Pepsi puts a seal of faith on brands

Ratna Bhushan Jun 19, 2007, 12.05am IST GURGAON: It happened four years ago, but the impact is such that it seems like yesterday. The famous pesticides-in-cola brouhaha of 2003 that alienated consumers and led PepsiCo global boss Indra Nooyi to question the handling of the issue in India has made Pepsi India take an extreme step. The company has decided to stamp a quality assurance seal which reads: 'One Quality Worldwide' across all its product labels, a first for a soft drink giant anywhere in the world. The quality seal will appear on labels of its carbonated beverages, non-carbs, flavours, Tropicana juices, sports drink Gatorade and Aquafina water. PepsiCo is also in discussions with its snack foods arm Frito-Lay India to put the same seal on its snack foods labels. The quality seal seeks to assure Indian consumers that the quality of PepsiCo's products sold in the country is the same as those sold in the US and other parts of the world.
PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi has blamed herself for not handling the pesticides-in-cola controversy properly, saying she should have been in India to propagate the safety of the company's soft drinks. One thing I should have done was to appear in India three years ago and say: 'Cut it out. These products are the safest in the world, bar none, and your tests are wrong'," Nooyi told US-based magazine BusinessWeek in an interview.Talking about the controversy emanating from Centre for Science and Environment's report alleging pesticide residues in soft drinks, the India-born CEO admitted the company's marketing strategy also made the matter worse.

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'Queen' Nooyi rocks US business world "Combine the public seeing the mercenary side of us, along with the fact that this was an American company," Nooyi, who was then the chief financial officer of PepsiCo, said. Before the pesticides controversy, the Supreme Court had in December 2002 pulled up PepsiCo for damaging environment by painting advertisement on rocks in Himalayan mountains. This was followed by allegations of depleting ground water by its various bottling units. She, however, added the public didn't see "the other things we were doing" and implied the company was a victim of its own image."If we get attention, it's not because of the water we use. It is because of what we represent," Nooyi said. "What we don't want is for people to think that industry is taking out of the ground God-given natural resources and depleting that community of its livelihood or requirements for

Friday, May 20, 2005

The Indra Nooyi controversy Indra Nooyi is one of IIMC's celebrated alumni and is President/CFO of PepsiCo Inc., People have wrought up a stupid controversy alleging she showed the 'middle finger' to America. The Economic Times Article : Nooyi's mid-finger makes US see red The index finger is Europe, pointing the way up; the ring finger is Latin America, sensual and romantic (think Salma Hayek or J-Lo); the thumb is Asia, proud and aspiring; the little finger is the Dark Continent, while the middle finger - yes, you guessed it - is the United States of America.Soon, the incident had blogworld all aflutter. It would certainly be a shame if the president of PepsiCo had gotten rich on America, while she was gallivanting around college campuses claiming that the US was giving the middle finger to the rest of the world. That would not be cricket, would it? asked one of the blogs Remember that the middle finger - the US - always stands out. If you are smart, if you exhibit emotional intelligence as well as academic intelligence, if you ascribe positive intent to all your actions on the international business stage, this can be a great advantage, she concludes. Apparently, ET claims this issue has caused a blog-storm. A quick Technorati search threw up 64 posts. Im not sure if this is a blog-storm.

Pepsico was quick to react. This is Indra Nooyi's clarification (Full Text of the speech): As part of this illustration, I assigned five of the worlds continents to the different fingers and thumb. I refer to North America and particularly the U.S. as the middle finger because it is the longest and anchors every function the hand performs. The middle finger also is key to all the fingers working together effectively. That is how I view Americas place of importance in the world.The point of my analogy was to emphasize Americas leadership position. Equally critical is the need for each of us as citizens to take a constructive role in whatever we choose to do in life to ensure the U.S. continues as the worlds helping hand. Does not make sense from the angle of both parties. Either the bloggers/newspapers should have sense enough to understand Ms.Nooyi , President of PepsiCo, would not choose a graduation ceremony to show her country the middlefinger. Atleast, Ms.Nooyi or her speech-writer should have sense enough to know what the middle-finger signifies. at 3:32 PM