The Story Behind Pepsi's Early Marketing to African Americans

The Wall Street Journal today ran a lengthy excerpt from the new book by Stephanie Capparell titled "The Real Pepsi Challenge: The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business." The Journal, which is published by the Journal and Free Press (a division of Simon and Schuster), published the excerpt on the front of its Marketplace section.

Capparell writes that Pepsi hired an all-black marketing sales division to go after the Black consumer market which she reports was valued at more than $10 billion. Her narrative covers the experience and historical significance of this sales team and reports on the ethnic marketing strategies they and the company employed.

She writes, "The mission of the black sales representatives at Pepsi-Cola was to win over loyal new customers - first by making personal appearances, then by placing ads in the black press and setting up displays at mom-and-pop stores in black communities."

The marketing team "visited bottlers, churches, 'ladies groups,' schools, college campuses, YMCAs, community centers, insurance conventions, teacher and doctor conferences, and various civic organizations."

[Here] is a link to the book on Amazon and [here] is the description on the Simon and Schuster site.

I'm excited to be able to alert to this and share it, in the form of a case study, with my ethnic marketing students at Johns Hopkins University.