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The Real Pepsi Challenge
Book

The Real Pepsi Challenge

The Inspirational Story of Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business

Stephanie Capparell
Free Press, 2007
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Innovative
  • Eye Opening
  • Engaging

Recommendation

Today, ad posters featuring African-American models are standard corporate practice. But during the 1940s, the Pepsi-Cola Company broke new ground when it ran ads featuring black middle-class families and community achievers. Stephanie Capparell creates an engaging account of Pepsi’s push to integrate its sales staff and customer base. Using insightful interviews and exhaustive research, Capparell provides a detailed portrait of segregation, economic challenges and corporate intrigue. Given the book’s vast amount of information, a timeline and a list of key players would have helped readers navigate the crowded cast of executives and events. But that’s a minor oversight in an otherwise excellent book. getAbstract highly recommends this intriguing saga to all students of corporate history, sales, advertising and racial politics.

Summary

Color and Cola Lines

The 1940s battle between Coca-Cola and Pepsi-Cola has been well documented. But corporate historians have paid far less attention to a conflict of greater significance during that decade: The battle African-American professionals waged for access to corporate America. During the post-Depression Era, the U.S. was not a land of equal opportunity. Most African-American workers labored in menial jobs or accepted segregated teaching posts. A chosen few – doctors, lawyers and mom-and-pop business owners – were self-employed in black communities.

Against that backdrop, the Pepsi-Cola Company was an unlikely warrior for equality. In the 1940s, New York-based Pepsi-Cola – the cola war underdog – moved into uncharted territory by hiring African-American professionals for national sales posts and internships. Tapping the minority market was a shrewd business move that ultimately paid handsome dividends for Pepsi. But the economic payoff did not diminish the strategy’s social significance. Indeed, Pepsi’s integration of its executive workforce preceded Jackie Robinson’s integration of major league baseball by seven years.

Pepsi Mixes It Up

In...

About the Author

Stephanie Capparell edits the “Marketplace” page for The Wall Street Journal, and is the author of Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer.

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