10 July 2008
The Real Pepsi Challenge: Breaking the Corporate Color Barrier
An exhibition explores Pepsi Cola’s hiring of black marketers in the 1940s
New York -- In the 1940s, a time when racial segregation was an ugly reality in the United States, one company took the lead in breaking down barriers in the business world. The Pepsi-Cola Company became the first major American corporation to market to black communities, and it hired a team of black professionals to do the marketing.
From 1947 to 1951, Pepsi had a "special markets" team -- at its height comprising 12 black men -- whose job was to sell the soft drink to what was then called "the Negro market." It was not until two decades later that the rest of American business caught up and showed the same commitment to selling to black customers and hiring black employees, according to an exhibit at the Queens Museum of Art, in New York.
Pepsi's groundbreaking move was made mainly for business reasons. America came out of World War II with a booming economy, but one that was remarkably segregated along racial lines. Black community leaders were urging major companies to advertise in black newspapers, stressing that the 14 million African Americans represented a gold mine of potential customers.
Pepsi, which had been established only a few years earlier, was an underdog struggling against the giant Coca-Cola brand. Pepsi saw an opportunity, said Stephanie Capparell, author of The Real Pepsi Challenge, a 2007 book that recounts the episode.
"Make no mistake, [Pepsi president Walter S. Mack] wanted to sell more Pepsi and make more money,” Capparell said. “But he was very aware he was doing something to advance [racial] integration."
Capparell, an editor at the Wall Street Journal, is the curator of the exhibit in Queens, a borough of New York and the location of Pepsi’s headquarters when the black marketing team was assembled.
The exhibit, which has been extended through September 2, chronicles the story through photographs, print and broadcast commercials from the period, and recorded interviews with several surviving members of Pepsi's special markets team. The black marketing representatives were better educated than most of Pepsi's sales professionals. All team members had a college degree; one had graduated from Harvard, another had a master of business administration degree from the University of Chicago.
Allen L. McKellar, now 88, was hired straight out of college in 1940, along with one black woman. McKeller left Pepsi during World War II, then joined the special team when he returned to company in 1950. Like his colleagues, he crisscrossed the country, visiting black civic centers, women's clubs, and schools and colleges, promoting Pepsi.
The black marketers faced constant hardships and humiliations. They had to sit in the back of buses, ride in separate train compartments and eat behind curtains on trains. In many places, they were barred from restaurants and hotels, so they relied on networks of black families and churches to feed and house them.
"We were not recognized as human beings," McKellar told America.gov. "We were ostracized and mistreated."
But like Jackie Robinson, who in 1947 became the first black major league baseball player, the black Pepsi marketers knew they were pioneers. They persevered with humor, intelligence and determination. "You just had to lift your head and move forward," recalled McKellar.
The black marketers had a big impact on black consumers. Often, they were the first black men carrying corporate business cards that their audiences had ever seen. "We showed them," McKellar said, "that there were other avenues open for blacks besides becoming doctors, lawyers or waiters."
The team's efforts appeared to win deep brand loyalty from blacks. After her book was published, Capparell received calls from several elderly blacks who cited the strong impression a talk from one of the marketers years earlier had made on them. "I'm 80 years old," one told her, "and I've never drunk anything but Pepsi."
The black marketers visited bottling plants around the country, many of them independently owned. In what Capparell calls "the first diversity training" in American business, the marketers spoke to the bottlers' all-white driver-salesmen, urging them to show more interest in retail stores in black neighborhoods.
For Pepsi the approach represented a risky move against accepted business practices. "A lot of people were segregationist," Capparell said. Pepsi "did risk being shunned by [white] consumers."
In the late 1940s, Pepsi introduced advertisements that were "shocking" for their day, when blacks typically were shown as rotund maids or smiling cooks, Capparell said. Pepsi’s ads portrayed blacks as “stylish, fun-loving, middle-class citizens living the American dream."
Pepsi ran the ads in national advertising campaigns in the black press. In 1965, Pepsi made its first attempt at running an ad with a black face in a national publication. The ad ran in Sports Illustrated magazine and pictured football star Jim Brown. It attracted complaints and was discontinued. But by 1968, with mounting pressure from the civil rights movement, blacks began appearing in ads for various companies in major publications.
Pepsi disbanded its special markets team in 1951, and most of its members left for other successful careers. One team member, Harvey C. Russell, stayed at Pepsi. In 1962, he became the first African American promoted to vice-president of a major corporation.
Today, the company, renamed PepsiCo, is as large as its main rival, the Coca-Cola Company. Capparell credits Pepsi's pioneering moves to market to blacks with helping the company prosper.
Information on the exhibition, titled “The Real Pepsi Challenge: Breaking the Color Barrier in American Business,” is available on the Queens Museum of Arts Web site.
