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advertisement Class

Edward Boyd: Corporate America’s Inclusion Trendsetter at Pepsi

Imagine a world in which ads never seem to be directed to you. For African American consumers, that description was not far from the mark until well into the 20th century.

The year 1947 proved a watershed for change in both sports and boardrooms. Most famously, it was the year that Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier to become the first Black player in major league baseball. Less well known, but in many ways just as importantly, it was the year that Ed Boyd was hired to improve Pepsi’s marketing efforts with Black Americans. Donald M. Kendall, former CEO at Pepsi, noted, “Jackie Robinson may have made more headlines, but what Ed did—integrating the managerial ranks of corporate America—was equally groundbreaking.”

Boyd was a 33-year-old executive at the National Urban League in New York City when he and a small group of Black salesmen were hired by Pepsi CEO Walter S. Mack. Tired of ads that depicted Blacks in unflattering and even racist ways, Boyd’s team decided to create advertising that represented Blacks as ordinary Americans. For example, one series shared profiles of 20 great Black achievers, including Ralph Bunche, the 1950 winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. Another featured students at Black colleges. Still other ads showed Black middle-class families in grocery stores buying Pepsi. The common theme: Blacks shared the American Dream too, and their business was important.

Of course, the reality of America in the late 1940s was nowhere near as perfect as the view depicted in Pepsi’s ads. As Boyd and his Black sales team traveled around the United States, they regularly encountered discrimination. The group rode on segregated trains and stayed in Black-only hotels. They even faced insults and discrimination from co-workers at Pepsi. At one point, the men received threats from the Ku Klux Klan.

But they persevered. In just a few short years, Boyd and his team produced results that exceeded Mack’s expectations for increasing sales of Pepsi to Blacks. In her book on Boyd, The Wall Street Journal reporter Stephanie Capparell wrote that,

On their way to nudging their country to a better place, the sales team helped define niche marketing some thirty years before it became a widespread business strategy. They gave formal talks to white drivers and salesmen about their role in the company, thereby instigating some of the earliest formalized diversity training. They also helped to instill in African Americans a unique sense of brand loyalty—to products produced by companies with a commitment to social progress as much as to product quality.29 (Links to an external site.)

On April 30, 2007, Boyd passed away, depriving the world of one of its great civil rights pioneers. Through his tireless and underappreciated efforts to bring Black consumers into the mainstream of American life, Boyd made history. He was practicing ethnic target marketing years before the business world would embrace such a strategy. He fundamentally altered the image that white Americans had of their Black neighbors. And he taught corporations an important lesson on the value of embracing inclusion, both within the corporate ranks and in choosing customers to serve.

Questions

1.Why do you think Boyd and his team chose the marketing strategy that they did to target Black Americans?

2.Who are some other ground breakers in marketing? Offer a minimum of two examples. (Provide the link that you used in your research.)

management Homework Class

Your Assignment

Read Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Bosses Better Adjust.  Download Remote Work Is Here to Stay. Bosses Better Adjust.and answer the following questions:

1. The author said wise leaders know it is time to figure out how they and their teams can work remotely and productively over the long haul while protecting everyone from burnout. Which ideas/recommendations presented in the article did you find most convincing/insightful and why?

2. What are norms and why are norms important in the workplace?

3. If you were creating a charter or “prenup” for one of your online or remote classes, what team norms would you include?

4. How can leaders help workers deal with the “Swiss cheese” days they might be experiencing during the pandemic?

5. While not specifically discussed in the article, group roles are an important determinant of high performing teams. Which group roles (be specific) become even more important when teams are working remotely?