David Rosenthal: belief

Transcript context

…That’s how they refer to it in internal communications. They don’t write Pepsi. They say the imitator. The imitator. Steele had been an ad man at the D'Arcy agency, and then he moved to Coke and joined Coke in-house. Basically as soon as he gets to Pepsi, Steele stages a coup and kicks out Walter Mack, who had been running Pepsi for the last 20 years. He shoves him out and Steele becomes the new president of Pepsi. He’s quite the maverick, shall we say. There are just some hilarious quotes from him about his management philosophy. One example, “The whole trick in hiring executives is to find a good man and turn him into a prick. A good man will be able to stand the course, but if the guy was a prick to begin with, he’ll crumble along the way.” Then, “I don’t care if the consumer wants carbonated sweat in a goat skin pouch. If so, this side of the room go looking for goats and that side start running fiercely in place.” This is Alfred Steele. Not only does he turn around Pepsi’s fortunes. I think Pepsi really becomes the more interesting company than Coke for at least the next, (call it) 30–40 years here after World War II. Coke has had this incredible success on the back of the war, but they’re also pretty fat and happy. They’re not interested in rocking the boat, shall we say. Steele clearly doesn’t give a crap about tradition or history or anything. Nothing to lose.…

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