Nooyi's childhood may add fizz to Pepsi advertisements

GURGAON: The childhood story of the world’s fifth-most powerful woman may pan out on the Indian advertising landscape. If PepsiCo India’s plans go on track, the childhood struggles of its global CEO—the Chennai-born Indra Nooyi—will feature in a campaign highlighting the soft drink company’s initiatives in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) space.

The proposed campaign by the PepsiCo India team shows two school girls and talks of Nooyi’s middle-class upbringing in Chennai. It talks of how even at the age of 5, the current global CEO had to wake up at dawn to fill buckets of water. It is learnt that PepsiCo India officials are awaiting a final approval of the campaign from Ms Nooyi.

The campaign, as proposed by the Indian office, goes on to talk about how Ms Nooyi wants every child to “catch up on studies instead”. It links her vision of finding more ways to generate water and how PepsiCo is making a difference with its water harvesting activities in Indian villages.

Water is an issue close to Ms Nooyi’s heart. She has been quoted as saying she still feels guilty filling a bathtub with water. She has stated publicly that she and her family used to wake up in the early hours to fill every bucket in the house, and they had to learn to live off two buckets of water. Other ads PepsiCo India has planned in the CSR series talk about the soft drink company’s garbage collection and community farming activities.

All the proposed ads link to some of PepsiCo India’s best-known commercials such as ‘Yehi hai right choice baby’, ‘Yeh pyaas hai badi’ and ‘Yeh dil maange more’. It’s not the first time that a PepsiCo head has personally featured in one of the company’s own commercials.

During the peak of the pesticide-in-cola controversy, the then PepsiCo chairman Rajeev Bakshi had appeared in television commercials endorsing the safety of its soft drinks. While it’s not clear if the campaign resulted in actually reassuring consumers about the product quality, it did generate significant consumer recall.