How Many Global CMOs Does It Take To Sell A Can Of Soda?

There's wonderful news from never-never land. The folks at Pepsi are at it again. This can only mean more fun and laughter for the rest us.

Having completely forgotten that their job is to sell sugar-water to pimply-faced geeks in Newark, they are doubling down on their bonehead search for worldwide, universal truths.

They have just hired a Senior VP-Global CMO for the Pepsi Trademark. Don't confuse this with the guy who used to be PepsiCo International CMO but is now CMO at Pepsi Beverages North America or the Pepsi Global Beverage Group Foresight Director or the President-Global Enjoyment or the Global CMO-Hydration. 

Ad Age reports that Pepsi's President-Global Beverages Group says that the new role of Senior VP-Global CMO for the Pepsi Trademark is "consistent with the global operating model PepsiCo has established. That model includes a global beverage group, global snacks group and global nutrition group. Eventually, each of the top 12 global brands will have a global leader."

It's a big globe after all. They're gonna need Magellan to design the org chart.

With all due respect, I would like to suggest that this really isn't Pepsi's "global operating model." If I may exhibit a little hubris here, I think I described their global operating model a little more accurately in a recent post...

"Many companies are powered by products or services initiated years or even decades ago... They persevere largely on inertia...That's why all the monkeys running around having meetings and writing memos really aren't doing that much harm."

Pepsi, however, seems to be uniquely qualified at identifying only the most dangerous monkeys and placing them where they can do extraordinary harm. But this doesn't seem to deter them.

The President-Global Beverages Group has this to say...

"Pepsi is our biggest and most global brand...

Most global? Are there degrees of globularity? It seems to me that a brand is either global or it ain't. Are there secret parts of the globe we haven't been told about? (Maybe that's where Jimmy Hoffa and the WMDs are!)

"...We have never up until very recently managed brands on a global basis...We’re marketing to global consumers that are hyper-connected to each other, no matter where they are in the world."

Yeah, well I have little update for you, amigo. It turns out all the pimply-faced geeks in Newark who are "hyper-connected" with pimply-faced geeks in Norway are not having "conversations about brands." They're texting pictures of their girlfriends' tits.

While Pepsi's new President-Global Beverages Group is pretty good at this globu-babble stuff, I'm afraid he really isn't up to the standard of inter-globularity of his predecessor Massimo d'Amore, who was quoted thusly...

"[Before] it was more of a global coordination as opposed to a global management," Mr. d'Amore said. "Technology, both social networks and mobile platforms, have created this global generation. We really want to connect our global brands with the global generation, and the best way to do that is with global management."

Just a word of caution. I'm afraid Mr. d'Amore is no longer at Pepsi. He was given a sudden involuntary globotomy.

Maybe he's with Hoffa somewhere keeping an eye on the WMDs.