The Pepsi challenge

I was reading one of Engadget's sister blogs, AdJab, about a rebuttle to a certain media fiasco regarding Pepsi's CFO, Indra Nooyi's speech at a university commencement speech. Even though there's been a firestorm of criticism about Nooyi's immense critical analogy of the United States as the middle finger of democracy, I don't think she's too far off from the international sentiments held against our country. Even though Nooyi perhaps represents the most American of individuals, I think she was trying to think outside of own her body and her own geography when she created this not-so-subtle analogy about the five continents as digits of the hands. We are the middle finger, because we are flipping everyone off if they can't buy into our brand of freedom, liberty, and democracy.

Soldiers in Iraq, conversatives, and good ol' complainers have been quick to call Nooyi's speech as anti-American and extremely bad for Pepsi's business. Heh, why would she care about what those people think? Pepsi has an immense international base...something that rather shocked me when I saw how pervasive they were in Asia. Then again, we guzzle down enough soda to compete with any other continent, but I don't think that is enough to say Nooyi should mind what she says. There is inevitable double standard here: she's a woman, a South Asian woman, and a powerful South Asian woman. These are all the necessary elements for the anti-feminists to persecute Nooyi for her so-called indignation.

Now, I'm not defending her to the extreme, but I don't think there's anything wrong with coming up with a controversial commencement speech. This is Columbia's MBA program...so I'm sure controversy is among it's least provocative pieces surrounding the school. The added bonus was that it generated a great deal of writing and dialoguing about our growing awareness about our reputation abroad. This is kind of what we would like to ignore...that we're essentially unpopular to the international community. No one wants to feel like the loser...that's why we try to spin it like we're the ones who are on top. Heh, it's not going so well.