Dive Brief:
- Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent and PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi have joined forces in a public service announcement supporting American Corporate Partners (ACP), a nonprofit that provides veterans with professional career guidance.
- In the spot, the two normally competing beverage giants' CEOs implore Americans to volunteer on ACP AdvisorNet, a veterans career advice site that's free to use.
- "This is the first time the two CEOs have come together in such a public way, but that doesn’t mean they haven’t met before. According to a Coke representative, Nooyi even went to a reception hosted by Coke during the World Economic Forum at Davos," Fortune reported.
Dive Insight:
"While the meeting of the beverage bosses may not seem like a big deal, it’s a huge shift from how the two companies’ previous chiefs behaved. Roberto Goizueta, CEO of Coke from 1980 to 1997, and Roger Enrico, who held the top job at PepsiCo from 1996 to 2001, famously never met or tasted their rival’s drinks, wrote Fortune‘s Pattie Sellers in 1996," according to Fortune.
ACP founder and chairman Sid Goodfriend said it wasn't as difficult to unite the two CEOs as some might think, with each CEO doing the spot if the other agreed to it as well.
"They compete on the beverage side for customers, but independently both companies are very focused on veterans," Goodfriend told Fortune.