Pepsi shows some smarts

Power Line posted yesterday on a graduation speech Indra Nooyi, the president/CFO of PepsiCo, gave to the Columbia Business School. The controversy didn't strike me as hugely important when Powerline posted it, and seemed overblown to begin with. Pepsi has now posted Ms. Nooyi's speech in full. Reading it, I don't find anything objectionable. That isn't really the point of this post though. No matter how good or bad the speech makes Ms. Nooyi (and hence Pepsi) look, posting it is the smart thing to do. Immediately it gets you out of the business of 'covering up' and lets you move on to dealing with the issue, making clarifications and apologies if needed, and letting the whole thing blow over. If Eason Jordan had got his speech at Davos online quickly, the whole thing would have probably blown over. Pepsi has shown they understand the new media environment.