Avoiding Aunt Jemima Images, Boyd Showed Us As Fun-loving Middle-Class Folks Living The American Dream.
Parlaying marketing Pepsi-Cola into a war against white racism and black stereotypes, Edward F. Boyd died on April 30 in Los Angeles. He was 92.
What made Mr. Boyd innovative was that he used blacks like diplomat Ralph Bunche and celebrities like Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton to give “shout-outs” for Pepsi.
In one ad, the small boy shopping for Pepsi with his mom in the foreground was the late Ron Brown, who would become U.S. Secretary of Commerce. (Bio)Boyd hired some of the first black advertising models, flooding black papers and adding new prominence to the ads published in magazines like Ebony. He also had a squad of black salesmen visiting bottlers, grocery stores, and teachers’ and doctors’ conferences.
Blacks were then being lynched in the South, and even in the North, and many hotels did not welcome the brothers better qualified, but less paid than their white counterparts.
Mr. Boyd had them use Pullman sleeping cars on trains so they could avoid segregated dining areas. One proud Harvard graduate resigned after being sent to the back of a bus.
Marketing specifically to African-Americans, Mr. Boyd pioneered what Madison Avenue now calls “niche marketing.” (For that, click here)
And sometimes he used race as a selling point. Disseminating a Time magazine report that Coke’s chairman, Robert W. Woodruff, had toasted the re-election campaign of staunchly segregationist Georgia governor Herman Talmadge, Boyd attacked Coke’s widely perceived reluctance to hire blacks.His efforts bolstered Pepsi sales in every area they hit. After his team visited Chicago, Pepsi overtook Coke for the first time.
“Long before most companies came to see the potential of the black consumer, Ed put doors where previously only walls had existed,” Donald M. Kendall, PepsiCo's retired Chair and CEO, said.
Edward Francis Boyd, a barber’s son, was born on June 27, 1914, and raised in Riverside, California. He graduated from the UCLA, and used his singing and dancing training in minor movie roles, generally playing stereotypical black roles he despised. He worked for the Screen Actors Guild and government housing before National Urban League in New York.
Pepsi’s president, Walter S. Mack, who saw the potential of the black market, hired Mr. Boyd in 1947. His arrival meant a larger initiative, and many black newspapers wrote about him. Still, his sales force did not expand to the promised twelve until 1951.
The cola wars required delicacy, with Pepsi not wanting to appear too solicitous of blacks, for fear of losing white. Once a rumor circulated, which Mr. Boyd’s salesmen attributed to a Coke bottler, that a black worker had fallen into a Pepsi syrup tank and died. In 1949, Mr. Mack told 500 bottlers at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel that he no longer wanted Pepsi to be known as a "n***** drink.
Mr. Boyd jolted upright and trudged out in what he called “the longest walk...” “The thing in my life I’ve had most to fight is bitterness,” he later said in an interview. “I always realized that once I became embittered, I’d lose my objectivity and become nonfunctional and ineffective.”
Survived by his wife of over 60 years, four children and a granddaughter, this man is a testament to tenacity. commitment to one's race, and vision.
Cheers Mr. Boyd. This rounds on us!
Get Douglas Martin's full, unedited story here