• Frito-Lay, the savory-snack subsidiary of PepsiCo responsible for brands like Tostitos, Doritos, Cheetos, and Lay's, had to reduce assortment of its flavors at the start of the pandemic. 
• The tactic resulted in an apparent shortage of less stand-out flavors in stores, with customers taking to Twitter to voice their frustrations with the lack of variety.
• "From a production perspective, as we got into this, we had to really reduce assortment of a lot of our portfolio," chief customer officer of Frito-Lay North America Mike Del Pozzo previously told Business Insider.
• A Financial Post report revealed that the dearth of Cool Ranch Doritos in Canada was caused by a similar tactic.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As snacking has increased amid the pandemic, Frito-Lay has had to pivot its business to feed the growing salty cravings of its consumers.

The savory-snack subsidiary of PepsiCo responsible for brands like Tostitos, Doritos, Cheetos, and Lay's, was impacted by a shift in consumer habits at the start of the pandemic. Like many food and beverage companies, Frito-Lay saw a surge in business during the stock-up phase at the start of the pandemic. Salty snacks were the top food item contributing to sales growth at retailers since early March, according to sales data from IRI, a data-analytics and market-research company.

To meet the rise in demand, Frito-Lay made the decision in early March to streamline the portfolio and reduced about 21% of the brands SKUs to focus on maintaining the supply of the best-selling core brands, a representative for the brand said. 

"From a production perspective, as we got into this, we had to really reduce assortment of a lot of our portfolio," Mike Del Pozzo, the chief customer officer of Frito-Lay North America, told Business Insider in an interview, adding that a top priority was ensuring core brands were available and accessible in stores. 

The result, naturally, was a lack in variety among other, less stand-out flavors near the start of the pandemic. Frustrated by being unable to find their favorite flavors, Frito-Lay customers took to Twitter to inquire about the lack of flavors such as Doritos Salsa Verde, Fritos Scoops Spicy Jalapeño, Frito-Lay Baked & Popped Mix Sack, Tostitos Restaurant Style Hint of Jalapeño, and more. In many cases, Frito-Lay responded to these inquiries and complaints by confirming that these flavors were experiencing a temporary pause in production.

One user took to Twitter to voice his frustration with the lack of stock, to which Frito-Lay responded that the company was "working diligently to meet that demand."

In responses to other tweets, Frito-Lay confirmed the company had to temporarily halt production of Doritos Salsa Verde, another fan favorite.

Frito-Lay confirmed a halt in production in other flavors such as Fritos Scoops Spicy Jalapeño and Lay's Lightly Salted via Twitter as well. 

In Canada, a similar dearth of variety has reportedly been found. A Financial Post report revealed that the lack of Cool Ranch Doritos in Canada was also caused by pivoting focus from a variety of flavors to just three core flavors. 

"We had to make decisions along the way and make them fast," Ian Adler, chief marketing officer at PepsiCo Foods Canada, told the Financial Post. "Doritos is definitely one that caused a great deal of discussion, knowing that a fan favorite like Cool Ranch could be in jeopardy."

In America, Del Pozzo said that as consumer habits have become more predictable, Frito-Lay has started to focus on bringing back the assortment of noncore flavors in its portfolio. A representative from Frito-Lay confirmed that most flavors were back in stock or would be soon. 

"All but 5% of the paused SKUs have returned to the portfolio in recent weeks as we have seen stock up mentality slow," the representative said. 

SEE ALSO: Inside Frito-Lay's response to the COVID-19-related snack surge, from shifting its supply chain to creating Snacks.com

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• Aunt Jemima is changing its name and losing its mascot of a Black woman that has been criticized for years for its roots in racism and minstrelsy. 
• Parent company PepsiCo said new packaging will hit shelves late this year and that the brand's new name will follow soon after. 
• "We recognize Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype," Kristin Kroepfl, Quaker Foods North America's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. 
• Land O'Lakes removed the drawing of a Native American woman on its packaging earlier this year, while Uncle Ben's says it is planning on "evolving" the rice brand. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Aunt Jemima is changing its name and losing its brand image of a Black woman, as parent company PepsiCo acknowledges the pancake brand's racist roots.

PepsiCo announced the change on Wednesday, saying that packaging without the Aunt Jemima mascot will hit shelves in the fourth quarter of this year. The brand's new name will be announced at a later date, quickly following the first phase of new packaging. 

"We recognize Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype," Kristin Kroepfl, Quaker Foods North America's chief marketing officer, said in a statement. "While work has been done over the years to update the brand in a manner intended to be appropriate and respectful, we realize those changes are not enough."

The Aunt Jemima brand has been criticized for years. The inspiration for the name was a minstrel song and the brand continued to be linked to racism in the eyes of many. 

"This Aunt Jemima logo was an outgrowth of Old South plantation nostalgia and romance grounded in an idea about the 'mammy,' a devoted and submissive servant who eagerly nurtured the children of her white master and mistress while neglecting her own,"Riché Richardson wrote in The New York Times in 2015.

In 1989, Quaker Oats rolled out a more "contemporary" look for Aunt Jemima — the sixth makeover that attempted to distance the mascot from the brand's racist roots. At the time, Quaker Oats said it would not be renaming the brand, with a spokesperson saying that Aunt Jemima's "familiarity and recognition is an invaluable asset."

Brands are being forced to confront their racist roots

Now, PepsiCo has decided that Aunt Jemima's "familiarity" is worth sacrificing. Kroepfl said that the company acknowledges the brand "has not progressed enough to appropriately reflect the confidence, warmth, and
dignity that we would like it to stand for today." 

On Tuesday, PepsiCo announced that it would invest $400 million over five years to address inequality and create opportunities for Black communities. 

Earlier this year, Land O'Lakes removed the drawing of a Native American woman on its packaging. Rice brand Uncle Ben's has faced similar criticism to Aunt Jemima, due to the name's roots in white Southerners calling older Black people "aunt" and "uncle" instead of "Mr." or "Mrs."  

Uncle Ben's parent company Mars Food told Business Insider in a statement that it does not "know what the exact changes or timing will be, but we are evaluating all possibilities." 

"As a global brand, we know we have a responsibility to take a stand in helping to put an end to racial bias and injustices," Mars said in a statement. "As we listen to the voices of consumers, especially in the Black community, and to the voices of our Associates worldwide, we recognize that one way we can do this is by evolving the Uncle Ben's brand, including its visual brand identity." 

SEE ALSO: Leaked documents show how Adidas is confronting racism internally by banning certain terms like 'asset' among employees

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• Quaker Oats announced Wednesday it will reimagine its Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mix.
• Aunt Jemima was fashioned after a "mammy" caricature, a racist depiction that portrays Black female slaves as smiling, happy homemakers for white people.
• A company spokesperson said Quaker Oats, which makes the product, recognizes that "Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype."
• Aunt Jemima is not the only problematic brand that's been a staple in American culture.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Quaker Oats, a subsidiary of PepsiCo, announced Wednesday that it will retire its Aunt Jemima brand of syrup and pancake mix, saying the company recognizes that "Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype."

In the late 1800s, the Missouri newspaper editor Chris L. Rutt decided to name his brand of self-rising flour after "Aunt Jemima," a song performed by minstrel actors. A former slave named Nancy Green was later hired to portray Aunt Jemima as a "mammy," a racist caricature that depicts female slaves as smiling, happy homemakers for white families.

"We recognize Aunt Jemima's origins are based on a racial stereotype," Kristin Kroepfl, vice president and chief marketing officer of Quaker Foods North America, said in a press release. "As we work to make progress toward racial equality through several initiatives, we also must take a hard look at our portfolio of brands and ensure they reflect our values and meet our consumers' expectations."

Kroepfl said the company has worked to "update" the brand over the years to be "appropriate and respectful," but it realized the changes were insufficient.

Hours after Quaker Oats announced it was changing its Aunt Jemima logo, Mars, which makes the boxed rice product Uncle Ben's, said it plans to change the product's "brand identity." Uncle Ben's was named after a Black domestic servant.

These two products, however, are hardly the only racist ones to have been a staple in American culture. Here are several other offensive logos and mascots that have existed throughout history.

Katie Richards, Kim Bhasin, Aaron Taube, and Karlee Weinmann contributed to an earlier version of this article.

SEE ALSO: 13 eye-opening essays and articles from Black writers you should have already read to understand America's problems with race

The Washington Redskins, 1933-Present

Sports team: The NFL's Washington Redskins 
In 2014, the US Patent and Trademark Office canceled six trademarks belonging to the Washington Redskins, including the team's old logo, after finding the name disparaged Native Americans. The word "redskin" is a racist slang term for America's indigenous people. 

The Washington Redskins were founded in 1932 as the Boston Braves. The team changed its name to the Redskins in 1933. 

The team's owners and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell have defended the use of the word and the logo, which depicts a Native American. In the wake of PepsiCo's decision to rename its Aunt Jemima products, however, more are calling for change for the football team. 

Source: Business Insider, The Guardian, The Washington Post

Chief Blackjack, 1928-1987

Organization: St. John's University

The Queens, New York-based college began calling its sports teams the Redmen in the early 1920s and adopted the Chief Blackjack mascot in 1928 when two students found a statue of him outside a cigar store.

The school used a variant of the logo you see here up until 1987, finally ditching the Redmen name in 1994 after pressure from Native-American groups. The school's teams are now known as the Red Storm.

Source: St. John's University, Jay Rosenstein Productions, New York Times

Rastus, 1901-1925

Company: Cream of Wheat

Since the 1880s, Rastus has been widely considered a pejorative term associated with black men. Through advertisements from the first part of the 20th century, the smiling chef is depicted as childlike and uneducated.

Cream of Wheat took Rastus off the box in 1925 in favor of a portrait of Frank L. White, a Chicago chef who remains on the box to this day (pictured above).

Source: The Jim Crow Museum Of Racist Memorabilia, Adweek

Miss Chiquita, 1944-Present

Company: Chiquita

Originally a sexy banana, the mascot is now a sexy banana seller. She wears a Carmen-Miranda-esque fruit hat that gives an exotic and idealized image of the tropics.

Source: Chiquita

Syracuse University's Big Chief Bill Orange, 1931-1978

Organization: Syracuse University

Before the private university looked to Otto the Orange for a boost of school spirit, Syracuse University's mascot was Big Chief Bill Orange, the Saltine Warrior. 

A statue of the Saltine Warrior was erected on the campus in 1951 and still stands today. In 1978, students in the Syracuse community and members of a Native-American organization protested the use of this mascot.

Eventually the Saltine Warrior was retired along with the costume worn by the mascot.

Source: Syracuse University Archives

Frito Bandito, 1967-1971

Company: Fritos

Speaking broken English and robbing unsuspecting bystanders, the Frito Bandito was an armed Mexican conman with a disheveled look and a gold tooth.

Responding to pressure from the Mexican American Anti-Defamation Committee, the snack-food giant cleaned up Frito Bandito's look. But combed hair and a friendlier expression didn't quite cut it.

Fritos ditched the cartoon, and a less controversial band of cowboys, the Muncha Bunch, replaced him.

Source: "On the Media"

Land O'Lakes butter, 1928-2020

Land O'Lakes recently changed the packaging for its consumer products to remove the image of a Native American woman with a feather in her hair.

The change was implemented ahead of the company's 100th anniversary. The new packaging is very similar to the original, save for the removal of the Native American woman. It also added the phrase "farmer-owned" above the Land O'Lakes name.

Source: Business Insider

Eskimo Pie, 1921-Present

Company: Cadbury Pascall

The ice cream treat named for a North American tribe became the subject of controversy in 2009 when a Canadian Inuit woman said the product name insulted her heritage.

A slow-moving and largely unpublicized battle in North America's northland has quietly raged on against the use of the word "Eskimo" to describe people with Inuit heritage.

But "Eskimo" is so ingrained that even the occasional blasts of bad publicity have failed to persuade manufacturer Cadbury Pascall to consider a new name.

Source: The Toronto Star

Chief Wahoo, 1947-Present

Company: Cleveland Indians, Major League Baseball

Despite decades of criticism and lobbying for his removal, Chief Wahoo is still the mascot for Major League Baseball's Cleveland Indians.

Still, the once-untouchable landscape of sports mascots is bending. Now that the Redskins lost their trademark, the Cleveland Plain Dealer is asking whether Chief Wahoo should be next.

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

Sambo's, 1957-1981

Company: Sambo's

When restaurateurs Sam Battistone and Newell Bohnett launched Sambo's, they insisted its name had nothing to do with a children's book of the time, "The Story of Little Black Sambo."

But the businessmen capitalized on the association, with "Little Black Sambo"-inspired decor.

In the late 1970s, the chain had 1,200 locations in 47 states. After some backlash, a name change and an attempt at an identity makeover, it went bankrupt in 1981.

Source: Slate

Funny Face Drink Mix, 1964-1965

Company: Pillsbury

When Kool-Aid started dominating the refreshment market, Pillsbury decided to create its own competing brand: Funny Face.

Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry are actual varieties of Funny Face, and the racist overtones didn't stop at the names: Caricatures accompanied each of the flavors. 

Pillsbury eventually swapped out its original varieties for Jolly Olly Orange and Choo Choo Cherry on its own.

Source: Slate

Crazy Horse malt liquor, 1992-2001

Company: Stroh Brewery

Though the real Crazy Horse may have advocated abstinence, that didn't stop Stroh Brewery from capitalizing on his recognizable name and image — as well as the popular stereotype that Native Americans are heavy drinkers — with this malt beverage.

The company had to backpedal after its product inspired serious outrage from Crazy Horse's estate and the Rosebud Sioux Tribe. In 2001, Stroh apologized in a ceremony on the Rosebud Reservation.

Crazy Horse is still on the market, but under the name Crazy Stallion.

Source: Slate

• US stock indexes rose on Monday as investors prepared for upcoming earnings reports, which will provide details around the impact of coronavirus on companies.
• PepsiCo gained after revealing better-than-expected sales to kick off earnings season.
• Pfizer and BioNTech gained jumped after two of the firms' COVID vaccine candidates received "fast track" status from the FDA.
• Oil fell amid fears of OPEC+ unwinding production curbs. West Texas Intermediate crude dropped as much as 2.2%, to $39.66 per barrel.
• Watch major indexes update live here.

US equities gained on Monday as investors prepared for earnings reports that will show the degree of damage imposed by the coronavirus.

PepsiCo jumped in early trading after revealing better-than-expected revenue in the second quarter. The report marked the unofficial start of an earnings season set to be more chaotic than usual.

Several companies pulled forward guidance in their previous reports, citing uncertainties sourced from the coronavirus pandemic. Investors now wait to see which corporate giants outperformed and which faltered throughout widespread lockdowns.

Here's where US indexes stood at 1:20 p.m. ET market open on Monday:

• S&P 500: 3,232.47, up 1.5%
• Dow Jones industrial average: 26,608.41, up 2.1% (539 points)
• Nasdaq composite: 10,790.63, up 1.6%

Read more:UBS says buy these 18 diamond-in-the-rough stocks that will offer massive gains over multiple years, even as their underlying industries suffer

Major banks kick off earnings season on Tuesday, with JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Wells Fargo all slated to release quarterly metrics. The firms are expected to show a sharp decline in profits due to bolstered loan-loss reserves and weakened net interest income.

In deal news, Maxim Integrated Products leaped after rival firm Analog Devices said it would purchase the firm in a $21 billion all-stock deal. The takeover is among the year's largest.

Pfizer and BioNTech gained after two of the firms' coronavirus vaccine candidates received "fast track" status from the Food and Drug Administration. Both companies have said they plan to produce as many as 100 million doses by the end of 2020 if their vaccine gains regulatory approval. A trial with up to 30,000 participants can begin as soon as later this month, they added.

Read more:BlackRock's bond chief who oversees $2.3 trillion told us how the coronavirus crisis created a game-changing investment opportunity for the first time in almost 20 years — and shared 4 ways he's cashing in

Oil declined amid fears of OPEC+ retracing production cuts in its Wednesday meeting. West Texas Intermediate crude slid as much as 2.2%, to $39.66 per barrel. Brent crude, the international benchmark, fell 2%, to $42.39 per barrel, at intraday lows.

The stock market's gains follow a positive close to the previous week. Equities climbed roughly 1% on Friday as investors cheered a different coronavirus vaccine candidate. Gilead Sciences announced trial data for its remdesivir compound found a 62% reduction to mortality risk among severe COVID patients. Banks including Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup also jumped through the session.

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• Cereal sales are up 11.8% so far in 2020, compared to the same period last year, according to Nielsen data. 
• Industry giants like Kellogg's, General Mills, and PepsiCo have said cereal sales are booming as people eat breakfast at home. 
• Buzzy startups like OffLimits and Magic Spoon are now trying to cash in on the breakfast boom, as big name brands from Dunkin' to Disney form partnerships to create their own cereal lines. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Anything can be breakfast food, if you want it to be. 

At least, that's what Kraft Mac & Cheese is theorizing with its latest marketing campaign. The brand is giving away limited-edition Kraft Mac and Cheese "Breakfast Boxes," and advertising the noodles as a breakfast option on social media.

It's no surprise that Kraft wants to get into the breakfast game. As the coronavirus pandemic stretches on, many Americans' morning routines have been completely revamped. 

Fast-food chains including McDonald's, Dunkin', and Panera said that breakfast sales have been hardest hit during the pandemic, and continue to drag down overall business. 

"There's not much recovery in the breakfast day part right now. In terms of day part, breakfast has dried up," Panera CEO Niren Chaudhary told Business Insider.

Read more:Breakfast sales at fast-food giants like Starbucks and McDonald's 'dried up' during the pandemic

Cereal giants are celebrating the return of breakfast at home

One of the biggest winners of this emerging trend has been cereal, a breakfast category that has witnessed sales decline over the last four years, in part because millennials were too lazy to make themselves breakfast at home, Nielsen data shows.

But in 2020, cereal sales have grown 11.8%, to $5.4 billion, through the week ending July 25.

Sales are additionally up 6.7% over the last 12 months, Nielsen said. Prior to this recent surge, cereal sales had dropped at least 1% year-over-year dating back to 2017.

Now that many Americans are stuck at home, cereal is once again a convenient option for people unable to pick up a bagel or coffee on their way to work. 

General Mills reported in early July that its net sales grew 16% in its most recent quarter, driven by meals, banking, and cereal categories. US cereal sales were up 26% in the period, with the company announcing in last month that it planned to add up to 40 new cereal supply-chain partnerships.

PepsiCo has seen similar success with its Quaker Oats cereal and oatmeal lines. The company reported in mid-July that Quaker's organic revenue increased 23% in its second quarter, driven in part by "increased breakfast occasions." 

Kellogg's also reported in late July that net sales grew 9% in its most recent quarter. On a call with investors, CEO Steven Cahillane said cereal consumption in the US was up almost 16% compared to last year.

New competitors are now trying to enter the cereal game 

With cereal sales on the rise, some buzzy startups are trying to cash in. One of the biggest names in the breakfast startup world is Magic Spoon, a direct-to-consumer, keto-friendly line of cereals. 

"We have seen a bigger demand in our cereal, from both new customers discovering Magic Spoon for the first time, whether from social media or word of mouth, but also our longtime customers who have been ordering more cereal at a time while at home,"Magic Spoon cofounder Gabi Lewis told Business Insider in May.

OffLimits is another new trendy cereal brand that launched this summer. A box of OffLimits' Dash cereal costs $12, and has the added benefit of turning your cereal milk into cold brew thanks to a partnership with Intelligentsia Coffee.

Established cereal giants are also turning to partnerships. And new stakeholders, includigfast-food chains to Disney, seem happy to get their own small piece of the booming breakfast business. 

Dunkin' branded breakfast cereals are rolling out through a partnership with Post in early August. The two flavors —  Dunkin' Caramel Macchiato and Mocha Latte — are slightly caffeinated, with about 10% of the caffeine of a cup of coffee. 

General Mills launched a cereal inspired by Disney's "The Mandalorian" with Baby Yoda front-and-center on the box. Kellogg's recently rolled out"Minecraft Creeper Crunch," referencing the video game. 

And, of course, there's the Kraft Mac and Cheese Breakfast Box – proving that a company doesn't even need to change its recipe or branding to attempt to cash in on the growing demand for easy breakfast options at home. Kraft says that 56% of parents have served their children mac and cheese for breakfast more often during the pandemic, citing a survey of 1,000 people. 

Time will tell if the current cereal renaissance sparked by the at-home breakfast boom will last. As both industry giants and startups make new investments, they're banking on people continuing to eat cereal in the long term — even if growth slows as people return to their normal routines. 

"It's one to watch, obviously, but we're pretty confident that the at-home consumption is going to remain elevated," Cahillane said of cereal sales on a recent Kellogg's investor call. "And we're assuming a deceleration, obviously, from the height of it as people become more mobile and things do return back to normal, but we're still seeing good overall consumption"

SEE ALSO: Papa John's says it expects the pandemic-induced spike in pizza sales to continue 'for the foreseeable future'

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• Michele Hoskins founded maple syrup company Michele Foods in 1984, and the business has been growing ever since.  
• The company's main competitor, Aunt Jemima, was pulled off shelves because of its racist branding, which gave Michele Foods a boost in sales. 
• Business Insider spoke with Michele Hoskins about her rise to success, and how she was able to transform her small business into a thriving company valued at over $1 million in three decades. 
• Since founding the company, Hoskins has gained recognition from public figures like Oprah Winfrey and Beyoncé. Her products are stocked in over 8,000 retailers nationwide. 
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When Michele Hoskins started Michele Foods in 1984, the young entrepreneur was a newly divorced teacher with three children and no source of investor capital to start a business. 

Three decades later, Hoskins has steadily grown her syrup into a business that she says is worth over $1 million, with products in more than 8,000 stores across the country, including Kroger, Safeway, and Publix. Hoskins' syrups exploded in popularity in June, when Quaker Oats pulled Aunt Jemima syrup off shelves for its racist stereotypes. Quaker Oats' parent company, PepsiCo, announced that a rebranded version of their product will hit shelves in the fourth quarter of this year. 

Following the announcement that Aunt Jemima was being pulled off of shelves, Hoskins' syrups sold out on Amazon within an hour. Public figures like comedian Rickey Smiley endorsed Hoskins, and Beyoncé featured Michele Foods on her directory of Black-owned businesses. 

While Aunt Jemima's fall was the catalyst that helped Michele Foods gain a mass following, Hoskins had been expanding her brand for decades. Here's how she did it.

She started from scratch – and with a recipe passed down through generations 

In the early 1980s, Hoskins decided she wanted to do something other than teach – she wanted to found a business. 

The 80s saw female executives and entrepreneurs emerge at an unprecedented rate. This inspired Hoskins. "I wanted to be part of that movement, but I didn't know how," Hoskins said. The aspiring entrepreneur also had little money to start a business. 

But what Hoskins did have was access to a syrup recipe that had been passed down for four generations from her ancestor, America Washington, a young woman and family cook who was emancipated from slavery in the 1800s. 

Hoskins got to work turning the recipe into a product that she could sell in stores. She sold her belongings to fund initial costs, moved into her mother's attic with her three daughters to work on the product, and began taking her it to stores. 

Along the way, Hoskins learned how to manage a business through trial-and error. For example, Hoskins once had to temporarily halt her business after running out of syrup bottles. 

"Everything I learned, I learned through the school of hard knocks," Hoskins said. Now, she mentors other young entrepreneurs to come into business prepared with a concrete idea of the inventory they will require. 

She grew her business with persistence 

After selling her product to local stores, Hoskins decided to expand her market. She went to the corporate offices of supermarket chain Albertsons, which has since merged with Safeway, to request sales space. 

"It was unusual to see a young, African-American woman walk into a corporate office, trying to put products on a retail market," Hoskins said. "It just wasn't something that had been done." 

In her pitches, Hoskins touted the quality of her product, offered samples, and came in prepared with the numbers to back up her proposal, from inventory costs to profit margins. 

"If you are a small company wanting to approach a major retailer, you should really make sure that you have your financial backing and the systems in place to be able to support that," Hoskins said. 

But one of her biggest strategies was persistence. 

Before becoming the first minority supplier for Denny's, Hoskins called the breakfast chain's corporate offices to pitch her product every Monday for two years. "I've had to be very creative these past 30 years, because we never had any real capital infusion," Hoskins said. 

In time, her syrup received attention from media outlets including Black Enterprise, People Magazine, and the Oprah Winfrey show. Hoskins also authored a book on entrepreneurship and went on tour to promote it. 

But Hoskins' business was always dwarfed by the two biggest syrup brands in the industry: ConAgra Foods' Mrs. Butterworth and PepsiCo's Aunt Jemima, which used racist stereotypes of Black women to promote their products. Both PepsiCo and ConAgra have recently announced plans to update their packaging. 

Meanwhile, Hoskins was discouraged from including her face on her bottle. A suburban store owner in a predominantly white area once told Hoskins to remove her product from his store because he didn't want anything "ethnic," Hoskins said. 

Even Hoskins herself had grown up with Aunt Jemima's syrup as a child. "Your mom comes back from the grocery store with a syrup bottle that has this black face on it, and you subconsciously identify some connection," Hoskins said. "So for African-Americans, that was the syrup of choice." 

She treated competitors with respect 

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font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:550; line-height:18px;"> View this post on Instagram</div></div><div style="padding: 12.5% 0;"></div> <div style="display: flex; flex-direction: row; margin-bottom: 14px; align-items: center;"><div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(0px) translateY(7px);"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; height: 12.5px; transform: rotate(-45deg) translateX(3px) translateY(1px); width: 12.5px; flex-grow: 0; margin-right: 14px; margin-left: 2px;"></div> <div style="background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; height: 12.5px; width: 12.5px; transform: translateX(9px) translateY(-18px);"></div></div><div style="margin-left: 8px;"> <div style=" background-color: #F4F4F4; border-radius: 50%; flex-grow: 0; height: 20px; width: 20px;"></div> <div style=" width: 0; height: 0; border-top: 2px solid transparent; border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4; border-bottom: 2px solid transparent; 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margin-top:8px; overflow:hidden; padding:8px 0 7px; text-align:center; text-overflow:ellipsis; white-space:nowrap;">A post shared by <a href="https://www.instagram.com/michelesyrup/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading" style=" color:#c9c8cd; font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; font-style:normal; font-weight:normal; line-height:17px;" target="_blank"> Michele Foods - Gourmet Syrups</a> (@michelesyrup) on <time style=" font-family:Arial,sans-serif; font-size:14px; line-height:17px;" datetime="2020-06-16T09:53:02+00:00">Jun 16, 2020 at 2:53am PDT</time></p></div></blockquote> <script async src="//www.instagram.com/embed.js"></script>

On Monday, June 16, Hoskins woke up at 1 am to an Instagram post that her daughter created comparing Michele Foods to Aunt Jemima, and a call from her tech assistant informing her that her website had crashed. Aunt Jemima was being pulled off shelves, she learned, and nearly 500 people were trying to access her site. 

Since then, Hoskins has been working rapidly to meet the new sudden wave of demand, and Michele Foods has been creating new fulfillment centers for shipping. 

"I tell people to imagine I'm in a log cabin. I'm in the basement trying to fill one bottle at a time, and Aunt Jemima is upstairs with this huge, automated kitchen," Hoskins said. "One day, I don't hear any activity, and I come upstairs and the door's open – they're gone. They left me the house!" 

Hoskins said she made a point to not speak negatively about other brands. "That's not the way I'm trying to build my brand. I'm trying to build my brand because I have the best syrup in America," Hoskins said. "But my syrup does come from the heritage they pretended they came from." 

Times have changed since Hoskins' syrup was rejected from the suburban store owner's shop: Hoskins now proudly displays her face on her syrup bottles. And she's using her decades of experiences as an entrepreneur to coach other aspiring business owners. 

"Each lesson I had to learn – opening the door and figuring out where the light switch was – I was able to retain," Hoskins said, "and give to someone else." 

SEE ALSO: The HR chief of a $10 billion holding company with brands like Vimeo and Care.com shares 3 crucial pieces of advice for recruiting new talent during the pandemic

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• Top brands in consumer goods industries like apparel, packaged goods, and fast food continue to support the global ad ecosystem, even as traditional media outlets lose ground to online platforms.
• These companies remain top destinations for marketing professionals, especially as ad agencies shed thousands of jobs — and they recruit people from around the world.
• Business Insider analyzed the US Office of Foreign Labor Certification's most recent quarterly disclosure data for the biggest US advertisers to reveal what they pay their marketing employees.
• Salaries range from $95,181 for a marketing project manager at Adidas to $600,000 for a chief marketing officer at Mondelez.
• Subscribe to Business Insider to read the full story.

The media and advertising ecosystem has changed dramatically in recent years as consumers spend more time online, eroding the influence of formerly dominant media outlets like broadcast television networks.

But big brands still spend billions each year to promote their products across an increasingly complex array of platforms. And they pay their employees competitively at a time when ad agencies have shed thousands of jobs due to the pandemic and brands are taking more of their marketing in-house.

Like agencies, brands hire talent from around the world to fill top marketing jobs, and they're required to list base salary rates when filing paperwork on behalf of all employees who received visas. The US Department of Labor's Office of Foreign Labor Certification releases that data every quarter.

The brands in this story appear on AdAge's index of America's top 200 advertisers or are prominent brands in their industries and received visas for marketing jobs during the most recent quarter. The top spenders in some industries, such as auto and insurance, did not have relevant salaries in the visa data.

The salaries and ranges listed are based on "prevailing wages," or the minimum pay required for the jobs in question. The Department of Labor uses these numbers to prevent international and domestic professionals from being exploited.

Spokespeople for all the companies mentioned in this story either declined to comment or did not respond to related requests.

Apparel: Nike paid a global brand director $155,965 and The Gap paid a visual director up to $240,100

Top apparel advertisers Adidas, Nike, and Puma have been negatively affected by the pandemic, with Nike's total revenue down 38%, Adidas's net sales down 19%, and Puma's net profit down 61.6% year-on-year in the first quarter. 

But as the economy starts opening up, the industry has started to bounce back. Strong online sales helped The Gap offset a blow to its revenue in the most recent quarter, when year-over-year revenue fell about 18% to $3.28 billion.

With malls and stores opening again, retailers added 258,000 jobs in July, according to the Labor Department — offsetting job cuts announced by some national chains.

Here's how some top apparel companies pay their marketing employees:

Adidas

• Senior manager, strategic marketing project management: $95,181

The Gap

• Manager, search engine marketing: $116,792 to $125,00
• Director, brand visual: $189,613 to $240,100

Nike 

• Manager, brand innovation: $95,181
• Director, global brand communication: $142,408
• Direct merchandising manager: $145,933 to $154,170
• Global brand director: $155,965
• Innovation insights expert: $164,450
• Senior product manager, digital marketing data and analytics: $165,000

Puma

• Head of brand creative, women's: $145,933 to $155,000

Fast food: Burger King paid a senior digital marketing manager $140,000 

The restaurant industry is another that's been debilitated by the pandemic, and is expected to lose $240 billion in sales in 2020 as a result. But transactions are slowly recovering, according to data from the NPD Group, with bigger fast food chains recovering faster than the rest of the industry, according to Bank of America.

Chains like Burger King and Popeye's have kept their advertising running with campaigns like Burger King's "Christmas in July," which gave consumers the chance to "unwrap" a deal.

Here's how much QSR chains including Yum! Brands, which owns KFC and Taco Bell, paid their marketing employees:

Burger King

• Senior manager, digital marketing: $140,000

Popeye's Louisiana Kitchen

• Senior manager, digital marketing: $140,000

Yum! Brands International

• Brand director: $165,000

Finance: Citibank paid a regional head of marketing $215,000 and PayPal paid a director of global content $246,000

Finance companies, which are traditionally some of the biggest advertisers, have taken different paths over the past six months.

American Express's revenue dropped dramatically in the second quarter of 2020 as consumers stayed home and cut spending during the pandemic. Mobile payment startup Square, on the other hand, saw net revenue jump 64% year-over-year, and PayPal reported its strongest quarter since separating from eBay in 2015.

Two of the biggest names in the business have made big changes to their marketing departments in recent months. JP Morgan Chase promoted Leslie Gillin, who previously ran its co-branded credit card division, to CMO, and PayPal parted with both CMO Allison Johnson and chief creative officer Steve Simpson as it shifted focus to small businesses.

These are salaries that top brands in the finance and fintech spaces paid marketing employees:

American Express

• Director, commercial marketing platforms: $141,312
• Director, global media and marketing, travel services: $139,667
• Manager, area marketing: $151,840 to $182,280

Citibank Group

• Marketing segment and services senior specialist: $136,871
• Senior regional head of marketing: $215,000

Discover

• Principal, media and advertising: $76,066 to $122,004
• Senior manager, channel marketing: $162,00 to $169,703

JP Morgan Chase

• VP, marketing analytics manager: $140,000

PayPal 

• Content strategist: $128,000
• Manager, marketing programs: $135,000
• Marketing manager $170,000
• North American head of marketing analytics: $183,110
• Director of global content: $246,000

Square

• Product manager: $142,000
• Product marketing manager, payments: $148,600

Packaged goods: PepsiCo paid a PR director $172,400 and Mondelez paid its CMO $600,000

Many consumer packaged goods companies increased their marketing as demand spiked while others like PepsiCo tapped the brakes.

Here's a snapshot into how some well-known CPG brands paid their marketing employees:

Coca-Cola

•  VP, digital and revenue growth management: $222,760

Mondelez

• Senior associate brand manager, Oreo: $114,100
• Manager, global growth analytics: $115,000
• VP, CMO: $600,000

Nestle

• Consumer insights analyst: $95,000 to $115,000
• Market activation manager: $120,000 to $140,000
• Packaging manager: $148,000 to $168,000

PepsiCo

• Designer: $75,000
• Senior designer: $100,000
• Ecommerce insights specialist: $100,000
• Ecommerce data analyst: $130,000
• Ecommerce data engineer: $140,000
• Strategy director: $165,100
• Communications director: $172,400
• Design director, structural packaging: $186,945
• Ecommerce senior data engineer: $190,000
• Senior director, consumer insights: $196,400

Procter & Gamble

• Data scientist: $125,000

Unilever:

• Global brand director: $189,613
• VP, customer development: $323,000

Pharma: GlaxoSmithKline paid a global marketing manager up to $203,000 and Bayer paid a marketing director $235,520

Pharma companies like Pfizer, GlaxoSmithKline, and Merck are all among the top 50 US advertisers each year, and their marketing budgets show no sign of declining.

While some sales representatives believe revenue will be negatively impacted by the pandemic, other pharma marketing executives say the industry will ultimately benefit as new drugs continue to launch and find customers, with the help of marketing.

Here is a range of salaries for marketing jobs at the top-spending pharmaceutical and healthcare companies:

AbbVie

• Manager, marketing analytics, immunology: $132,500 to $162,500
• Global director, brand excellence: $190,000 to $200,000
• Associate director, global marketing: $200,000 to $250,000

AstraZeneca

• Senior manager, insights: $150,000
• Global marketing director: $210,000

Bayer

• Director multi-channel marketing: $235,520

CVS

• Director, personalization strategy: $152,275

Gilead

• Associate director, product management: $179,142

GlaxoSmithKline

• Global marketing manager: $151,840 to $203,000
• VP, medical commercialization leader: $210,000 to $377,000

Novartis:

• Senior product manager: $115,294 to $132,000
• Associate director, strategy and operations: $151,840

Sanofi

• Global head of digital customer experience: $225,000 to $325,000

Walgreens

• Head of product: $250,000

Telecom: Verizon paid an associate creative director $155,000 and AT&T paid a product marketing manager $139,000

As Facebook and Google continue to dominate the digital ad industry and streaming giants like Netflix change entertainment, the biggest telecom companies are competing more directly on both fronts by simultaneously serving as publishers, ad platforms, and marketers.

The most visible examples are Verizon and AT&T, with the latter's WarnerMedia division heavily promoting HBO Max. Charter Communications, which bought Time Warner Cable in 2016 and is now the second-largest cable provider in the country behind Comcast, also increased marketing to boost subscriber totals during the pandemic.

These salaries and ranges reflect pay for management-level jobs across the telecom industry:

AT&T

• Lead product marketing manager: $139,000 

Charter Communications

• Database marketing analyst: $81,800 to $131,000
• Director, ecommerce strategy and management: $140,000 to $168,000
• Manager, marketing competitive analysis: $96,300 to $170,900
• Senior manager, marketing research: $107,900 to $229,300

T-Mobile

• Commercial marketing manager: $120,000

Verizon

• Digital marketing manager: $128,000
• Database marketing manager: $130,000
• Associate creative director: $155,000

Travel: Expedia Group paid a director of marketing innovation up to $203,333

Expedia, which includes properties such as Travelocity, Orbitz, and Hotels.com, has traditionally been one of the biggest global advertisers, spending billions each year on search marketing campaigns. But in April, CEO Barry Diller told CNBC that his company would slash its 2020 budget by more than 80% as travel plummeted.

The company had already announced plans to cut 3,000 jobs to simplify what Diller called a "bloated" organization before the pandemic hit.

Here's what Expedia pays marketing professionals, as revealed by these salaries across its properties:

• Mixed media content editor: $83,900 to $117,000
• Senior marketing analytics manager: $86,500 to $117,000
• Senior database marketing manager: $110,500 to $120,000
• Analytics manager, digital media sales: $94,500 to $125,359
• Senior mobile app marketing manager: $106,000 to $137,100
• Director of strategy and marketing innovation: $156,500 to $203,333
• VP, global talent acquisition: $180,000 to $267,000

SEE ALSO: Tech marketing salaries revealed: What companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Twitter pay employees, from creative directors to managers

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Companies use a litany of methods to try to tap the ingenuity of their employees to find the next great product or internal innovation.

Some use internal innovation units that are tasked with developing concepts around a specific market, or venture capital arms that try to pin-point the hottest startups early-on. Others use intrapreneurship programs that encourage workers to think beyond their day-to-day jobs.

At PepsiCo, CEO Ramon Laguarta created a company-wide competition known as "The Next Big Idea," where employees submit concepts for everything ranging from systems to improve manufacturing operations to new products. The proposals are then voted on by their peers around the world and the winning submissions are presented to Laguarta and the company's senior team.

PepsiCo is now gearing up to launch the first product developed from that initiative: Driftwell, a drink marketed at helping people de-stress and relax — and an effort by the beverage giant to tap into the $1 billion over-the-counter sleep remedy market.

It took under a year to take the idea from concept to productization, which was a historically fast timeline according to Emily Silver, PepsiCo North America's vice president of innovation and capabilities. Driftwell will be available online later this year, and in-stores in the first quarter of 2021.

"It's actually the fastest beverage innovation that PepsiCo will have ever launched," she told Business Insider. "This is certainly a shiny example of how we can be faster."

In developing the product itself, the group was aiming to cater to a wide audience of customers who were hesitant to turn to prescription medication for assistance going to sleep.

"There's quite a few people who don't feel comfortable necessarily using something with those kinds of hard-hitting ingredients," said Silver. "They want something that's perceived to be safer and perceived to be better."

While creating and marketing a new product in a still-nascent industry is hard, doing it during a global pandemic could be even more difficult.

From an operational standpoint, Silver's team needed to pivot quickly. They were already working in a global capacity — with cohorts in Canada and the US — and comfortable relying heavily on remote communication tools, so it wasn't too heavy of a lift.

And ultimately, the pandemic could serve to be a major sales boost, Silver said, as customers look for any avenue they can to manage through the crisis.

"What COVID did from a consumer perspective is only increase the need for people to need something to help them relax," said Silver. "It only increased the conversation and the consumer desire for solutions like this."

SEE ALSO: The CEO of $116 billion industrial giant Honeywell says that the company's ambitious transformation into a software powerhouse will hinge on acquisitions and investments in emerging tech like AI and quantum computing

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Red Lobster is adding a Mountain Dew margarita to the menu, sparking disgust and awe online. 

The DEW Garita will roll out at select Red Lobster restaurants in September, and will hit menus across the US by the end of 2020, Red Lobster announced on Tuesday. According to a press release, the "DEW Garita pairs perfectly with Red Lobster's iconic Cheddar Bay Biscuits." 

The beverage, which is the first ever official Mountain Dew cocktail, inspired mixed reactions. 

Some were disgusted by the drink. 

But, some people were excited to give the DEW Garita a chance. 

Some felt the DEW Garita only inspired more questions — namely, if the rim was coated with crushed Doritos. 

The DEW Garita's debut is part of a wider partnership between Mountain Dew's parent company PepsiCo and Red Lobster. The brands are working together to co-create more "tasty menu items," using Frito-Lay and Quaker products, the companies said in a press release. 

"Red Lobster is thrilled to work with PepsiCo, not only because it has a great portfolio of brands, but specifically because of the food and beverage innovation possibilities," Nelson Griffin, Red Lobster's senior vice president and chief supply chain officer, said in a statement. "The DEW Garita is the first delicious taste of the types of inspired menu items to come."

SEE ALSO: McDonald's HR looks into new training and hiring processes to emphasize corporate values, as the fast-food giant faces controversies

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In 1990, Coca-Cola set itself a target of selling drinks in bottles made from 25% recycled plastic — but even after reducing that target and pushing back the deadline, its bottles still only contain 10% recycled plastic, 30 years later. 

The drinks giant, which is the world's largest plastic polluter, producing 2.9 million metric tons of plastic packaging every year, has failed to meet many of its internal sustainability promises, and has opposed new environmental laws, a report by the Changing Markets Foundation published on Thursday found.

The foundation, which campaigns for sustainability within organizations, also found that some companies including food manufacturer Mars Incorporated rely heavily on unproven chemical recycling, which changes the chemical structure of used plastic so it replicates the properties of unused plastic. The report described this fast-growing alternative to traditional mechanical recycling as "a false solution" that can further damage the environment.

Mars vowed in 2019 to make 30% of its plastic packaging from recycled content by 2025 – but its packaging currently contains zero recycled content, the report said. The company says on its website the goal is "dependent on advancement of chemical recycling at pace," suggesting that if it can't scale up its chemical recycling facilities quickly enough, it may not be able to meet the target.

Mars also commits to making all of its plastic packaging reusable, recyclable, or compostable by 2025, but currently this figure is only 19%. The report argues that, even if it reached 100%, many companies don't address the fact that "recyclable" products are not ultimately recycled. A lot of the plastic in the ocean is technically recyclable, it said.

The report analyzed voluntary commitments from the 10 biggest plastic polluters: Coca-Cola, Colgate-Palmolive, Danone, Mars Incorporated, Mondelēz International, Nestlé, PepsiCo, Perfetti Van Melle, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever. 

The Foundation researched how environmentally friendly the companies' sustainability policies actually are, such as whether they are eradicating single-use plastics by simply replacing them with other single-use materials. For example, Coca-Cola pledged to stop using plastic straws by 2025, and Mars by 2020, but both appear to just be replacing these with other single-use materials such as paper, the report said.

False promises "easily warped, reframed, or ignored"

The foundation found varying levels of commitment between the companies, but concluded that, overall, they had heavily publicized a few small token projects to portray an illusion of sustainability. The report described this as "marketing greenwashing."

The paper argued that "regardless of how ambitious voluntary commitments sound, most companies regard them as just paper promises, easily warped, reframed, or ignored while conveniently generating favorable headlines."

Even when companies introduce sustainable practices, they often limit them to certain countries, the report said. Coca-Cola lobbied extensively against plans for a Scottish bottle deposit return scheme — where customers pay a small deposit on plastic bottles and are paid back when the bottles are returned — before changing its stance after heavy press backlash.

It produces one in five plastic bottles in the world and continues to fight against the introduction of the system in Kenya and the US state of Georgia, the report said.

PepsiCo also plans to make 50% of its plastic packaging from recycled materials in the EU by 2030, but has set a global target of only 25% by 2025, the report found.

The foundation also questioned the effectiveness of group initiatives, especially those founded by companies themselves.

Nearly 50 companies, including oil and gas companies, retailers, and consumer goods firms, have joined The Alliance to End Plastic Waste, founded in 2019. These members have committed $1.5 billion to the groups research, but invested more than 100 times this amount – $186 billion – into new petrochemical facilities between 2010 and 2017, and over a quarter of members generate an annual turnover of more than $45 billion, the report said.

Coca-Cola promises to learn from missed targets

A Coca-Cola spokesperson said the company is committed to do "more, faster" so that the business grows in the right way, and described missing its target to make its bottles from 25% recycled plastics as "an opportunity to learn."

The company said it is "confident" about its goals to collect and recycle a bottle or can for every one it sells by 2030, make its packaging 100% recyclable by 2025, and use 50% recycled material in its bottles and cans by 2030. Coca-Cola says it will achieve the goals by learning from past experience and engaging in partnerships such as the Ellen MacArthur Foundation, which aims to develop what it calls a "circular economy" by reducing waste in product design and manufacturing.

It added that bottles with 100% recycled plastic are currently available in 18 markets around the world, and that recently the local Coca-Cola businesses in Norway and Netherlands announced they are now using 100% recycled PET across their portfolio. In Great Britain, the Coca-Cola is preparing to announce that it has reached 50% recycled PET across its packaging, it said.

A Mars spokesperson said the company is "disappointed in the report and its assertions that Mars is not addressing this challenge."

"Mars is committed to playing our role in delivering more sustainable packaging and advancing our Circular Packaging Plan. This is focused on reducing unnecessary packaging, redesigning the remainder for circularity, and investing to close the loop to help scale up waste management infrastructure."

Mars said that it is "is absolutely committed to addressing this issue."

"We have not advocated for the use of just one single strategy to address the challenge. Further, Mars is publicly on record regarding our support for extended producer responsibility schemes as a critical piece in addressing the challenge. Our participation in membership organizations is illustrative of this point: we can't tackle this issue alone. The depth of the challenge demands partnership with other businesses, community and government to reduce packaging, to drive the system change required and maximize the collection, sorting and recycling of materials."

PepsiCo did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.

SEE ALSO: A California environmental group is suing Coke and Pepsi over claims they're polluting oceans with plastic bottles

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Ask someone what their favorite soda is and the conversation is likely to turn into a debate about the merits of Coca-Cola and Pepsi. 

U.S. consumers have Donald Kendall to thank for that.

Kendall, the former CEO of PepsiCo, died Sunday of natural causes, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing his family. He was 99 years old.

The former executive led PepsiCo from 1963 until he stepped down in 1986. In that time, he laid the groundwork for the company to challenge Coca-Cola's sales dominance — in the so-called "cola wars."

Here are five notable business decisions that Kendall made during his tenure that helped make PepsiCo the company it is today.

Kendall traded cola for vodka to make Pepsi the first American consumer product Soviet citizens could buy

Kendall was famously present at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959, where U.S. Vice President Richard Nixon debated Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev about their countries' rival economic systems.

After the confrontation, Nixon led Khrushchev to Pepsi's display where Kendall — who then managed the company's international arm — served him its signature drink. Khrushchev was impressed and was open to bringing the drink to the Soviet population.

But getting Pepsi to the USSR came with challenges. While Kendall called the U.S.'s chief rival "one of the greatest softdrink markets we have outside of the United States," the country's closed economy meant its currency, the ruble, was practically useless beyond its borders, leaving it no easy way to pay for the cola it would import.

Instead, PepsiCo and Kendall came up with an out-of-the-box solution: PepsiCo would make cola in the Soviet Union — beating Coke to an untapped market with hundreds of millions of consumers — by accepting an equivalent amount of Soviet-made Stolichnaya vodka as payment. Kendall and Soviet officials signed the deal in 1973, and Pepsi demand in the USSR took off in the following years.

He agreed to a multi-million marketing blitz, including a tour featuring Michael Jackson

PepsiCo spent millions under Kendall's tutelage on a tour and related advertising campaign featuring Michael Jackson and his five brothers in 1984. At the time, UPI reported that the tour and campaign cost about $7 million, a sum that made some executives cringe at first. 

Under the deal, Pepsi rewrote words to Jackson's "Billie Jean" to focus on Pepsi products. Jackson's fame also helped promote Pepsi's image as "The Choice of a New Generation."

He hired African-American executives in the face of a boycott from the KKK

Kendall hired Harvey C. Russell as a vice president at PepsiCo in 1962, making him the first African-American vice president at a major U.S. company, PepsiCo said in a post summarizing Kendall's life. 

The Ku Klux Klan opposed the move, organizing a boycott of Pepsi products. But Kendall responded by appointing another African-American to PepsiCo's executive ranks, according to the post.

He touched off the "cola wars" with Coca-Cola

In Kendall's early years as CEO, Pepsi struggled to market itself as something other than "the poor man's Coke," as one ex-Pepsi executive called it, according to a 1976 article in The New York Times. 

On Kendall's watch, Pepsi began capitalizing on blind taste-tests, known as the "Pepsi Challenge," that the company said demonstrated that over half of Coca-Cola drinkers surveyed actually liked the taste of Pepsi better.

Starting in the mid-1970s, the company rolled out a marketing campaign in areas of the country where Coke had a sales edge using claims such as "Nationwide, more Coca-Cola drinkers prefer Pepsi than Coke."

The campaign helped Pepsi take market share from Coke in the following decades, including in 1985, when Pepsi targeted cola drinkers unhappy with changes Coke made to its secret formula.

He paired Pepsi with chips and other snacks by acquiring Frito-Lay

Kendall based Pepsi's 1965 acquisition of Frito-Lay on the idea that most people eating salty snacks wanted a drink to go with them. One 1976 report from The New York Times even said he wanted to increase the amount of salt in Frito-Lay snacks, a move that would make consumers thirstier and likely to buy more Pepsi.

The deal increased the size and scope of PepsiCo's sales overnight, but it also set it up for deals and expansion decades later. Today, PepsiCo has investments in a range of snack and beverage brands, including its recently taken stake in UK organic brand Rude Health.

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Digital transformation became an even more buzzy concept in the last few months as the coronavirus pandemic upended nearly every industry, forcing companies to quickly adopt new and novel technology to adapt to life amid the ongoing crisis. 

And while there are countless examples of the speed at which corporations were able to deploy new software and applications, sustaining that momentum and building upon it is exceedingly more difficult. 

Just 13% of organizations that have deployed artificial intelligence in their operations, for example, have successfully scaled it across the enterprise, according to research from French consulting titan Capgemini. 

That indicates projects are remaining in the pilot stages, segmented to specific regions or business units, like logistics or the legal department. They then often fail to sustain progress once they are expanded to a wider set of the workforce. 

"It's easy to just create an innovation lab because it's the flavor of the month," Adam Rubin, the head of innovation enablement at Capgemini Invent, told Business Insider. "It's much harder, but much more rewarding, to treat innovation overall as a discipline." 

Companies have tried various approaches to addressing these challenges, including propping up central innovation studios charged with overseeing the transformations, as well as choosing "digital leaders" within different teams that can help champion cultural and technological overhauls on a more grassroots level. 

But even more is needed. Capgemini dug into how to successfully scale digital transformation projects for a recent study. The firm conducted in-depth interviews with 40 executives at global corporations that together total over $1.7 trillion in annual revenue and narrowed it down to three key areas: establishing scaling as its own discipline, creating an innovation governance structure, and cultivating a resilient culture. 

We talked to Rubin to learn more about how companies can immediately tackle each. 

Scaling as a discipline all its own

A common approach to promoting digital transformations is pinpointing the "digital evangelists" within different teams that can promote the efforts and help to bring other advocates on-board. 

But the role needs to be much more formalized and come with its own set of performance metrics — in other words, a position all its own, not something tacked on to someone's day-to-day job, according to Rubin. 

"Discipline means that there is some kind of operating model dedicated to scale," he said. "That means they're going to have the right mandate, they have the right support, and other people in groups inside the company know that's their responsibility." 

Creating an innovation governance model 

And overseeing those individuals should be a steering committee of sorts that is tasked with ensuring that projects achieve a purpose beyond just deploying the latest technology, Rubin suggests.

That helps to establish a return on investment for those initiatives — which in turn helps future efforts get funding. It's one reason why chief financial officers and chief strategy officers are good candidates to include in the governance committee, per Rubin. 

"If the governance team can ensure that ideas align to the overall arching strategy of the company, there will be a different feeling," he said. And "treating a certain budget as sacred, letting it run its course, committing to innovation as a complete process, is a really important part." 

In economically turbulent times like right now, it's easy for companies to pull funding for the innovation-driven projects as a cost-saving move. But in many cases, those projects are are the most valuable and should be preserved, in Rubin's view, as a way to help future-proof the company from further shocks.

"It's ironic in a way. When you're having a tough quarter, maybe the very thing you need the most is innovation," he said. 

There are many examples of companies doubling-down on IT makeovers despite the turmoil caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Phillips 66, for example, is continuing its transition to a new enterprise resource planning system despite the energy sector suffering greatly during the ongoing crisis. 

Cultivating a resilient culture 

At the end of the day, most organizations have access to the same technology. That's why chief information officer and other tech leader's often say the biggest differentiator is the culture, and it's a key part of successful transformations. 

But it takes more than just the CEO proclaiming the values of a company. It has to be ingrained in the day-to-day operations, said Rubin. Many times, that means encouraging employees to take risks to try new technology or uncover new processes that can cut down on operational costs or time to market. 

Read more: A top Amazon Alexa exec shares the 3 steps IT departments should take to build a culture of innovation

"Otherwise, what happens is people lose faith in leadership, people won't want to spend time to find problems and to develop new ideas, They will literally be incentivized for just doing their day-to-day," said Rubin. 

PepsiCo, for example, launched a new beverage that was conceived through an internal innovation contest, providing a very visible example to employees of the potential that can arise by pursuing and advocating for new products or concepts. 

SEE ALSO: Intel explains its strategy for standing out in edge computing, the next $65 billion battleground in the processor market — and why it's not worried about Nvidia's $40 billion Arm purchase

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Pepsi and Coke spent years fighting each other over cola. Lately, though, the two have been taking different paths when it comes to selling beverages to pandemic-weary consumers.

Coca-Cola jumped into hard seltzer on Tuesday, announcing a partnership with Molson Coors that will bring an alcoholic version of its Topo Chico hard seltzer to the US in 2021. But PepsiCo doesn't have any plans to follow suit, CEO Ramon Laguarta said Thursday during an earnings call.

Instead, PepsiCo is devoting its "100% focus" to its plan for energy drinks, he said in response when an analyst asked him whether PepsiCo would also break into hard seltzer.

Laguarta pointed to PepsiCo's work on energy drinks, including its acquisition of Rockstar, a distribution agreement with Bang Energy, both of which it announced earlier this year and is still integrating into its business. Those, along with its Mountain Dew- and Starbucks-branded beverages, are a top emerging category for the company, he said.

"Those four big pillars, that's taking a lot of our focus, and that's going to be our priority, especially in 2021," he said.

PepsiCo's focus on energy drinks during the pandemic marks a different path from Coca-Cola, though both categories have been growing steadily during the pandemic. 

Sales of energy drinks at PepsiCo grew at a "double-digit" rate during the third quarter, the company said Thursday. And while Molson and Coke have yet to launch Topo Chico hard seltzer, data from Nielsen shows that consumers have continued to buy similar drinks at retailers.

Laguarta likened hard seltzer to short-term beverage trends. "A couple of years ago, it was CBD, now it's more alcohol," Laguarta said. "So we get a lot of opportunities in front of us."

PepsiCo would also face challenges navigating the US's regulated system of alcohol distribution, Laguarta said, referring to the separation between brewers, distributors and consumer-facing sellers. Coca-Cola's Tuesday agreement relies heavily on Molson Coors's distribution network, which it already uses to sell beverages such as Miller High Life and Crispin cider.

"Given the three-tiered system, it's not obvious how you capture a lot of value," he said.

Consumers continued to buy a wide range of PepsiCo's beverages and snacks during the third quarter, pushing the company's revenue 5% higher to $18.09 billion and above the consensus estimate compiled by S&P Capital IQ.

Changes in consumers' day-to-day lives made many of those gains possible, Laguarta said. "People are embracing daily routines of exercising," he told analysts. "That helps the sports drink category and, obviously, Gatorade as a leader in that category."

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Hi! Welcome to the Insider Advertising daily for October 5. Lucia Moses here, filling in for Lauren Johnson.

Today's news: Tech chiefs to testify, why Pepsi isn't following Coke into hard seltzer, and Triller user numbers disputed.

First: remember to subscribe here to get this newsletter daily.

The CEOs of Facebook, Google, and Twitter will all testify before Congress, days before the election, over legal protections for internet companies

• The heads of Facebook, Google, and Twitter have all agreed to testify before Congress about social media regulation on October 28, just days before the presidential election.
• Lawmakers plan to question them about concerns over Section 230, which shields social media companies from being held liable for the content of users' posts and gives them authority to develop their own content moderation rules.
• Its advocates have called the law "the most important law protecting internet speech," but it's increasingly come under fire from both sides of the political aisle — for very different reasons.

Read the full story here.

PepsiCo's CEO explains why it's shying away from hard seltzer even as Coca-Cola moves into booze

Pepsi and Coke have been taking different paths when it comes to selling beverages to pandemic-weary consumers.

PepsiCo is focused "100%" on its strategy in energy drinks, CEO Ramon Laguarta said on the company's earnings call Thursday in response to a question about whether it would follow Coca-Cola into hard seltzer.

He indicated energy drinks offer more long-term potential while hard seltzer could be shorter-lived.

Read the full story here.

Insiders say TikTok rival Triller reported monthly active users that were 5 times higher than what some internal metrics showed

• The short-form-video app Triller, a TikTok rival, touted massive user growth last year that some former employees said they believed was inflated, Dan Whateley reported.
• Six former employees said the publicly reported monthly active user number was more than five times what they were seeing on some internal metrics.
• Triller CEO Mike Lu said the former employees were "disseminating inaccurate information" and that it can validate "each and every one" of its reported users.

Read the full story here.

More stories we're reading:

• Starbucks has begun rolling out glow-in-the-dark cups for Halloween— and people are already reselling them online (Business Insider)
• A high-profile engineer left Amazon after filing sexual harassment claims to HR in 2018. Now she's speaking out about what she calls a 'toxic' work culture for women. (Business Insider)
• 'Ready to spend': Publishers are angling for election-wary advertisers' Facebook budgets (Digiday)
• How Discord went from gaming and alt-right hub to a sneaker cook group hotbed, where resellers charge fees to share their secrets for cracking the $2 billion resale market (Business Insider)
• A part-time YouTube creator breaks down how she makes over $1,000 a month making videos about thrift shopping (Business Insider)

Join the conversation about this story »

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Consumers are more likely to think of artificial ingredients than artificial intelligence when they see a bag of chips or a bottle of soda. But for PepsiCo's forecaster, the latter is on his mind, especially during the pandemic. The company is using artificial intelligence to pull useful data from millions of sources online in a bid to find the next trendy flavor or a smart marketing opportunity.

The beverage and snack maker has been working with data-focused startups like Black Swan Data and Tastewise to identify consumer trends before the pandemic by scraping the web for tweets, restaurant menus, and recipe blogs. Now, sifting through streams of social media posts and other fast-updating content online has become even more important, with many consumers turning to social media to document how their lives have changed as a result of the pandemic, according to Stephan Gans, chief insights and analytics officer at PepsiCo. 

"To me, the pandemic has made these tools more useful," Gans said in an interview with Business Insider. "The main reason is that the pandemic has rocked everybody's foundations in life."

For a company like PepsiCo, looking online is the best way to figure out "what people are really talking about with each other," whether the topic is the state of the economy or what people are snacking on, he added.

PepsiCo's platform, called 360 Always On, uses artificial intelligence to analyze the information it gathers online from social media networks like Twitter, cooking blogs, online message boards, and other sources. From there, the technology can separate topics that appear to be short-term fads from those that are likely to have more staying power, Black Swan CEO Steve King told Business Insider. 

The approach has led PepsiCo to develop new products and consider areas for expansion during the pandemic. Last week, PepsiCo unveiled a series of new concentrated flavorings from its seltzer brand Bubly that can be added to homemade seltzer from its SodaStream machines. Bubly Drops, in flavors like lime and blackberry, were developed after Gans' team saw customers posting online about frequent use of seltzer makers in lieu of drinking away from home.

"SodaStream was already growing in our core markets, but that growth has absolutely accelerated" during the pandemic, he said. "If you're spending much more time at home than you would normally do, SodaStream brings a kind of in-home excitement."

360 Always On also allows PepsiCo to spot opportunities in specific regions. In 2018, for instance, the company introduced seaweed- and rice-flavored curls under its Off the Eaten Path snack brand in the UK less than a year after seeing an uptick in online recipes that used the ingredient. 

PepsiCo likely wouldn't have spotted that trend if it had only used traditional consumer research, which relies on interviewing consumers directly about their preferences, Gans said. While consumers had learned about seaweed, they might not have known enough about it to talk about it in a more formal survey setting.

"People will always answer the question within the context of what they're familiar with and what they know," Gans said. "It's actually much better to focus on seeing [what people are talking about online] because you can get much better insight into what's on people's minds and what people would actually prefer."

Consumer companies have taken a range of actions in response to consumers' changing preferences during the pandemic. While makers of cleaning supplies, packaged food, and other in-demand items have bolstered production and rushed to bring new products to market, others, such as Coca-Cola and Mondelez, have taken the opportunity to cut underperforming products.

Seeing how consumers are reacting in real-time, and determining how long those changes will last, is part of making those decisions, King of Black Swan said. "If you're a brand, you may want to unload some of your portfolio quite quickly, or you might want to wait," he said.

Many of Black Swan's clients are using the company's data to plan for different scenarios based on how long the pandemic lasts and whether consumers continue to consume more at home, King added. "This pandemic was a catalyst for this kind of data," he said.

It also represents a different approach for Gans, who spent more time scanning supermarket aisles for rivals' new products when he first broke into the CPG world.

"When I started my career, we would call something a trend if it showed up on-shelf," he said. "Over the last couple of decades, our ability as a company to spot a trend well before it reaches the shelf has improved significantly."

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Happy Friday!

It's me, Shoshy Ciment, coming at you with another jam-packed edition of Insider Retail, Business Insider's weekly round-up of everything that's happening in restaurants and retail. If you haven't already subscribed, click here to do so and make your Fridays instantly more exciting. 

There's a lot going on this week. Here's what you need to know:

Amazon has its biggest-ever Prime Day(s)

Even during the pandemic, Amazon's 2020 Prime Day on October 13 and 14 broke company records, a company spokesperson told Business Insider. 

Even so, Amazon chose to highlight a different stat: Third-party sellers on the platform raked in $3.5 billion in sales.  That's a 60% increase in sales compared to last year's Prime Day event.

BIG PICTURE: Prime Day was a big test for the e-commerce giant. According to Moody's analyst Charlie O'Shea, the two-day shopping event served as a litmus test to reveal if Amazon's delivery network could handle the heat amid a surge of orders.

How PepsiCo tracks what its consumers like

How does PepsiCo know exactly what its customers like? Simple: it pays attention.

As Alex reported this week, the beverage and snack giant monitors tweets, restaurant menus, and other online sources with help from tech startups like Black Swan to see what people are eating and talking about.

For example, this strategy helped the company introduce new SodaStream flavors when it noticed a spike in sales of the brand.

Read more about how PepsiCo is tracking shifting consumer preferences during the pandemic

Inside the wild world of 'Retail arbitrage'

This week, I took a deep dive into the world of "Retail arbitrage," which refers to the practice of buying products and then reselling them online at a premium.

I spoke to the founders of Arbitrage Ops, an exclusive membership-based group that focuses on training beginner arbitrageurs and helping them scale their businesses on Amazon.

Since the group's inception in May, some of its nearly 500 members have sold more than $400,000 in goods, according to screenshots of different members' Amazon seller accounts that were viewed by Business Insider. 

Here is a look inside the group and some essential tools for getting started in arbitrage

Everything else you need to know

SEE ALSO: People are quitting their jobs to make thousands selling everyday items on Amazon. Here's a look inside one exclusive resale group, where members have sold over $400,000 worth of goods since May.

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For years, fitness geeks in cities like Los Angeles, New York, and Miami signed up for workout sessions at Co:Labs, an event hosted by PepsiCo's Propel water brand. The goal was to drive sales of the beverage, which PepsiCo has marketed for two decades as Gatorade's younger sibling.

But in 2020, the event required a different approach, said Anuj Bhasin, vice president of Gatorade, protein and fitness brands at PepsiCo. "It's been a really big success, but this year, we had to make a big pivot," he said. 

That meant taking the fitness festival to Instagram, where consumers could access workouts that ranged from quick stretches to longer Barre and dance classes. Besides expanding Propel's Instagram following, the digital event helped the brand grow sales at a double-digit rate as the pandemic kept many consumers at home, Bhasin said. 

"We were specifically focused on was ensuring that we were connected with our consumers and that they were seeing propel as a leading brand in the fitness space," he added.

Products designed for people working up a sweat in a socially distant way have been hot sellers since COVID-19 began spreading in the US earlier this year. Consumers snapped up Peloton bikes and Lululemon athletic wear as many stayed away from gyms but kept working out at or near home.

That boom has extended to beverages, especially sports drinks like Gatorade and Propel. PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta pointed to the category earlier this month while discussing third-quarter earnings with analysts, saying that consumers "are embracing daily routines of exercising," he said.

Marketing is just one area where Propel is making changes as consumers' habits change during the pandemic. The brand is also introducing new flavors of its water that contain Vitamin C and zinc, which the company says help support the immune system. The product, called "Propel Immune Support," was in the works before COVID-19 swept the US, Bhasin said, but "we think it's hyper-relevant now," he added.

Even before the pandemic, Bhasin said, consumers were looking for beverages that offered nutritional and other health benefits. Through focus groups and other consumer research, Propel found that consumers were highly interested in products that included "another benefit around antioxidants and immune support."

"My personal perspective is that we're at the beginning of that trend," he said. "Consumers will continue to demand more personalized, more customized, more functional-forward innovation."

Propel has also seen consumers gravitate toward other ways of consuming its fitness water during the pandemic. Sales of powdered Propel, which customers can mix with water, have taken off in the last six months, Bhasin said. In response, Propel is planning to release a branded water bottle designed to work with its powders as well as considering other forms for its powdered drinks, such as tablets.

"We want to be a leader in form innovation, to drive more sustainability but also to deliver upon what consumers are seeking, which is more convenient on-the-go solutions as well," he said.

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Underneath all the tragedy of the coronavirus pandemic is a massive digitization effort within nearly every industry across corporate America that promises to change how we shop, get healthcare, or even find our next job. 

There are many visible examples of this. Some Walgreens shoppers have already had a glimpse at the new, internet-enabled displays from Cooler Screens that will soon be in 2,500 stores across the nation. At non-profit hospital chain Banner Health, a new chatbot (the brainchild of a former Target executive) helps mitigate one of the biggest complaints in the healthcare industry: waiting for a doctor. And more regional banks are investing in online banking, an offering that many of the Wall Street titans have perfected but that, prior to the coronavirus, had less urgency among smaller institutions as customers still preferred visiting local branches. 

But there are many improvements that may not be noticeable to the average shopper or patient. Walgreens, for example, is partnering with Microsoft and Adobe to create a digital profile for each of its customers — which allows the retailer to create custom promotions based on shopping habits.

PepsiCo is using artificial intelligence to scan tweets, menus, and other online information to help get deepen insight into rapidly changing customer preferences. Those efforts even helped support the launch of new SodaStream flavorings. At IBM, the tech giant is automating many of the more mundane human resources operations— like pinpointing the skills that certain teams may be lacking based on the resumes of the employees. 

These digital transformations are only accelerating, as COVID-19 prompts a quicker shift to online interactions. And both sides of the spectrum — the visible improvements and the behind-the-scenes advancements — will only get more robust. 

Below are a few other stories that you may have missed from the last two weeks. As always: If you're interested in receiving this biweekly newsletter and other updates from our ongoing Innovation Inc. series, please be sure to sign up here.

• A top MoneyGram exec lays out a digital transformation that's helped fuel triple-digit growth in cross-border payments during the pandemic
• How Stanley Black & Decker avoided 'pilot purgatory' in launching new tech projects that have saved it millions, and why it's making a broad call for partners with big new ideas
• FactSet's CFO lays out how the data giant quantifies innovation, and why tracking failed projects is a key metric
• Baker McKenzie just teamed up with an AI platform to help clients make better business decisions. A partner lays out how the tech will help the firm 'make meaning out of the volatility.'
• How the NBA used tools from Qualtrics — which is gearing up to spin out of SAP — to make sure that teams in its pandemic bubble felt 'heard and taken care of'

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Walmart is focusing heavily on technology and pursuing a big revamp of internal and advertising operations as the company tries to take on Amazon in the lucrative ad industry. 

The world's largest retailer has run an advertising business for years, but recently ramped up its investments in the space. In early 2019, for example, Walmart split from longtime agency Triad Retail (which closed earlier this year)— signaling the company's lofty ambitions. And over the past year, the Walmart Media Group has aggressively hired talent from companies like Amazon, PepsiCo, and ad holding company WPP.  

Walmart primarily sells search ads in its app and website that pop up when people search for products. A search for "soda" can show an ad for Coca-Cola, for example. Walmart also gives advertisers data about shoppers, including if they purchased a product after seeing an ad for it.

The potential prize is big, but Walmart faces tough competition from Amazon — the dominant player in the industry. With e-commerce booming as a result of the pandemic, retail advertising is expected to grow 39% year-over-year to $17.4 billion in 2020, according to eMarketer. As much as $13 billion of that is expected to go to Amazon. (eMarketer is a subsidiary of Insider Inc., Business Insider's parent company.)

But Walmart's efforts shouldn't be taken lightly. While other retailers struggle to succeed against the growing dominance of Jeff Bezos' e-commerce giant, Walmart has beefed up its online offerings and increasingly relies on its physical stores to succeed in the age of Amazon. 

An analysis by Business Insider of recent Walmart job postings provides a glimpse into how the retail giant is building its ad business and the role technology will play.

In a statement, Walmart said it is "looking for ambitious, creative, people-oriented teammates who thrive in an exciting, fast-paced start­up environment" to "help fuel the growth of our dynamic in-house media and advert­ising business."

Focus on tech, data, and enterprise transformation 

Walmart has deployed advanced tech like artificial intelligence to automate supply chain negotiations, improve its expedited delivery options, and even clean its stores. While it uses outside vendors to assist with some of that, many of the applications are built in-house by Walmart's internal software engineers and data scientists. 

The advertising business is no different. The company, for example, is seeking multiple leaders for its product group — including a group product manager and a director. Both listings call for individuals to help "build industry defining omni-channel ad platforms at scale," including a "self-serve demand side platform" for buyers that taps Walmart's data from its online and in-store channels — as well as analytics to demonstrate the effectiveness of a brand's campaigns. 

The focus on analytics is clear across several job postings, including one for an advanced analytics manager that will be tasked with "driving measurable outcomes for our suppliers, merchants, brand advertisers, and ad agencies."

According to the job postings, some roles within Walmart Media Group will focus on overhauling the company to allow more collaboration between different groups. Specifically, Walmart is looking to bring closer together the e-commerce and store operations teams, the combination of which is widely-referred to in the industry as "omni-channel"— the ability to reach customers both physically and digitally. While Walmart's e-commerce business is booming, on average most Americans live within five miles of one of its stores — an advantage that remains a key part of the company's strategy. 

To enable that work across disparate parts of the company, Walmart is seeking a senior manager to assist with this organizational transformation, as well as a manager for business analysis and insights, along with other roles.

Both vacancies call for someone who can work with people on multiple teams — including with the "emerging Omni Merchant organization"— and use data analytics to help drive the overall strategy. Walmart said the "emerging Omni Merchant organization" is a new entity that includes individuals from both e-commerce and store operations to create an "omnichannel merchandising team."

"This puts the customer at the center of how we buy and sell merchandise, whether the item is for a store or online," a spokesperson said. 

A signal of Walmart's ad ambitions 

Two postings — one for an associate director of marketing operations and one for a partner manager— focus on Walmart's application programming interface (or API) for advertisers. 

An API is software that big ad platforms like Facebook, Google, Amazon, and Snap use to automate ad sales and generally signal that a company wants to make advertising a bigger business. 

Walmart opened its API in January to four adtech firms that help marketers manage ad spend: Teikametrics, Flywheel Digital, Pacvue, and Kenshoo. Walmart has said that it may add partners to the program. Some advertising agencies who help brands advertise on Walmart and other ecommerce platforms have said that Walmart encourages brands to work directly with the adtech partners, which they fear will cut the agencies out of the process. 

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The two job postings seem to address some of those challenges. The partner manager role is supposed to serve as a contact between sales and leadership teams for the API partners and is responsible for resolving "partner issues as they arise," according to the job posting. The associate director is meant to help roll out new products and features with the API partners.

According to Walmart's job posting, the ideal candidate for the associate director of marketing operations role will have six or more years experience in digital ad operations, product, or project management — indicating that Walmart is looking for employees with a heavy background in advertising technology. The hire will be responsible for knowing the ins and outs of Walmart's self-serve and API solutions and will help roll out new products, features and integrations, according to the job post.

The partner manager role will specifically work on the API partner program and help adtech partners sell ads for Walmart Media Group. The person will also be responsible for keeping the API partners in the loop about new features and will be the face of Walmart Media Group at events for advertisers and agencies hosted by the API partners.

"This role serves as the primary point of contact for Ads API partner sales and account leadership into WMG," reads Walmart's job posting. "You will be crafting a level of expertise among each partner's product sales and account teams on WMG's advertising platform which drives revenue generation, coordinate activities across each partner and effectively resolve partner issues as they arise."

Below is a snapshot of the roles Walmart is looking to fill as it aggressively scales its ad business:

• Manager II, Product Management
• Advanced Analytics Manager 3 - Customer Science
• Manager, Business Analysis and Insights - Retail Analytics
• Senior Manager I, Product Management (CA) - Media Planning and Campaign Workflow
• Advanced Analytics Specialist 3, Pricing
• Director, Product Management
• Group Product Manager
• Senior Manager I, Business Strategy (Enterprise Transformation)
• Advanced Analytics Manager 2, eComm - WMG Data Solutions
• Advanced Analytics Specialist 3, Measurement Insights and Analysis
• Associate Director, Marketing Operations, eComm - Support Operations
• (USA) Senior Manager I, Advertising Sales - Partner Manager - Walmart Advertising Partners

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PepsiCo's SodaStream has attracted consumers for years in many European countries, such as Germany, where it introduced Mountain Dew- and Pepsi Max-flavored syrups for its machines earlier this year.

But the US, where fewer households buy SodaStream products, presents the biggest opportunity for the brand, CEO Eyal Shohat told Business Insider in an interview.

"For me, there's so much room to grow this category," he said. "We just need to continue to do what we're doing and create a loyal user base of SodaStreamers."

To that end, SodaStream has gotten a boost from the pandemic: Shohat said that sales of the company's carbonating machines were up 135% during the first half of 2020, making it the kitchen appliance with the fastest-growing sales during the period, according to NPD. Sales of carbon dioxide canisters have also ballooned in 2020 as people consume more beverages at home and stock up, he said.

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But the beverage brand is trying to do more to grow sales in the long run, Shohat said. One initiative has been introducing more flavorings that consumers can add to water carbonated with SodaStream machines, he said. In the US, the most recent addition to the flavor lineup is Bubly, an existing sparkling water brand that PepsiCo sells through its carbonated soft drinks business.

"Once the pandemic started, we saw a big shift... in our direct sales, more towards the consumables, the [gas cylinders] and the flavors," he said. "They became the much bigger part of the sales on our website. We also saw this in brick-and-mortar."

Flavor concentrates that allow consumers to make SodaStream versions of PepsiCo's biggest soft drink brands, such as Pepsi and Mountain Dew, have been another area of focus. The company introduced some of those flavors in Europe and Australia over the last year.

Early results from Europe and Australia suggest that the flavor concentrates from the top brands aren't eating into sales of those products in their traditional canned and bottled format, Shohat said. In many cases, he added, the new concentrates are leading customers who are familiar with one product to try the other.

"There's a halo effect [for] the brands in Europe in some cases, like Germany," he said.

While Shohat said that SodaStream has no immediate plans to introduce the top-brand flavors in the US, he said he hopes to add them "in the next couple of years." 

"We have quite a big flavors business in the US, but still, we see most of our consumers using the system to mostly consume sparkling water," he said. "Once we will launch those well-known brands, it will move the needle" with "more people consuming more flavors on the system."

PepsiCo bought SodaStream for $3.2 billion in 2018. The move gave the beverage giant a foothold in the at-home beverage category, "a completely different market that we really weren't touching at all," CFO Hugh Johnston told analysts in 2018 after the company announced the acquisition.

While still small relative to still water, sparkling water sales in the US have been growing.  Sales of sparkling water grew nearly 13% during the 12 months through March. Sales of non-carbonated bottled water, meanwhile, grew slightly less than 4%, according to data from IRI.

"Flavored sparkling water as a segment is one of the fastest-growing categories within the beverage landscape globally," Shohat said. "You see more and more consumers shifting into consuming healthier beverages and sparkling water."

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