Pepsi 1993 Syringe Case



Pepsi 1993 Syringe Case

Introduction

This paper intends to discuss the Pepsi 1993 Syringe Case. The syringe scandal related to Pepsi in 1993 will be evaluated in this paper in the light of decision and implementation Pepsi did to enact to get over this dilemma. The case refers to 1993 when a syringe was supposedly found in a can of Diet Pepsi within Washington State. Within a week's time, around fifty reports were made regarding the tampering of Diet Pepsi Can. It was a complete hoax situation for Pepsi Co. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the decisions taken by Pepsi in managing the crisis they witnessed with the hoax of Pepsi related to syringe.

Discussion

The decisions Pepsi took and implemented provided positive results in the form of losing only 3% of sales. Pepsi Co responded to the case confidently as it was assured that the reports are completely false. PepsiCo along with FDA than took serious initiatives to make people sure that these are simply accusations spread by the competitors. Company came out extremely positively and confidently defending its products against the accusations. PepsiCo did not rely on making simple and vague statements to regain the trust of people. The company started with releasing several videos throughout the crisis (Horovitz, 1993).

Producing and releasing four videos throughout the crisis time made people aware about the production process of Pepsi. Videos were related to showing reports on various processes like soda canning process. Moreover, Pepsi also released a video showing surveillance of a woman in Colorado store inserting a syringe into the can of Diet Pepsi behind the back of the store's clerk. This video surely helped the PepsiCo regained the trust it lost. Moreover, CEO of PepsiCo North America, Craig Weatherup appeared on various news stations providing people with various visual evidence that all the reports were bogus along with showing the explicit support PepsiCo possess of the FDA (Crocker, 1993).

The appearance of Craig along with the Commissioner of FDA, David Kessler was reassured public that Diet Pepsi is completely safe and the whole case is just fabricated. All these initiatives resulted positively. FDA arrested various people for filing false reports within the next two weeks of news show appearance. Diet Pepsi sales was fallen around 2% during the crisis event; however, it was regained within a month's time. This depicts extremely planned and well executed crisis management by the PepsiCo. It was Pepsi's aggressive defense that made the situation management well because Pepsi realized that if they remained quiet and complacent, it is going to damage their product immensely (Birkland, 1993).

It was the event of crisis that was managed well by the Pepsi. It has been observed that crises are managed well only with proper communication and showing good gestures to the public. Various experts related to crisis management has suggested that communication in the event of crisis, must be conducted in such a manner to make sure that the public and key stakeholders are ...