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The TTAG tipster who alerted us to PepsiCo’s financial support of Gabrielle Giffords’ 2013 civilian disarmament gabfest entered “pepsico” into the search bar at aspenideas.org. (Fiendishly clever, eh?) Up popped Brad Jakeman, President, Global Beverage Group, PepsiCo, Inc., right below none other than Gabrielle Giffords, the doyenne of disarmament. Being the seasoned journalist I am I Googled Mr. Jakeman’s name and the festival and found the YouTubery above. According to Mr. Jakeman’s full official bio the Aussie was the marketing maven behind Activision’s gun-intensive Call of Duty video game (“There’s a soldier in all of us”). Here he is below Ms. Giffords . . .

(courtesy aspenideas.org)

Mr. Jakeman was joined at the Aspen Ideas Festival by B. Bonin Bough. At the time, Mr. Bough was the global head of digital and social media at PepsiCo. (Mr. Bough is now Vice President of Global Media and Consumer Engagement at Mondelēz International (formerly KRAFT Foods.) Here’s his bio from the Aspen Ideas Festival:

(courtesy aspenideas.org)Mr. Bough’s connection with guns is (as far as we know) tangential: his former employer Weber Shandwick advised – and may still be advising – Cerberus Capital Management in its efforts to sell the Freedom Group, “the gun maker that produced the assault rifle used in the Dec. 14 Newton, Conn., school shooting.” Again, Mr. Bough left Shandwick in 2008.

PepsiCo is all over the Aspen Ideas Festival. (As is the resolutely anti-gun Atlantic magazine.) The unidentified speaker at the end of the Pepsi-branded promo video above asks the audience to recognize that “ideas come from listening to people with both sides of view.” I wonder if there was a speaker putting forth the pro-gun point-of-view during the Gabrielle Giffords/Mark Kelley gun control chin wag. No? This is my surprised face. And here’s another 2013 Aspen Ideas Festival video from the well-paid heads of Americans for Responsible Solutions.

We’ll chase up PepsiCo’s promise to get back to TTAG with a clarification of their sponsorship of the civilian disarmament cart-and-pony show and report back.

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113 COMMENTS

    • Too friggin’ right. I’m not buying anymore of their products, even IF they issue an apology. Boycott, but call them and let them know! Maybe we can get some videos up showing how well their products withstand different calibers?

    • PepsiCo products:

      Pepsi Brands include Frito Lay, Tropicana Juice Products, Quaker Brands, and Gatorade.
      Frito Lay Products include Tostitos, Doritos, Lays Chips, and Flat Earth Snacks.
      Quaker Brands include Aunt Jemima, Rice-A-Roni, Near East side dishes, Spudz snacks, and Crisp’ums baked crisps.
      Quaker Breakfast Cereal Brands include, Life, Puffed Wheat, Harvet Crunch, King Vitamin, Quaker Oh’s!, Mother’s Cereal, and Cap’n Crunch.
      Gatorade Brands include G2, and Propel Fit Water.
      Pepsi’s SoftDrink Brands include Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, Pepsi Max, Mountain Dew, Diet Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew Voltage, Sierra Mist, and Diet Sierra Mist.

      So, remember it’s not just soda.

      • Did anybody else catch the irony of his list? Every item he listed is more likely to kill you than a gun. The dyes, preservatives, sodium, fat, high fructose corn syrup, etc are known to be cancer bullets straight from the Grim Reapers cornucopia. And gun owners have a culture of death fetish? What makes these products even worse is that they target and affect women, children, and minorities the worse. We quit soda pop and crap food long time ago and are better for it. Granted, we can’t ever get coupons for tomatoes or cukes like we could for gallons of mystery processed cheese, but we also aren’t on any meds.

        • I don’t use any products on that list, sans Quaker Oats, I’m pretty much a health nut.

          Most of my food comes from locally grown organic fruits and vegs, or from meat that I’ve personally hunted (doesn’t get more organic than that.)

          Sometimes, my family will buy local livestock and everyone will spilt the cost of the animal and processing.

          Levi’s is my only true anti gun vice, I’m a Levi’s jeans man, always have been.

        • ROHC, I’m right with you on the organic food, you lost this vegetarian(only seafood) on the meat. Unfortunately crops like corn can get cross contaminated just buy the wind./// GMO foods(better living through chemistry) Yeah, Right.

        • Orangic is the way to go, man. It’s expensive, but look at it this way, you will eat less that way and keep your weight down.

          But, I spent a lot of time on my grandparents’ farm growing up, so can taste and even smell the difference between organic food and not.

          People don’t believe me, but I can smell meat cooking and tell you if it’s organic or not.

      • Well, of that list I only ate Doritos chips and Ruffles sour cream & onion (not listed). I can do without those items if it means I have a clear conscience. Additionally, I drink Coke and Dr. Pepper so I believe i can spend my money on non-PepsiCo. products.

      • Huh. Here’s some irony: A few months ago I got stuck on a brutal cholesterol/triglyceride diet. This list is pretty much my exact “no fly zone”. Perhaps my body was trying to tell me something? (Diet just got easier.)

      • Thanks Hellchild for compiling this list.

        This will be an easy boycott for me, and everyone else please take note:
        NONE OF THESE ITEMS ARE FIT FOR HUMAN CONSUMPTION

      • Let’s see…. I drink Gatorade when I have the flu. The others? Nary a single one. Garbage, pretty much all of them. GMO corn… yum. It sterilizes lab rats in two generations, kills them in three.

        Now WE’RE the new lab rats. I wonder what will happen?

      • Sweet tea? Or as I like to call it “crack tea…”

        I will get down on some sweet tea sometimes, but I lived on it as kid though.

  3. Is there a updated list or a list at all up here on TTAG’s of companies that support gun control? If not there should be. I know google works but I think it would be a good article/list to have here that could be updated every month or so. We need to boycott these companies and any product or item related to anyone who supports gun control. Just look what the Gun’s and Ammo mag are going through, they can’t even give away a 2 year subscription now, over a single editor and his dumb comment. We can make a difference if we boycott.

    • If you boycotted every anti gun company you would have a difficult time living…

      Dannon Yogurt, Ben & Jerry’s, Sara Lee, Levi Strauss, Disney, Toys-“R”-Us, Hyatt, Time-Warner, 7-Eleven… Just to name a few big ones…

      And, there are tons more…

      Best to just pick and choose what you can, when you can.

      Check out the NRA’s list, it’s about ten pages long, you would have to stand there in the store and research every product before you put it in your shopping cart.

        • Do what you do, man.

          I don’t eat junk food, or drink sugary beverages, I make my own coffee at home, and I rarely eat out (I’m a health nut), so most businesses don’t effect me.

          I’m not saying it’s difficult because it can’t be done, I’m saying it’s difficult to do because of the constant researching.

      • I already boycott most of those companies. I haven’t bought Levis since they attacked the Boy Scouts, about 20 years. I can live just fine without every single one of those products.

        • I buy a new pair of Wranglers about once every three years. Not more often than that. Gotta have jeans, man, and I wear them pretty much out. Wranglers are better than Levis anyway, in my humble.

    • Want to know where a company stands on an issue? There’s an app for that! 2nd Vote lets you search for companies based on various criteria (like 2A, corporate welfare, etc.) or lists companies by industry and ranks them in a handy list. So if you’re looking for say, electronics, you will get a list of companies (Sony, Vizio, etc.) ranked by an overall “conservative” to “liberal” metric or by single issues, if you’d rather. I have my company lists sorted by their positions on 2A issues, so I don’t ever give my money to any business that supports anti-2A groups. How they come down on gay marriage is of no big concern to me, but how they behave about the 2nd Amendment is. Anyway, it’s something I keep on my phone and I think it’s a useful tool. Much like Farago. (Zing!)

  6. Try the app 2nd Vote. It rates companies on their support of various issues, with higher ratings given to more conservative companies. If you only care about guns, they give you that info too. It’s a little sparse right now but hopefully it grows.

      • Yeah, GMO corn. When I say it’s poison and you think “hyperbole” (or something worse), research it.
        From my research, it would seem that about 98% of corn and corn products are made with GMO corn.

        I have pretty much eliminated non-organic corn stuff from my diet, except for a trip to my local Mexican restaurant (locally-owned, with 3 locations), maybe three times a year.

        Theoretically, even organic corn can be contaminated with GMO corn pollen. And when that happens, you have just “stolen” Monsanto’s trademark and patents. They sue many farmers every year, and the corrupt courts rule in their favor.

        Wrap your reeling mind around THAT.

        • Yeah, I knew all of that, and it’s a sad state of affairs. Good comment though. Anybody finding out about these things might wake up and realize how f****d up things are.

      • Pretty damn fine potato chips, if you ask me! I buy a bag of chips maybe once or twice a year, but it’s nearly always Snyder’s.

    • In Texas, I prefer Julio’s and Central Market brand anyway. There are many other local tortilla chip makers that have a superior taste to Doritos too, except for the many folks who are hooked on Cooler Ranch and Nacho cheese Doritos.

    • Depends on where you live. Most major markets have a local brand of tortilla chips that are much better than Doritos. Not necessarily flavored, though, so you’ll have to do your own doctoring.

  9. COD is a major reason why youth are staying interested in firearms, Pepsico is a huge sponsor of COD/MW. Interesting dichotomy. More than likely about money and politics than about guns to them.

  10. I found this interesting on the Aspenideas link; “Two and a half years ago, Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly had their lives changed forever by a madman with an arsenal of deadly weapons.”

    Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t that ‘arsenal’ consist of a single Glock pistol?

    Not that I’m not already practically boycotting Pepsi, but are they backing civilian disarmament in particular, or just this hokey lib fest? Perhaps if we made enough of a stink they’d either withdraw their support or insist that a pro second amendment voice be included. I would think with a hundred million potential customers they might take notice. That or I’m cracked.

    • Yep, it’s all them libs:

      “I do not believe in taking away the right of the citizen for sporting, for hunting and so forth, or for home defense. But I do believe that an AK-47, a machine gun, is not a sporting weapon or needed for defense of a home.” —Ronald Reagan, at his birthday celebration in 1989.

      “There’s no reason why on the street today a citizen should be carrying loaded weapons,”
      Ronald Reagan

      • Good ole Reagan, his “Conservative” history on the RKBA:

        1967: signed the Mulford Act as Gov of CA
        1986: signed the FOPA that banned a whole class of arms
        1989: the infamous “no sporting purpose for AK47” speech
        1992-94: lobbied for the Brady Bill and Clintons AWB

        Reagan also grew the size of govt, increased every govt budget from 1980-1988. It was under Reagan the FCC allowed CATV companies to scramble TV signals, making the satelite dishes people purchased useless. I generally liked Reagan, but his policies were hardly Conservative. The last true Conservative president was Calvin Coolidge, not Reagan.

        • We need to do more to fight the sporting purpose stupidity. Have they never heard of CMP high powered rifle or 3 gun?

    • “Correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t that ‘arsenal’ consist of a single Glock pistol? ”

      Sorry… you got me laughing, and I couldn’t stop. Still laughing. OMG, those people are like stink on sh*t.

    • Remmy’s employees in Ilion are represented by the UMW, so if the employees are being mistreated, it’s on the troglodytes.

      We can hope that Remmy’s products will improve if Cerberus dumps the business and Remmy goes independent or is bought by someone who cares about quality.

  12. I honestly wonder at what age Gabby’s mental acuity can be compared to after the brain damage. She certainly talks like a 5 year old. However she may be mostly there in cognitive ability but have damage to the communication center of her brain that doesn’t allow the information to come out right. Either way it seems really bizarre and sad to parade someone who is a shadow of themselves around like that.

    • Once she was a glib social parasite. Now she’s not so glib.

      Examine her bio and you’ll know why I call her a social parasite.

  14. I for the life of me can’t find the ad but back in the day (when I was a child) in New Zealand there was an ad running on TV by either Coke or Pepsi which had the CEO walking into the board room, setting a briefcase down of the boardroom table. He opened it and removed an Uzi and did a mag dump into a vending machine (of the competition) at the other end of the table, returned the Uzi to the brefcase and announced to the board (how were lined up on each side of the table) that the cola wars had begun, outstanding ad.

  15. “The unidentified speaker at the end of the Pepsi-branded promo video above asks the audience to recognize that “ideas come from listening to people with both sides of view.” I wonder if there was a speaker putting forth the pro-gun point-of-view during the Gabrielle Giffords/Mark Kelley gun control chin wag. No? This is my surprised face.”

    Well, there is a ‘Recommend a Speaker’ form right on the site: http://www.aspenideas.org/content/recommend-speaker

    The form even has a required field that says:
    “The Ideas Festival supports diversity and inclusiveness; we aim to create a speaker list that reflects diversity across a number of areas (ethnicity, global geography, gender, age, professional focus, etc.). How would this speaker help us meet that objective?”

    If people would like to actually promote the “ideas come from listening to people with both sides of view” concept, perhaps typing ‘Robert Farago’ into that recommended speaker form might be more effective than trying to organize a sort-of-boycott of PepsiCo products.

  17. For those TTAGers that haven’t read it yet, “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” by Michael Pollan is a very good read concerning our current food chain.

    • Table sugar is 50% fructose, high fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose. You won’t get diabetes 10% slower if you use table sugar instead of HFCS. They will both kill you with equal efficiency.

  19. My letter to Pepsi

    Hello,

    I am a lifelong Pepsico customer, especially fond of Mountain Dew, which I have been purchasing religiously for 20 years or more.
    As much as I LOVE your products, I value my 2nd amendment rights more. It has recently come to my attention that Pepsico has joined the dark side in the current civilian disarmament. While I respect your right to do so, I must inform you that you will no longer enjoy my patronage from this point forward.
    It’s such a shame that companies feel compelled to take sides on this issue, but now that you have, our relationship is OVER.
    I also intend to spread the word far and wide. Expect to lose a LOT of customers over this.
    You should have stayed out of it, but I realize those of your ilk just cannot help themselves.
    It’s a shame really

    Patriotically yours,

    Scott Leitch
    Vacaville CA

    sent via https://cu.pepsico.com/pepsi

    • Their reply…

      Dear Scott,

      Hi – Thank you for contacting us at the Pepsi-Cola Company.

      Please know that Pepsi-Cola has never supported groups that either advocate Gun Control or oppose hunting.

      Every couple of months these rumors surface in different parts of the country – we’d appreciate your spreading the truth for us to your family and friends.

      Pepsi-Cola offers support in the following areas: education, literacy, anti- substance abuse programs & playrooms in hospitals for children with AIDS.

      I hope this information is helpful. You can be assured that I will share all your comments with our Senior Management Team.

      Thanks again for contacting us.

      Most Sincerely,

      Margaret
      Consumer Relations Representative
      013477411A

  20. That whole list of products I was like ehh I don’t normally consume them. Than I saw Propel and damit, I drink that all the time. I thought that was a coke product. Does any one know if there is a coke version of Propel? I know for Gatorade there is PowerAde.

    “Mr. Jakeman’s full official bio the Aussie was the marketing maven behind Activision’s gun-intensive Call of Duty video game (“There’s a soldier in all of us”).” which is kind of ironic especially considering that apparently the developers that work on the game are pro 2A.

    For example Jessica Hook, Is the texture artist for the firearms in COD who got into shooting while working on COD because most of her co-workers are into firearms, and now does competition shooting in her spare time.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kar3_3e0dv4

  22. Looks like a LOOOOT of reaching to make those connections.

    I think there’s a pretty distinct line between an Anti-Gun company and a Company with an Anti-Gun president.

    Now, ACTORS on the other hand….. yeah, let’s avoid Anti-Gun actors.

    But penalizing the hundreds or thousands or hundreds of thousands of guys who buy guns with the paychecks they get from working at Pepsi? That’s not a good way to go, guys.

  23. For Mr. Kelly:

    “Gaby and I stand in the middle”
    One side seeks further gun control measures by means of legislation. The other side wants no more legislated gun control measures. In fact, this side would like many if not all current legislation repealed. Since you are lobbying for additional gun control measures, you are most certainly not in the middle.

    “We say no to the cynical efforts of the gun lobby – No to the philosophy of more guns at any cost”
    Who said we need more guns at any cost? It has been said that more guns equates to lower crime. Whether it does or does not – doesn’t matter. Our rights to self defense of our person, family, country, and liberty is guaranteed. The philosophy of this statement should be held at any cost.

    “We insist on the responsible exercise of gun rights”
    Me too. By means of personal responsibility – not legislated pre-accident, pre-crime law. Any consequence due to the lack of responsibility should be processed by law through due process. We the people are not a corporation to be regulated by safety polices. We are people with our own rights, freedoms, and responsibility. My safety is my responsibility – not belonging to anyone else.

    “Our rights are an attribute of citizenship”
    No. Our rights are granted by the creator to all people on planet earth. These are called natural rights and are a philosophy of free people. People who’s rights are outlawed by legislation still retain those rights. They have only made the decision not to exercise their rights for risk of consequence of punishment and are unwilling to (currently) fight for them.

    “Weapons of war are not available to criminals”
    It is arguable that the technology of all guns at one point in time were derived from a weapon of war. Furthermore, no legislation will prevent a person from performing a crime or otherwise breaking the law. Harsher penalties for infringing on the rights of others could deter these people.

    “Guns stay out of the hands of dangerous people”
    Anyone can be dangerous and anyone can get a gun if they are determined.

    “Firearms are not left around so that kids can shoot other kids”
    I don’t think any firearms are ever left around so that kids can shoot other kids. However, children having access to firearms fall in the realm of personal responsibility. Some parents may support their children’s access and training to/for firearms in the event they may need it.

    “No guns in bars”
    This is a no issue. People that are irresponsible and know they get violent or have otherwise can’t control themselves with alcohol would drink anyways. People who are irresponsible would likely break the law and take a firearm in the bar anyways if this law was enacted. Irresponsible people do Irresponsible things regardless of law. The law is a piece of paper that cannot guarantee the control, actions, and decisions of people. This topic is a matter of personal responsibility.

    “No Guns in classrooms or college campuses”
    Since classrooms and college campuses seems to be the target of mass shootings, it appears this law is ineffective for its intention. If you are willing to killed dozens of people… why would you care about a law that says no guns on campus. The shooter would likely not have any guns on campus until it is time for him to start shooting. Completely ineffective and eliminates the ability of other students from defending themselves.

    “Our rights aren’t the strongest when our laws are the weakest”
    Our rights have nothing to do with the law, and the law certainly should not be encroaching into the territory of “rights.” Rights are rights. They should not be strong or weak.

    “When our laws are weak our communities and families are not safe”
    Laws in no way or form make families or communities safe. Safety is each persons own responsibility. Passing legislation does not guarantee someone is never going to break that law.

  24. I sent an email to Brad Jakeman from the pepsico web site. The only pepsico product I had been buying was an occasional bean burrito from Taco Hell. I will never eat another. I also suggested he carry his sorry ass back to Australia.

    • Consumers have the power to end the bs. By simply not buying their products. One consumer wont make that big of a dent. Hell it wont even make a ripple. However if everyone were to end buying their product then you might see something happen.

  26. All I needed to do was read the title of the article. PepsiCo is now on my black list indefinitely. I will no longer buy anything from that company or it’s subsidiaries. I will also be informing my friends on facebook.

  28. Good Luck to PepsiCo!!!!! NEVER NEVER NEVER WILL I BUY A PRODUCT FROM PEPSICO! I live in Arizona and the world can go PISS on Gabby & Mark along with Pepsi!

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