The wisdom of crowds (thank you!)
Well, our health commitments are finally launched. After over a year of drafting, amending and data-gathering. And a huge amount of engagement, dialogue, challenge and co-creation.
22 March 2010
Or, as our previous UK President put it to me: "Andrew, you could have had a baby in that time". I don't think he was speaking literally, but you get the point...
First things first - it's not perfect. We can probably still all spot a grammatical slip or two. More importantly our commitments won't please everyone.
But, led ably by Rob (our Vice-President for Research and Development) we sought feedback from a huge number of experts, allies, sceptics and critics. They helped us make this a much stronger, more stretching set of commitments.
We've made a big attempt to action key areas of feedback. Much of it was consistent across those we engaged, for example:
- Greater focus on short-term action as well as medium-long-term transformation
- Clear future vision - what kind of company we want to be, what kind of products we want to sell
- Greater specificity and clarity on pledges - clearer timelines, scope and nutritional definitions - so we can be held to account
- Pledges covering what we can influence, as we as what we can control - for example widening the retail availability of our healthier products
There was also feedback we couldn't action immediately. For example the ask from one academic that we stop selling regular Pepsi immediately. Or the suggestion that we adopt traffic light labelling. We've explained our stance on those. Others, like the idea of encouraging greater benchmarking between food companies, will take time.
We promised anonymity to those who took part in our workshops and fed in advice, counsel and knuckle raps. But please accept a huge thank you from PepsiCo - in the UK, and in New York. Your feedback directly shaped our agenda, and improved it.
But the dialogue doesn't stop here. Let us know what you think.
Andrew Smith, Head of Public Affairs, Corporate Responsibility
Comments (4)
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Andrew, it’s good to see the Health Report has – at last – made it onto your website! It’s been an interesting process. During the stakeholder meetings (that we at C3 Collaborating for Health organised last year), at which we discussed an early draft of the report and fed in some ideas, there were certainly some pretty hefty criticisms of the food and drink industry. Having said that, I was intrigued to hear that you hadn’t advertised full-sugar Pepsi for years...so you are clearly already starting to deliver on your pledges.
Coming up with the ideas, and publishing the report, is the easy bit: now it gets tough! Next comes regular, warts-and-all reporting on these pledges – and continuous improvement.
One quick anecdote: at a recent conference on ‘social responsibility’, one of the delegates commented that, if you want to know how a company performed *last* year, look at the most recent financial report – but if you want to know how they will perform *next* year (or the year after, or the year after that), look at the social and environmental report. A good tip – but one only works if the company really can deliver on the promises it makes. We’ll be watching with interest – best of luck!
Katy, thanks again to you - and the rest of the team at C3/Oxford Health Alliance. You did a brilliant job of pulling together the great and good to help shape/critique our commitments!
Believe it or not, we've already started planning (!?) a Health Update for later this year.... Will be the first formal installment of how we're doing against our commitments. And the business also has a pipeline of commercial plans ready to help us towards the pledges. Watch this space!
Thanks again, Andrew
Not many people would have imagined a few years ago that PepsiCo would be up for transforming itself in this way and that it would now be part of driving the health agenda forward.
At Forum for the Future, we're pleased to have played a part in helping you shape your future plans - both on health and on the environment. I really like the very open way you've gone about developing your vision and commitments on health - a great example to others.
As Katy rightly says, delivering on these promises is the next big challenge. Beyond that (as we say in the report) we'd encourage the UK & Ireland business to be a real catalyst for change for the rest of PepsiCo. Having worked with other parts of the global business, I know the appetite's there.
So, congratulations Andrew and the team on the launch and good luck with the implementation!
Dan, you might have seen we published some big global goals earlier this week too - so the appetite for broad change on environment, health definitely there!
You've really helped us take some of the lessons from our environment work in 2007/8 -setting our a transformational journey, engaging stakeholders openly - and apply them across other areas. Here's to the next year or two! Best, Andrew