On a recent wintry
evening, Roger A. Enrico is in front of 50 of his company's most talented
executives. They are at PepsiCo's headquarters in Purchase, N.Y., a massive
campus dotted with sculptures by Alexander Calder and Henry Moore, to hear one
of the last great warriors of the cola wars. Enrico, 55, who once wanted to be
an actor, understands that great marketing is pure theater. In his 29 years at
PepsiCo (
PEP), he has staged some of marketing's most spectacular productions.
Tonight, as he strides to a lectern in his dark suit and white shirt, he does
not disappoint. ''Coke's leadership tried to put us out of business,'' he says
flatly. ''But we did not look for a temporary boost or a short-term gain
despite the self-destructive business philosophy by our major competitor. We've
been honed by fire.''
Enrico, who reluctantly succeeded the cancer-stricken Wayne Calloway as CEO in
1996, vividly describes the company's progress. But now, he says, Pepsi must
show Wall Street that it can deliver superior performance quarter after
quarter. ''You can do this,'' Enrico assures the crowd. ''You have greatness in
you, and you can give that greatness to your colleagues. You can make us the
fastest-growing, the most profitable best of the best. I'll settle for nothing
less from this team. You, my friends, can take it to the top.'' Fiery applause
erupts. The executives stand. Clearly, Enrico, who made his name as a maverick
marketer in the '90s, still has the touch. Smiling, he walks back to his dinner
salad, satisfied with his performance.
If only Wall Street would notice. At the dawn of the New Economy, when dot-com
startups are the new Nifty Fifty, investors have paid scant attention to
Enrico's four-year transformation of the packaged-foods giant. He jettisoned
the company's slow-growing fast-food chains. He spun off Pepsi's
capital-intensive bottling operations into an independent public company. He
spent $3.3 billion to acquire Tropicana, the leading orange juice brand. For
the first time in decades, the company is focused on just two things, packaged
foods and drinks, in a trio of well-known businesses: Frito-Lay snacks,
Pepsi-Cola beverages, and Tropicana juices.
Perhaps the most dramatic change at Pepsi is that these days, soda and juice
run a distant second to the big engine that now drives PepsiCo: snack foods, in
which the company enjoys near-total dominance. Although PepsiCo's identity is
still tied to soft drinks, that business now accounts for only a quarter of
sales. Frito-Lay, which controls two-fifths of the world market for salty
snacks, generated more than 71% of PepsiCo's profits in the fourth quarter.
By almost every financial measure, PepsiCo is in better shape than it was in
1996, when one wag noted that ''Coke ( KO) was kicking Pepsi's
can.'' Although its $20.4 billion in sales is now a third lower, the company's
net is higher by more than $100 million, at $2.1 billion last year. Operating
margins have risen to 15% from 10%, while the return on invested capital has
jumped to 20% from 15%.
Pepsi's position in the marketplace has strengthened, too. For the first time
in its history, it boasts two of the top three U.S. soft-drink brands on store
shelves. Pepsi-Cola is still second to Coca-Cola, but last fall Pepsi's
Mountain Dew edged out Diet Coke for third place. Pepsi's Aquafina bottled
water is the No. 1 brand in that fast-growing category, while its Lipton's Iced
Tea brand boasts a 16-point share lead over Coca-Cola's Nestea. Tropicana Pure
Premium, the nation's top-selling orange juice, surpassed Campbell Soup as the
third-largest grocery brand in late January.
TOUGH JOB. So how did Enrico bring about these changes? The cola warrior
took a hard look at Pepsi's businesses and, unswayed by history or emotion,
made strategic decisions to focus on the areas where the company could
dominate. Overseas, that meant giving up the self-defeating strategy of going
head to head with Coke in every market and instead concentrating on emerging
markets that were still up for grabs. ''We kept beating our heads in markets
that Coke won 20 years ago,'' says Enrico. ''That is a very difficult
proposition.''
At home, Enrico has used that discipline to concentrate on grocery sales,
always Pepsi's greatest strength. Taken together, Frito-Lay, Pepsi-Cola, and
Tropicana make the company the second-biggest source of sales for supermarkets,
behind only Philip Morris Cos.' Kraft Foods Inc. ( MO). Enrico is using
that clout to finally unlock the promise that drove Pepsi and Frito-Lay to
merge in the first place. By moving Pepsi drinks next to Frito-Lay chips on
store shelves, Enrico has increased the odds that when shoppers pick up soda
and chips, the soda is a Pepsi. Called ''Power of One,'' the strategy is
disarmingly simple--but it's something Pepsi has been unable to execute in the
30-odd years since the two companies were united.
But Enrico's biggest challenge has proven the most intractable. Despite
improved performance, Pepsi's stock seems as stale as a bag of old potato
chips. It has gone nowhere for three straight years. Even the well-publicized
miscues of Pepsi's nemesis in Atlanta haven't brought any fizz to Pepsi's
shares. Enrico blames a slump in food stocks and the flight of money to high
tech. After all, he notes, Pepsi has met or exceeded Wall Street's expectations
for four straight quarters, and 22 of 23 analysts who follow PepsiCo rate the
stock a buy or higher. Yet the company's shares trade in the low 30s, barely
four bucks above the price when Enrico took over. ''It's the old economy/new
economy thing that's holding the stock back,'' says George E. Thompson, a
Prudential Securities analyst.
Sitting in his spacious office, Enrico is clearly frustrated. ''As an investor,
I would not put a dime in any of these overinflated companies,'' says Enrico,
whose only child, Aaron, now works for a dot-com in Los Angeles. ''I think a
lot of people are going to get burned big time, and when that happens I hope
they don't get scared and rush their money out of the stock market. I hope they
put it in more substantive investments, like Pepsi.''
FADED GLORY. In a period when big brands have lost clout, that doesn't
seem likely. Even venerable names, from Procter & Gamble ( PG) to Gillette ( G), are trading near
their 52-week lows. Like his counterparts at those other packaged-goods giants,
Enrico is struggling to get top-line growth of 6% or 7%. That's not enticing to
investors infatuated with outfits that double in size every two years. Even
Coke's recent spate of public-relations blunders and management tumult have
offered few opportunities. When tainted sodas in Belgium set off an anti-Coke
backlash last year, Pepsi could only watch. ''Our market share in Belgium is so
small that if we had a chance to gain anything more than two-tenths of a share
point, we probably would run out of capacity,'' Enrico says.
Still, if anyone can restore PepsiCo to its glory days of the 1980s, it might
well be Enrico, a man whose personal transformation has been almost as dramatic
as that of the company he leads. Enrico made his name as head of the U.S. soda
business in the '80s. Back then, he was a master of the grand gesture. In 1983,
Enrico paid $5 million to entice pop icon Michael Jackson--then at the apex of
his career--to make a Pepsi commercial. After Coke's botched introduction of
New Coke, he dashed off a brash--and embarrassingly premature--memoir called The
Other Guy Blinked: How Pepsi Won the Cola Wars.
But now, 14 years later, the swagger and flamboyance have been tempered.
Enrico, the onetime impatient egoist, has become more reflective. He is less a
flashy marketing genius than a keen corporate strategist and patient mentor to
hundreds of colleagues. Once always on the prowl for the big score, these days
Enrico professes as much interest in the singles as the home runs. ''The way
you build a brand and create enduring value has more to do with the day-to-day
execution by tens of thousands of people on the front line than it does with
the brand manager with the hot idea,'' he says now.
It's not just the passage of time that has mellowed Enrico. His friends and
colleagues trace the catalyzing moment to the early morning hours of Feb. 24,
1990. It was 2 a.m. and Enrico and his wife, Rosemary, were tearing up the
dance floor in a nightclub in Turkey. ''It was a Latin band,'' he recalls,
''and they played a mean lambada.'' Suddenly, Enrico became short of breath.
His chest began to ache and he broke out in a cold sweat. His colleagues rushed
him to the American hospital in Istanbul. ''I was lying on the stretcher and
the Turkish doctor said, 'Don't worry. You're going to be all right.' And I
said, 'I know. My wife said the same thing.'''
The heart attack he suffered was comparatively minor, but it altered Enrico's
perspective on life. The episode helped to spark some introspection in a person
who had long been consumed by his career. ''It was a remarkable and positive
experience,'' says Gerard R. Roche, an Enrico friend and Heidrick & Struggles
International Inc. headhunter. ''It has broadened him, made him more
reflective, and lent him a human sensitivity that he showed to few people
before.''
It's not surprising that the transforming event occurred far from home. From
his earliest days, Enrico has had the small-town boy's yen for adventure. The
son of an iron ore worker, Enrico grew up in tiny Chisholm, Minn. As a teen, he
pledged to someday visit every country in the world. After attending Babson
College near Boston on a scholarship, Enrico volunteered in 1967 for Vietnam,
where he dodged mortars to help transport fuel to troops near the demilitarized
zone. It was, he once noted, his first lesson ''in delivering precious liquids
to consumers.'' He married his high school sweetheart, Rosemary Margo, on an
R&R leave in Hawaii in 1969.
Two years later, after the service and a brief stint at General Mills Inc., he
joined PepsiCo's Frito-Lay Div. From the start, Enrico evoked the indignation
of superiors who thought him brash and impudent. James H. O'Neal, production
chief for Frito-Lay in the mid-1970s, recalls touring a plant with Enrico, who
was then a brand manager. ''All of a sudden, I notice that he is lagging
behind, and he has his arm draped around my plant manager,'' says O'Neal. ''He
was kind of seducing him to put more flavorings on his brand. He was just more
aggressive and more pushy than anybody else.''
Still, by demonstrating a flair for marketing and an ability to get results, he
steadily climbed the ranks. In 1983, when Enrico's boss, John Sculley, left for
Apple Computer Inc., Enrico became chief executive of Pepsi-Cola's U.S.
business. He quickly incensed his new boss. When he signed Michael Jackson in
1983, for example, he failed to either inform or gain the approval of his boss,
Victor Bonomo. ''He didn't care for supervision,'' remembers Bonomo, then head
of the worldwide beverage group. ''He liked to do his own thing.''
UNCOMMON BOND. Soon, Enrico committed an even bigger faux pas. It was
the mid-1980s, and he had invited hundreds of the company's bottlers to a
lavish black-tie bash in Manhattan. The evening included dinner at the Waldorf
Astoria, followed by a glitzy show at Lincoln Center. Left off the guest list
was legendary PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Donald M. Kendall, who heard of the
affair from CBS Corp. CEO Thomas Wyman. ''Needless to say, he was not
pleased,'' recalls Enrico. But the inevitable dressing down was followed by an
invitation from Kendall to meet with him once a week.
Thus began an extraordinary mentorship. The private meetings continued for
years, allowing the two to forge an uncommon bond that permits Kendall, now 79
and retired as chairman since 1986, to maintain an office on the executive
floor, just two doors away from Enrico. ''I ask for his advice many times,''
says Enrico. ''There is not a move I made here that I didn't consult with Don
in advance.''
Although Enrico had built his life around a fast-track career, his heart attack
led him to start questioning those priorities. Soon after returning to the
U.S., Enrico began paging through his calendar of business trips. ''I got sick
to my stomach, looking at the things I did,'' he says. ''I would fly to Paris
for a day and come back and go to Los Angeles for lunch and return the same
day. I thought, 'Here I am in a position to realize one of my childhood dreams,
which was to experience the world.' I wasn't experiencing a damn thing.'' Soon,
he began building extra hours for himself into his business jaunts. In Austria,
he spent an afternoon and early evening strolling the streets of Vienna before
meeting colleagues the next day. ''I had been there half a dozen times and yet
never saw the city,'' he recalls.
Even as Enrico moved up to the top job at Frito-Lay in 1991, he continued to
question the basic assumptions of his life and career. Through the years, he
had accumulated a small fortune in PepsiCo stock. (His current stock holdings
and options are worth more than $80 million.) ''I began to think, well, what's
money for?'' he says. ''It was more money than I needed to live on.'' Enrico
decided to use his wealth to take his life in a new direction. His first
impulse was to become active in community service or to teach, but a colleague
suggested that he could just as easily teach inside the company. So after two
years at Frito-Lay, Enrico took a 14-month sabbatical. He set up a ''war
college'' in 1993 at his retreat in the Cayman Islands and his ranch in
Montana. During much of that time, in sessions that began early in the morning
and went late into the evening, he mentored and coached the company's most
promising executives.
His teaching ''sabbatical'' ended in 1995, when then CEO Calloway lured him
back into the business to run PepsiCo's troubled fast-food business. Enrico was
named CEO of the division, responsible for 29,000 Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, and
Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. Calloway, diagnosed with prostate cancer in
early 1992, had an overwhelming need to bulk up his management team. Undergoing
surgery, radiation, and then chemotherapy, Calloway needed a viable successor,
and time was running out.
Indeed, just months later, Enrico found himself prevailed upon by his friend
Calloway and his mentor Kendall to take the top job. While the young,
career-obsessed Enrico would have leaped at the opportunity, the more measured
Enrico was reluctant. He was only 51, but he had already been chief executive
of PepsiCo's three major divisions during his 25-year career at the company.
''It was sort of like running the same show over again, rather than moving on
to the next act,'' he says.
So both Calloway and Kendall began to work on him. His mentor recalls one late
session at Enrico's home in Dallas when he spent hours trying to talk Enrico
into the job. ''About 3 in the morning,'' says Kendall, ''he finally came
around.'' Enrico says it was not that easy. ''Ultimately, it was circumstance
that persuaded me to take the job, not what anyone said. Wayne obviously was in
a situation where he couldn't continue to do this, and I owed it to the company
to take the job. Nobody told me that, but that was my conclusion.''
On April Fool's Day in 1996, he became CEO. Seven months later, he gained the
title of chairman from Calloway, who died in July, 1998, at the age of 62.
Enrico's ascension was cheered by investors, who had already become
disenchanted with the company's early 1990s fumbles, and employees, who knew
and respected Enrico for what he had done over the years.
He inherited a mess. Few understood how badly things had gone amiss. Through
the four years that Calloway battled cancer, the company had lost its momentum.
Pepsi-Cola was steadily losing market share to Coca-Cola. But the deterioration
was greatest overseas, where Pepsi had overinvested and overcommitted in a
foolish attempt to beat its rival in almost every market. ''You just don't
fight hand-to-hand combat against a Coke,'' says James O'Neal, the former CEO
of Frito-Lay International.
Then, shortly after moving into his new job, Enrico endured a stunning
humiliation. In Venezuela, one of the few international markets in which Pepsi
had an advantage, the company's bottling partner, Cisneros Group, shifted
allegiances to Coke. Virtually overnight, Pepsi lost its 85% market share.
Enrico, to this day, bristles at the incident, insisting that Coke vastly
overpaid for the bottler in a concerted attempt to wound Pepsi. Enrico ended
his first year as CEO having to take an $822 million write-off, the bulk of it
to clean up Pepsi's international problems.
BATTLE IN THE AISLES. Enrico lost no time in drawing up a battle plan.
By shedding restaurants and spinning off bottling operations, he has
essentially developed a strategy that centers on the supermarket, a
battleground where he has triumphed in the past. The addition of Tropicana, for
example, strengthens his position with retailers because of that brand's huge
importance. Tropicana executives believe the brand can eclipse both No. 1
Coca-Cola Classic and No. 2 Pepsi-Cola, as the top seller in the nation's
supermarkets before the end of this decade.
To make sure customers and employees alike got the message, Enrico cleared 21
days of his calendar last year to personally visit with the CEOs of the 25
largest supermarket chains. In each case, he made a powerful economic argument.
PepsiCo products account for 3% of the total sales of supermarkets and 20% of
the retailers' cash flow. Even better, the operating margins on Pepsi goods are
9%, compared with a 2% average on everything else, because Pepsi delivers and
stocks the shelves itself. The message: Do more business with us, and you'll
make more money.
The idea behind ''Power of One'' is that by leveraging the synergies of soft
drinks and snacks, Pepsi and its retail partners can drive sizable growth. It
has been 35 years since Don Kendall and Herman W. Lay sat at a table and
sketched out the merger of Pepsi-Cola and Frito-Lay on a yellow legal pad, with
no lawyers or investment bankers present. Back then, Pepsi-Cola earned 2.4
times the net profits of Frito-Lay and accounted for roughly 58% of the
combined sales. Today, that's reversed, with Frito earning 2.4 times beverages.
THIRSTY? While Kendall and Lay did not envision that remarkable reversal
of fortune, they did imagine powerful synergies. ''You make them thirsty,''
Kendall told Lay, ''and I'll give them something to drink.'' The deal dealt
Pepsi another card in its contest with Coca-Cola, but the card was never fully
played.
Soon after becoming CEO, however, Enrico revisited the issue. A simple fact
intrigued him: Two-thirds of all Frito-Lay consumers drink a Pepsi-made
beverage when eating snacks, but only half of them buy the soda and chips
together. If Enrico could persuade shoppers to pick up a six-pack of Pepsi
along with the Doritos, he was sure he could reel in plenty of customers who
were now quenching their thirst with rival drinks. What's more, Frito-Lay could
leverage its clout to gain greater shelf space for Pepsi. ''You go to Chile,
where Frito-Lay has over 90% of the market, but Pepsi is in lousy shape,'' says
Kendall. ''Frito-Lay can help Pepsi change that.''
To make it happen, Enrico appointed Pepsi's first corporate sales executive.
Albert P. Carey, a former Procter & Gamble sales manager who had put in 19
years at Frito-Lay, got the job in mid-1998. By working closely with Pepsi's
most important supermarket chains, Carey has gained some keen insights. Sifting
through data from one chain, for example, he found that sales of carbonated
beverages ranged from 2.27% to 5.43% of sales. ''If you could bring the
underperforming stores to the average, you could increase sales at this one
chain by $6.6 million,'' says Carey. ''Across all of our categories, the
opportunity gap was $10.6 million.''
Pepsi suggested adding shelf space and better displays in the poorer performing
locations. Almost immediately, volume bumped up by as much as 11%. Persuading a
supermarket to simply display snacks with soft drinks can add another 3 to 10
percentage points of growth. Displays that bring the products together at the
end of an aisle can give a 3% boost. Last year, these tactics helped Frito-Lay
increase its market share by two percentage points, to 56%. Pepsi-Cola's
volumes rose 0.6%.
Some of Pepsi's rivals, including Coke, benefited from the free advice. ''But
if you help the retailer solve a problem,'' says Carey, ''you'll get your fair
share of the rewards.'' This is the kind of partnering with customers that
General Electric Co.'s John F. Welch Jr. has used to boost profits at GE's
medical systems and aircraft engine units. It is also the antithesis of the
style that earned a younger Enrico a reputation as master marketer.
Still, Enrico has not abandoned his marketer's roots. By reviving the highly
effective ''Pepsi Challenge'' campaign of the 1970s, which invites consumers to
compare Coke directly to Pepsi, Enrico is setting off a new round in the cola
wars. He has recently signed celebrities including singer Faith Hill and
baseball stars Ken Griffey Jr. and Sammy Sosa to promote the flagship brand.
And he has just forged a promotional deal with Yahoo! Inc. that will be
launched in August. ''This is a series of big, bold, and dramatic marketing
moves that Roger had long been known for,'' says John D. Sicher, publisher of Beverage
Digest. ''You are seeing vintage Roger Enrico again.''
There may be even greater opportunities in the chip business. In the past
decade, the international salty snack market has doubled, to more than $20
billion. Yet most markets remain vastly underdeveloped, presenting huge
potential. At home, Enrico plans to leverage PepsiCo's vast
direct-store-delivery system, which allows Frito-Lay to roll out a new product
in 470,000 retail outlets within weeks.
Pepsi's recent acquisition of Cracker Jack gives a sense of the possibilities.
The classic brand, which had annual sales of $40 million and was owned by
Borden Foods Co., hadn't had serious advertising behind it since the late 1970s
and had been losing money for five straight years when Pepsi picked it up in
1997. It was a perfect fit. ''We were missing out on 50% of the snacking
opportunity because when people snack, they first decide whether to go for a
salty treat or a sweet one,'' says Beth Struckell, a Frito-Lay vice-president
who championed the acquisition. The product also met the company's ''mindlessly
nibbling'' test: ''Once you open the bag,'' smiles Struckell, ''you just keep
eating them until they're gone.''
Struckell retained Cracker Jack's iconic box package but also developed 4-ounce
bags. In response to consumer complaints, she added 10% more peanuts, upgraded
the prizes, and added a Web site. Then the company used its vast Frito-Lay
distribution network to roll it out. Cracker Jack turned a profit in its first
year, and today racks up nearly $100 million in annual sales from the new
four-ounce bag alone.
LOCAL WHEELS. Enrico still faces formidable obstacles in building
Pepsi's overseas soda business. His strategy now is an admission that in many
markets Coke is it. Enrico is placing his biggest bets on developing markets,
such as India, China, and Russia. ''The key thing is not to merely plant
flags,'' says Peter M. Thompson, CEO of Pepsi-Cola International. ''It's to
make sure you build a business, customer by customer, block by block, day by
day.'' In India, where per capita soft drink consumption is seven servings a
year, vs. more than 700 in the U.S., and where deliveries are often done on
three-wheel bicycles, Pepsi finds the most prominent businessman in each town
and gives them exclusive distribution rights, tapping their connections to
drive growth. Over the past five years, volume has risen at a 26% annual clip.
Pepsi has stolen 19 points of market share from Coca-Cola, bringing Pepsi's
share to 47%, close to Coke's 52%.
Still, Pepsi is unlikely ever to catch up to Coca-Cola overseas. Although
Enrico has stabilized Pepsi's international business, its size and scope pales
next to Coke's. Last year, operating income at Pepsi-Cola International totaled
just $70 million. Return on invested capital was a mere 3% last year--vs. 36%
for Frito-Lay. And despite encouraging progress in India and China, neither
market is yet profitable for Pepsi.
But Enrico's biggest challenge isn't overseas; it's on Wall Street. Internet
enthusiasm may have knocked some of the punch out of PepsiCo's stock price, but
Enrico bears some responsibility, too. His key maneuvers--ditching fast food,
spinning out the bottling group, and acquiring Tropicana--drew less than raves
because investors saw each as isolated chess moves, not as elements of a new
strategic direction. ''To some degree,'' concedes Enrico, ''that was my fault.
It would have been better to do these things more quickly than to let it play
out the way it did.''
One of Enrico's top priorities this year is to lure more investors into the
stock. PepsiCo is stepping up its presence at investment conferences, and
Enrico already has scheduled 20 personal meetings with major institutional
funds. ''We have a story to tell, and we have ears willing to listen to it,''
he says. ''I absolutely think the stock is undervalued.''
Even amid these challenges, Enrico has not forgotten the vows he made after his
heart attack to reorder his priorities. He's still extremely committed to
teaching, for example. The leadership conferences he pioneered during his
sabbatical have continued, giving him personal familiarity with his top
managers that is rare for a CEO. Nearly 130 executives have been through the
programs, including most of PepsiCo's senior management team. Teaching,
believes Enrico, is a vital part of the CEO's job, and it's also a payback for
the mentoring he received from Kendall and others. Besides, he says, ''it's a
heck of a lot of fun to be with young people who are really making things
happen.''
The nine participants each bring a major proposal to work on over the course of
the week, which also includes one-on-one mentoring sessions with Enrico. That
gives the CEO a chance to shape the corporation's most important initiatives at
their inception. Every participant is invited to call him at any time, without
the knowledge of his or her boss, just as Kendall once encouraged him. ''It was
a remarkable experience,'' says Struckell, who refined her strategy for Cracker
Jack at a session last summer. ''It's as if Roger becomes a coach and
consultant, leading you in the right direction.''
More than that, managers get to see the CEO outside the office, in jeans and a
flannel shirt. One day, he'll take the group horseback riding or fly-fishing
deep in the mountains of Montana. A couple of nights are spent crooning songs
like American Pie and My Way, which Enrico is said to deliver in
fine Sinatra style. The sambuca flows freely. ''People discover the warm side
of Roger there,'' says Indra K. Nooyi, the newly appointed chief financial
officer.
And Enrico remains interested in using his wealth to accomplish some higher
goal. For the past two years, he has worked for a salary of $1 a year, with the
proviso that his company donate the $1 million he would otherwise make to a
scholarship fund for the children of front-line workers. He still collects a
bonus and stock options, but the money he gives has paid the college tuition
for 150 students.
Meantime, Enrico is still trying to carve out time for himself and his wife. A
voracious reader of biographies, he is a public policy buff who says that Henry
Kissinger is his ''hero of all heroes.'' He enjoys fishing and scuba diving.
Yet his New Year's resolution, to spend more time playing golf, provides a clue
that he is still straining to achieve the right balance. ''The bad news is I
belong to two clubs and didn't hit a golf ball last year,'' he laughs. ''The
good news is that in the previous year I belonged to three clubs.''
Friends say Enrico is an impatient person who gets bored easily. That makes it
unlikely that he will last in the job for 10 more years when he turns 65. A
possible successor emerged last year, when he named Steven S. Reinemund, a
former Marine who successfully led Frito-Lay for eight years, his No. 2 and
PepsiCo president. Enrico clearly is thinking beyond his Pepsi career. ''There
is going to be an Act Two in my life,'' he insists. ''I don't know when or
what, but there is going to be something.'' Until then, expect this cola
warrior to keep battling away at the Pepsi Challenge.
Copyright
2005, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.