What I like so much about this Onion article is how it makes people say absolutely normal and reasonable things, but which in the capitalist context of profit-seeking sound absolutely demented.
“Look, Coca-Cola is a terrific product,” Nooyi continued. “Millions of people choose it over Pepsi every day. Are those people wrong? Of course not. Concepts like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ shouldn’t even apply. It’s a soft drink.”
Nooyi told reporters the company’s $1.3 billion annual advertising budget would be put into Pepsi’s savings account, spread among various charitable organizations, and divvied up into generous bonuses for the company’s minimum-wage factory employees.
Claiming that “taste is subjective,” Nooyi further stated that those who hadn’t already heard of Pepsi were unlikely to begin drinking it now, and that the company was perfectly content to rely on word of mouth to sell its product.
“You can’t taste an ad, anyway,” Nooyi said. “People are going to make up their own minds regardless of whether we spend millions trying to inform them that Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi. I mean, seriously, does it really matter if Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi? She’s just a human being like everybody else.”
The Prime Directive 