Pepsi ad man dead at 92

Byline

LOS ANGELES — Edward F. Boyd, a former Pepsi ad man who broke color barriers with one of the first corporate marketing campaigns to portray blacks in a positive light, has died. He was 92.

Boyd died April 30 in Los Angeles, PepsiCo Inc. spokesman Dave DeCecco said. There were no other details. The Los Angeles Times cited complications of a stroke he suffered in March as the cause of death.

Boyd was working at the National Urban League in New York City in 1947 when what was then the Pepsi-Cola Co. hired him and a team of black salesmen to help the company drive sales among blacks.

As an assistant sales manager, Boyd created a marketing campaign that showed blacks as respectable, middle-class consumers. The promotions differed sharply from the insulting images of “mammies” and “pickaninnies” in many ads at the time.

Boyd and his team visited black colleges, churches and markets throughout the country to promote Pepsi, enduring the daily injustices of racism along the way.

The group rode on segregated trains and was refused service at white-owned hotels. Insults from some colleagues at Pepsi weren’t uncommon.

Boyd graduated from the University of California at Los Angeles. A trained singer and dancer, he had minor movie roles after college.

He worked for the Screen Actors Guild, then government housing programs, before joining the National Urban League in New York.

(Associated Press)