Pepsi sent this to Robert Farago of The Truth About Guns after one of their eagle-eyed fans sent them a tip about Pepsico sponsoring Gabby Giffords and Mark Kelly’s anti-gun gab-fest at the Aspen Ideas Festival.
It seems, taking their note on its face as valid and accurate, that Pepsico’s sponsorship of Giffords and Kelly’s Americans for Responsible Solutions was a great deal more limited than we initially believed.
For this we are grateful and cheerfully extend our apologies for being wrong on Pepsi’s level of support.
While we aren’t pleased that Pepsico supported AGS in any fashion, they clearly aren’t the money source behind AGS.
We think we’ll open a Gatorade to celebrate.
From TTAG:
Dear Mr. Farago,
Thank you for sharing your concern stemming from our participation in last summer’s Aspen Ideas Festival.
For background, each sponsor of the Festival is offered the chance to underwrite one evening as a part of overall sponsorship benefits. The evening that PepsiCo put our name on was an event in which journalist Andrea Mitchell interviewed Gabrielle Giffords and Mark Kelly about their lives since Ms. Gifford’s shooting. Other than to have our logo and name attached to that particular evening session, we have no relationship to Ms. Giffords or to her organization, Americans for Responsible Solutions.
I can further share that PepsiCo has never supported groups that either advocate gun control or oppose hunting.
I hope this information is helpful. Thanks again for taking the time to contact us.
Sincerely,
Michael Madden
Consumer Relations
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