• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, September 15, 2011

A couple of seemingly innocuous press releases out of PepsiCo yesterday -- "Eric J. Foss Announces Plans to Retire from PepsiCo Unit" followed by "PepsiCo Names Al Carey CEO of PepsiCo Americas Beverages" -- didn't slip gently into the small type at Reuters.

"PepsiCo Inc. announced a shake-up of its beverages unit on Wednesday, appointing a new head to try to turn around the business, which has lagged behind Coca-Cola Co in North America," writes Martinne Geller. "Pepsi named Albert Carey, a 30-year PepsiCo veteran who most recently ran its Frito-Lay North America unit, to be CEO of PepsiCo Americas Beverages, effective immediately."

Geller then points out that Carey's rise comes with a "partial" fall for Massimo d'Amore, who has run the Americas beverage business since November 2007. He will retain responsibility for the North American Gatorade and Tropicana businesses as well as the Latin American beverage business, but reports to Carey. He'll also remain president of the Global Beverages Group, which is "focused on global breakthrough innovation, global R&D and global brand management," reporting to CEO Indra Nooyi.

"The moves come as [Nooyi] has been under pressure to revive the U.S. drinks business amid tough competition from rival Coca-Cola and consumer preferences that have shifted away from sparkling beverages," writes Alan Rappeport in Financial Times.

"PepsiCo has been underperforming Coke in North American beverages and now they've completely revamped their structure and management," John Sicher, publisher of Beverage Digest tells Geller. "I don't know whether this will improve their performance, but Carey is one of the strongest executives at PepsiCo."

The "oft-criticized" D'Amore, as Bernstein Research analyst Ali Dibadj puts it, has taken the fall for the ill-fated redesign of Tropicana Pure Premium packaging a few years ago. But he is also seen as an audacious, risk-taking and innovative manager. 

Carey, 60, is a 30-year veteran of PepsiCo.

"Al's highly collaborative leadership style, deep knowledge of our beverage businesses in North America and his past leadership of our 'Power of One' strategy make him the right choice to lead this flagship business," says Nooyi in a statement.

Tom Greco will become president of Frito-Lay North America. He most recently served as evp and chief commercial officer for Pepsi Beverages Co.

Foss, who was in charge of the bottling operations, had been expected to leave the company by early 2012 when his two-year contract expires, writes Mike Esterl in the Wall Street Journal. The 53-year-old executive rejoined PepsiCo after it acquired its two largest U.S. bottlers in early 2010 and he agreed to oversee their integration.

If you can't shake a sense of déjà vu, we chronicled another "shakeup" at the beverage unit earlier this summer. Credit Suisse analyst Carlos Laboy said at the time that he expected more churn to follow as "the changes in the New York marketing organizations haven't been as profound or as robust as they need to be. We expect there to be a lot more change and turnover."

But at the time, Laboy expected d'Amore to be instigating the changes in the Beverages America New York marketing operation, as Natalie Zmuda reported in Ad Age, not being part of the overhaul himself. Laboy called yesterday's changes "favorable" and "necessary" but "questioned if Carey had the marketing experience necessary to revive the beverage business," writes FT's Rappeport.

"Overhauls of the company's Pepsi-Cola, Tropicana and Gatorade brands, led by Mr. d'Amore, over the past few years, met with limited success," Esterl writes in the Wall Street Journal. "Some analysts have suggested PepsiCo should split the company in two. A PepsiCo spokesman reiterated Wednesday that the company has no such plans."

On a related note, former Pepsi Cola CEO John Sculley sat down for a fascinating interview with the Wall Street Journal's Janet Guyon recently and talked about both his business childhood at PepsiCo and his adolescence at Apple. The 71-year-old elder, now a blissful mentor to several startups, makes himself sound like a babe in the woods in his formative years.

In the piece, carrying the hed "Sell Sugar Water or Change the World?," Sculley says he was the first MBA ever hired at Pepsi.

"I was put into jobs that I wasn't really qualified for because the Pepsi management bench was very thin," he tells Guyon. "It was like a high-wire act experience because I didn't know what I didn't know. But these were great opportunities for me and I managed to succeed."

He also reveals deep regret over a falling out with Apple's Steve Jobs over Macintosh pricing but places blame on the Apple board for not helping to broker a solution rather than asking the co-founder to step down as head of the division.

"In hindsight, I think the board could have played a better role mentoring both of us," Sculley says. "We might have been able to come up with a solution."