Although Pepsi-Cola did not submit an exclusive sponsorship proposal to Iowa State, Pepsi officials said they had expressed interest in the university.

Mark Ladd, director of on-premise sales for the Iowa division of Pepsi-Cola General Bottlers in Urbandale, said the company responded to Iowa State’s request for proposal with a letter on Feb. 16. declining the offer. However, he said Pepsi did “express interest in talking with the university about an alternative proposal” by way of a shared vending concept.

Pepsi did not submit a formal proposal because it was aware “key athletic venues” would still be under contract with Coca-Cola until 2004-2005, Ladd said.

“They were looking for a 10-year arrangement, yet the athletic piece of that was under agreement for another three to four years currently,” he said. “We were really proposing a shared vending concept, because that would not involve athletics and still enable us to dispense products on campus.”

Ladd said although there are Coke vendors on campus, the idea would be to enable Pepsi to have its products available campuswide.

Arlo Meyer, ISU director of business affairs, said Pepsi didn’t offer a proposal to the university, but rather wrote a letter expressing “a willingness to talk about it if we wanted to sit down and talk about it.”

But Pepsi did not meet the requirements of the request for proposal, he said.

“The original request for proposal was for investigating what an exclusive beverage contract would provide for the university so we could make an informed decision about whether or not that was a good thing for the campus,” Meyer said.

Ladd said Pepsi did not give specifics on how shared vending could be accomplished, but suggested concepts in order to express its interest in Iowa State.

“We did try to open up some communication to talk about other options, and that’s basically where it ended,” he said.

After the initial letter was sent, Pepsi did not hear from the university again, Ladd said.

“We never got any notification whatsoever as far as who may have gotten the bid, no notification that they had received our letter, no word at all,” he said.

Ladd said the article in the Iowa State Daily on April 18 about Coca-Cola’s possible agreement with the university came as a surprise.

Meyer said Pepsi was not notified because the company did not submit a proposal and “didn’t call to ask.”

“I would think that they would be interested in hearing our thoughts, and hope they still are at some point,” Ladd said.