Hasta La Creative!

When the National Football League drafted Dawn Hudson as its next chief marketing officer, she appeared to be a convenient choice for a league struggling to repair an image rocked by domestic-violence controversies. To reference a much-criticized Mitt Romney line from 2012, one could only wonder if the troubled league ordered up “binders full of women” candidates as it sought to keep its sizable female fan base from defecting.

But a person familiar with Ms. Hudson and not affiliated with the NFL said she was on the league’s radar before the video of Ray Rice punching his wife made national headlines in early September. And those who know her say she is well-suited to the job, given her credentials as a focused, high-energy executive and consensus builder who is also a sports aficionado.

“I think the NFL made a good catch,” said John Sicher, editor and publisher of Beverage Digest, who covered Ms. Hudson’s rise at PepsiCo, where she served as president-CEO of Pepsi-Cola North America before leaving in 2007. In her 11 years at the company, she held various senior-level marketing positions, including posts at Frito-Lay. “I have never worked with anybody who is better under pressure than Dawn,” said Dave Burwick, a former PepsiCo exec who worked closely with Ms. Hudson for nine years and who is now president-CEO at Peet’s Coffee & Tea. “If I were the commissioner of the NFL, I’d want Dawn by my side to guide me,” he said. “The fact that she is a woman is completely secondary to the fact that she is an incredibly talented human being, but I think having a women’s perspective is also very useful and necessary at this time.”

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