The 90s Pepsi Contest That Turned Deadly

[Music] pepsi's number fever campaign in the philippines has probably gone down in history as one of the biggest marketing disasters in history mainly because of a human error that led pepsi to print more winning caps than they planned the resulting chaos caused riots civil unrest and even deaths reporting this story took over a year and it resulted in me flying to manila in the philippines to meet unlucky winners and to find out exactly what happened back then in the 1990s [Music] my name is jeff mesh i'm a journalist based in los angeles i wrote the story for bloomberg businessweek about pepsi's number fever campaign the philippines is a really interesting country it's made up of thousands of islands and it's also a country that's very heavily influenced by america american culture is everywhere you look in the philippines they're obsessed with frank sinatra music for example they love all things america and that extends to their their love for soft drinks pepsi cola coca-cola in the 1990s it was everywhere pepsi and coca-cola were embroiled in what is now known as the cola wars it was a fierce battle for market dominance number fever was already a really popular promotion it had been rolled out in america to great success and so pepsi decided to roll it out internationally particularly in asia they thought it was the answer to their problems they thought it could finally help them beat their biggest competitors look for the winning number and sorry sorry source every day off on tv radiant newspapers you could be a millionaire a million pesos or 68 000 doesn't sound like a lot now but in 1992 that was a phenomenal amount of money you've got to remember that in the philippines at the time the average monthly income was about 100 so a million pesos was wealth beyond anyone's wildest imaginations number fever caught fire in the philippines kids were saving up their pocket money to buy a bottle of pepsi parents were squirreling away all of the bottle caps in bags you would walk down the street and people were going through trash trying to find discarded bottle caps it was a national phenomenon pepsi boasted that half the population of the philippines was playing it number fever boosted pepsi sales every month from 10 million dollars to 14 million it had a huge impact on pepsi's bottom line number fever quickly became number hysteria maids were being jailed for stealing their employers winning bottle caps there was even some murders over over winning bottle caps people were fighting in the streets over these caps there were signs that there were going to be problems with number fever very early pepsi had rolled out the competition in chile and a garbled fax had caused some kind of problem with the winning number they'd announced the wrong one in chile causing riots there were signs that there could be big problems ahead if they didn't keep their eye on the ball so in 1992 pepsi decided to extend the campaign in the philippines and they announced that the competition would go on for a few more weeks one night on the television news they announced the latest winning number three four nine the problem was three four nine had already been allocated as a non-winning number in earlier campaigns so there were literally hundreds of thousands of bottle caps with three four nine just floating around the philippines hundreds of thousands of people all across the philippines thousands of islands were finding winning bottle caps three four nine three four nine some people had ten lucky three four nine bottle caps people were dancing in the street celebrating they thought their problems were over they were millionaires it's still not certain exactly how many winners there were of lucky 349 bottle caps but we know that pepsi printed over 600 000 of them pepsi realized very early that there was a problem hundreds of people started arriving at their bottling plants with their lucky bottle caps they realized something was seriously wrong pepsi tried to solve the problem by offering a small token donation to anyone that brought a lucky bottle cap to their bottling plant but it wasn't enough people didn't want just a handful of pesos people wanted their million peso prize within a year violent protests and riots outside pepsi factories would leave dozens injured and five people dead at one pepsi factory in the philippines a grenade was thrown through the window it killed three pepsi employees anacita rosario was a school teacher living near manila in the philippines she was one of the tragic victims of this whole thing she was walking to a nearby store to buy some rice one day when a molotov cocktail was thrown at a pepsi truck in a violent protest it bounced under the truck and exploded it killed her and an innocent bystander who was just a child and injured many others when i was in the philippines i'd tracked down anacita's daughter cindy and her husband raul it was clear to me that they were still very upset by the whole thing you know a family had been ripped apart by this competition and raul told me that he'd never remarried he'd uh told me that he'd gone to meet pepsi executives after his wife was killed and he was angry he he said to them you know this wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for you if it wasn't for number fever the biggest revelation from my reporting was rumors that pepsi was somehow involved in bombing their own trucks i found a newspaper report with a headline that said pepsi goons bomb their own trucks and when i visited the mbi the police department in the philippines they presented me with documents and interviews with people who claimed that pepsi had paid them to cause riots and to cause trouble outside their plants in order to destabilize the situation and to frame the owners of the coalitions that were that were fighting them to try and curry favor i just thought that was that was so shocking and of course pepsi denied it but how bizarre that a company would be accused of bombing their own trucks the contest had sparked so much anger in the philippines because it landed at just this really weird time in the philippines history it was during a crazy election that was wracked with allegations of fraud the philippines was in a kind of love-hate relationship with america they loved obviously the american aid and finances that was pouring into the country but at the same time they yearned for independence they wanted to be their own country vicente del fierro was a local preacher living in manila and he hated the number fever campaign del fierro thought pepsi's number fever campaign was just one of the many ways that america was asserting its dominance over a third world country he hated seeing his fellow countrymen get ripped off in his eyes by this huge multinational american company he wanted justice del fierro rounded up over 800 winners of 349 bottle caps and he got them all together to sue pepsi for over 400 million dollars to be divided between those holders of lucky bottle caps [Music] del fierro took money from some of the people who could afford it they paid him 500 pesos to help with legal fees but for people who couldn't afford the money he would just represent them pro bono the alliance right there is to build up pressure on that team and so you see people marching [Music] he flew to america and he hired two consumer lawyers here in america to take on pepsi he had a meeting at pepsi's headquarters to try and resolve the problem but he said he wanted to take it all the way to the highest courts in america when those cases were heard in america those courts decided that this was a problem that should be heard in the philippines not in america back in the philippines del fierro continued his case in the filipino courts at one stage there were arrest warrants handed out for nine pepsi cola executives which he saw as a big victory we don't know if those arrest warrants were ever upheld but it made newspaper headlines across the country pepsi did not take kindly to del fierro's campaign they tried everything to shut him down they sued him for libel my father had to attend three times a month for a branch 145 and another heating for the brunch 113a also three times a month also um there was a time my father's was hospital to do heart failure still he had to attend the two branch hearing otherwise for not attending the judge will issue one atom customer pattern my father passed away january 13 2010 after staying for almost one year in the hospital he died a complication due to heart failure after the death of my father i was inspired to do the website pepsico will be remembered for what they did to the consumer in the philippines and to my father when i reached out to pepsi for comment for this story they claimed that they didn't have access to anyone who was working at pepsi that was around in those days they also said that during covid19 they didn't have access to their their documents about this but you know they were very they were very careful to say that they were sorry for everything that happened and we do know that pepsi did try everything to try and make this right the pepsi number fever disaster cost the company millions we know that they paid up to 10 million in those goodwill payments but the financial effect could be much greater after the disaster we know that pepsi sales dipped they were overtaken by coca-cola again pepsi's number fever disaster changed the legacy of that soft drink in the philippines forever some people of a certain age won't touch it for many people pepsi is a taboo word a lot of the people that i spoke to were still quite traumatized by their experience by that experience of winning a million pesos losing it and then returning to their normal life in poverty in manila you

Channel: Bloomberg Quicktake

Views: 828,744

Rating: 4.8653626 out of 5

Keywords: News, bloomberg, pepsi, storylines, businessweek, BW, advertising, history, quicktake

Id: SChZyhpQJ_U

Length: 13min 8sec (788 seconds)

Published: Mon Dec 07 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/a_complex_kid]

Holy fuck did this escalate quickly.

[u/Critical_Butler]

Can you imagine dying because of a soft drink. These poor people.

[u/Thorusss]

"The winner with the right number bottle cap will win millions, this will be a great ad campaign. What could go wrong?"

Prints winning number 800.000 times

[u/SpartanXIII]

...this feels familiar...

[u/CueDramaticMusic]

Oh shit, I know this one, it’s one fucking wild story.