PEPSI’S BIGGEST MARKETING FAILURE.

Authored by Umar Kayamkhani | Club Executive CrowdCore

In the year 1992, Pepsi came up with a special consumer promotion campaign named the “Number Fever” bottle in the country of Philippines. There were 3 digits printed on the underside cap. The lucky winners would get 1 million pesos (₹50 Lakh in today’s rupees) if their number matches the winning number.

The money offered was 611 x the country’s average monthly salary at that time. So, people started buying Pepsi to test their luck. Monthly sales there quickly jumped from US$10 million and its market share from 19.4% to 24.9 %.

The Philippines was a rustic fighting, modest economy with widespread poverty. Filipinos perceived Pepsi’s grand prize as a life-changing amount of money thus once 349, that night' winning number, flashed on screen that night, tens of thousands of Filipinos couldn’t believe their luck. the amount was related to the most important prize within the sweepstakes. The consequent morning, Pepsi plants in Manila were overrun by individuals toting their 349-emblazoned bottle caps and searching for the secure reward.

But Pepsi didn’t know that it had printed some 600,000s of “349” bottle caps, so there they were 600,000 + winners waiting for their 1 million pesos due to the error at a bottling plant.

Pepsi quickly promised to pay 500 pesos to each winner as a gesture of goodwill.

Many ‘349’ holders accepted the pay off and the company paid out more than 12.5 million pesos. Later in January 1993, Pepsi had to pay a fine of 150,000 pesos to the Ministry of Industry and Commerce for deviating from their original advertising campaigns.

The contest sparked such anger against Pepsi that 10,000 claimants filed suits demanding money. The following month, a grenade was thrown into Pepsi plant killing 3 employees

After this blunder, Pepsi lost the ground to coke as anything associated with Pepsi was considered to be “349ed” which was a slang for being tricked.

More than 30 years later, this advertising campaign reminds all marketers that although "revolutionary big ideas" are an important first step, the foundation of any campaign should not be ignored. This was arguably the deadliest marketing disaster in history teaching us that

“A poor strategy smartly executed is better than a smart strategy poorly executed.”