
Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots - yarapavan
https://medium.com/better-marketing/pepsis-40-billion-typo-caused-deadly-riots-3d671295d1bd
======
austincheney
Having lived for some time in a third world country that has real poverty and
real day to day security worries, situations like this spring to mind when
people completely without optics compare their situations to those in
developing nations. Yes, as insanely ignorant as that sounds it happens.
People here on HN last week, as one example, were trying to compare their
experiences recently protesting to the Arab Spring. People in the Arab Spring
were lighting themselves on fire and protesting everyday longer than most of
us have been locked down from COVID. Not the same, not even in the same
universe.

The same absurd comparisons also come up when entitled people people try to
talk about poverty when it’s clear they have never seen poverty in the US,
much less in an economy where people earn less than $5 per day working 5x
harder.

~~~
catalogia
No matter what issue you examine, you can doubtlessly find that _somebody
somewhere_ at _sometime_ had it even worse. I think these kind of observations
are usually unproductive though; taking this attitude to it's logical absurd
conclusion would have you telling people to stop complaining because at least
they're not in death camps.

~~~
koheripbal
This "somebody somewhere" comparison is callous and dismissive. These are
billions of people that live under horrid conditions of tyranny and/or abject
poverty.

Hundreds of millions of people lived through the Arab Spring - not "somebody
somewhere". Many of them watched their country descend in unprecedented
violence that cannot be compared to tear gas and pepper spray.

To them, those are indeed first world problems.

Protesters in Syria were slaughtered with machine gun and _anti-aircraft_
fire. Protesters in Iraq were fired on with machine guns. Protesters in Egypt
were killed by snipers from the roof tops, exploded in bombs, and then jailed
and quietly executed. Protesters in Libya were massacred by the army - and
then by terrorists. Protesters in Iran were shot, arrested, and disappear. AND
THEN three of those countries fell into civil war.

As bad as things may seem in the US, they don't even compare to what happens
in other countries. How many innocent black Americans were killed by police in
any given year? 10? out of 300 million people? ....oh, and the police involved
have been arrested and charged?

Please forgive the civilians in Syria who were bombed with _nerve gas_ for not
sympathizing - their civil war is still going on - almost 10 years now.

~~~
dragonwriter
> These are major HUGE segments of the world population that lived

If it was _literally_ every other person in human history other than those in
the present day United States...

...it still wouldn't have any bearing on discussion of the injustices in the
United States. It's nothing more than an irrelevant distraction technique.

(And while it's a valid example of the general issue, no one before you raised
immediate issues IN THE US.)

> Please forgive the civilians in Syria who were bombed with nerve gas for not
> sympathizing

Literally no one is asking for that. There is a difference between suggesting
that, e.g., the Syrian experience you describe is irrelevant as a deflection
in a discussion among people who are subject to, and responsible-as-citizens-
for-their-governments-actions in the present problems in the US and suggesting
that those American problems ought to be a concern for the victims of the
violence in Syria.

I would suspect most people in the current American protest movement, while
gratified by the support that has been shown in numerous other first world and
even some developing nations, weren't looking for international attention and
don't particularly think that it ought to be an urgent concern for people who
are neither subject to nor responsible, even in the sense of the Democratic
responsibility of citizens, for it.

~~~
koheripbal
> ...it still wouldn't have any bearing on discussion of the injustices in the
> United States.

Of course it would. Because our resources for charity and good will should not
be solely given to Americans. There are far far more needy people outside
America.

------
overthemoon
> By the end of all the carnage, five people die and dozens more are wounded.
> All because of a marketing promotion went wrong.

Not to rag on the article because the author talks about other factors at the
top, but this is a fascinating story that can't really be summed up by a
technical goof-em-up, though that's obviously an important part.

On the one hand, especially from my western perspective, you have the utter
frivolousness of soft drinks and the seeming triviality of the technical
error. On the other hand, the subsistence wages of the people rioting and the
meaning of a $40,000 promise really stabs at the soul. This was a grotesque
fuckup. I truly cannot imagine how it would feel to finally face the prospect
of escaping the unfair, crushing cycle of poverty and all its attendant
ailments, fears, and anxieties only to have some fucking soda company say
"whoopsie here's $18". I'd have burned a truck, too. Or worse, frankly, who
knows! I've never lived their life. But it's more than just a goof-up, the
offer itself seems depraved to me. Pepsi appeared to have leveraged their own
poverty to get them to spend money. Yes, yes, I know, many companies do
giveaways here in the states, it's a difference of degree and context. Pepsi's
opening move was to exploit a profound and powerful human desire to care for
your family in the midst of uncertainty. That in the end it went wrong, due to
a technical error or a communication error, seems like a natural consequence,
like blowing your hand off while playing with fireworks. You shouldn't have
played with them to begin with.

Re the riots themselves, I think we in the states have lost a concept of
collective human behavior unless it's wrapped in technocratic psychobabble. An
organization made a promise that could have changed people's lives, they
fucked it up, tried to hide behind a technical error, people were justifiably
angry, and people do all kinds of things with justifiable anger.

------
danso
The Mental Floss writeup from 2018 has actual details:

[https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/558202/pepsi-number-
feve...](https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/558202/pepsi-number-fever-
promotion-failure-philippines)

> _To determine winning numbers, Pepsi recruited D.G. Consultores, a marketing
> firm based in Mexico. The numbers were generated via computer, then secured
> in a safe deposit box in Manila. From there, the list would be used to
> “seed” bottle caps in the bottling plants. Each night, the company would
> announce the day’s winning number on television._

> _Quickly, Pepsi executives in the Philippines and stateside convened for an
> emergency meeting at 3 a.m. on how to proceed. Economically, honoring the
> perceived value of all of the caps was virtually impossible to justify—it
> would’ve cost the company tens of billions of dollars. Instead, they opted
> to declare it a computer error and offered $18 to $20 to cap holders as a
> “goodwill gesture.” What was originally earmarked to be a promotion with $2
> million in total prizes ballooned to $10 million._

~~~
azinman2
10M is nothing to Pepsi with a market cap of 178B. If they're going to put
something out as a token, they could have easily 10-20x'd that and had a much
more meaningful payout.

~~~
smabie
Why should Pepsi have spent 100 to 200mm giving people money? Like, that's
clearly the wrong decision. People still would have been angry and not bought
Pepsi.

~~~
minusSeven
Well some would argue that it is Pepsi who were giving lottery so any mistake
on their part should be on them. Like if you mistakenly deposit 1 million
dollar into my account I don't owe you shit and I shouldn't be asked to repay
it back legally.

Here off course it depends on the laws of that country. For instance
Philippines could certainly have said its your mistake so you owe people money
instead. They would have then taken higher steps than that if the company
failed to pay back like canceling passports of foreign employees and
extradition of executives.

Off course this is all hypothetical but there should be laws that hold
companies responsible for their own mistakes.

~~~
smabie
You think executives should have been extradited from the US to the
Philippines to face trial because of this? You think the Philippines should
have stolen the employees passports and thrown them in jail and hold them
hostage?

And, actually, if someone accidentally deposits 1m into your bank account, you
do owe them shit. Specifically, you owe them 1m.

What you're saying is just so ridiculous I'm having a hard time taking you
seriously.

~~~
minusSeven
Well I said it hypothetically. It all depends on the laws of the country. If
Philippines held Pepsi responsible and ordered them to pay the entire amount,
it would be a different situation.

If you are ordered to pay money by the government and can't pay it may
considered fraud. So the government can take bigger actions. I guess
bankruptcy may follow where the government can end up seizing all assets the
company has. If all those steps are insufficient then even bigger steps may
follow.

As I said it all depends on the laws of that country. Not all countries have
similar laws.

------
9nGQluzmnq3M
For everybody who was saying "Wikipedia is complete, there's nothing left to
write about" yesterday, as far as I can there is not a word about this on the
whole site, certainly not on the Pepsi page. Time to get to work!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Pepsi+349&ns0=1&...](https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Pepsi+349&ns0=1&ns9=1&ns11=1&ns12=1)

Edit: I stand corrected, there is a single paragraph in here. Nothing
standalone/linkable though.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_in_the_Philippines](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_in_the_Philippines)

~~~
duxup
Is this something that should be on the Wikipedia Pepsi page?

While it is an interesting story I don't really think it is the kind of thing
I'd be looking for.

~~~
Zenbit_UX
Really? You don't think a corporations blunder that took lives and led to
riots is deserving of inclusion?

I can say Pepsi certainly doesn't want it there, your motivations are interely
baffling though.

~~~
duxup
I think it was a technical blunder and I don't buy into the idea that they're
responsible for the actions of individuals in a riot.

If someone upset that they (or more likely someone else) should have won a
prize takes actions that lead to the death of another ... I don't believe
Pepsi is responsible for that.

~~~
14
It still seems like a very interesting part of history whether they were at
fault or not. They have made dumb mistakes on multiple occasions if you
remember the Harrier Jet give away they blundered and someone came up with the
points. So I believe this is worthy of mention on the Pepsi Wikipedia page
it’s part of the business success and hardships. Maybe there will be more.
Maybe not.

~~~
sllabres
Yes another 'glitch' and even funnier, because no one was harmed...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc).

------
capableweb
Interesting story, but the clickbait headline is not needed here. Story ends
with:

> At the end of everything, Pepsi’s total combined losses, between physical,
> legal, and brand equity costs, would top $20M. Their market share would
> plummet and take years to rebound.

The "$32 billion" seems to come from the amount of bottles who would win the
prize, but Pepsi didn't actually pay out the promised amount, so it didn't
cost them $32 billion in the end.

~~~
stickfigure
This critique is unnecessarily pedantic. If I issue you a $200 check and
(through whatever error) it ends up being written for $200,000,000, we would
fairly call it a "$200MM typo" despite the fact that it would bounce.

The headline delivered exactly the story it promised. I was surprised I had
never heard about it before.

~~~
cdubzzz
Eh, I think it's debatable and not pedantic. I literally clicked on the link
because I inferred the headline to mean that Pepsi made a typo that somehow
cost them $32B.

And re: your example, I would not call that a "$200MM typo", I would call it a
typo. If I intended to write a check for $200 and later when it was cashed
found I had accidentally wrote it for $220, I would call that a $20 typo.

~~~
stickfigure
> If I intended to write a check for $200 and later when it was cashed found I
> had accidentally wrote it for $220, I would call that a $20 typo.

So my example was a "$199,999,800 typo"? Can't we just round up?

~~~
cdubzzz
The relevant difference between our examples is not the amount. It's that my
example check was cashed and therefore cost me $20. Your example check bounced
and didn't cost you anything. If that bounce caused your bank to charge you a
$10 fee, I'd call it a $10 typo.

~~~
interestica
It was a $32B typo that only cost them $20M

------
petters
> The number “349” was the $40,000 winning number. > Pepsi had explicitly told
> its vendor factories not to print this number at all.

Sounds dangerous to decide the winning number in advance. Makes it easier for
a vendor or someone else to cheat.

But I suppose they wanted short numbers.

~~~
asutekku
How else would you define there to be only two winning numbers then? If you
define the winning number afterwards, there’s no way telling how many numbers
of those would’ve been in circulation.

~~~
loeg
Make the winner number outside the normal printed range.

~~~
r00fus
This is so obvious - what are the downsides? I mean, it could be easily
guessable that the bottlecap is valuable, ruining the surprise.

Ultimately they didn't test. Or confirm the vendor's test. It's all Pepsi's
fault for a mission critical bug.

------
rootsudo
Never knew!

Nowadays in the Philippines, Pepsi is the dominant brand, Mountain Dew is the
#1 beverage in the Country and FEMSA, the bottler for Coke, which is the same
as it's Mexican and South American bottler had to divest and sell it's assets
back to Coke USA because it was so unprofitable because it didn't properly
plan for Sugar futures.

So, Coke is #2 in the country and there was a while where it was unavailable
in Metro Manila, even in BGC/Taguig..where it's corporate head quarters are.

------
js2
Contemporaneous reporting:

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/29/a...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/business/1993/07/29/a-pepsi-
giveaway-gone-wrong/1a6af4b1-2b6f-4e5a-9b1d-5dc6799ac2af/)

The article refers to a similar incident in Chile:

> The Philippines Senate Committee on Trade and Commerce accused Pepsi of
> "gross negligence" and noted that Pepsi was involved in a similar fiasco in
> Chile just a month before the 349 incident.

I can't find any details about the Chile incident, but I did find another
Pepsi-related giveaway that was newsworthy, this time in the U.S. where they
worried about overloading the telephone system:

[https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/25/business/the-media-
busine...](https://www.nytimes.com/1991/01/25/business/the-media-business-
pepsi-cancels-big-giveaway.html)

> As part of its Diet Pepsi commercials during the telecast of the Super Bowl
> this Sunday, Pepsi had planned to give $1 million to each of three randomly
> chosen callers to a toll- free telephone number that would be shown during
> the commercials. But last night the company scrapped the idea.

> But the company announced last night that it had canceled the promotion
> after discussing it with the Federal Communications Commission. "We did not
> want to do anything that would have even the slightest chance of disrupting
> our nation's ability to communicate," said David Novak, executive vice
> president for marketing and sales.

> Telephone industry experts had estimated that as many as 50 million calls
> could flood the nation's telephone network during the promotion.

------
YeGoblynQueenne
However, a computer glitch with one of Pepsi’s vendors caused them to
manufacture 800,000 bottles with the number “349” on the bottle cap.

>> The number “349” was the $40,000 winning number.

>> Pepsi had explicitly told its vendor factories not to print this number at
all. The two bottles with that number would be specially manufactured and sent
to the Philippines by Pepsi themselves.

The lucky number that Pepsi had explicitly asked not to be printed not only
got printed, but got printed in 800,000 caps?

I'm going to wildly speculate here but I'm willing to bet this was no
"computer glitch" and someone did it on purpose. Perhaps a disgruntled
employee, perhaps someone with good old hacker ethics, like those of Melvin
Kaye:

The story _as written by Nather involved Kaye 's work on rewriting a blackjack
program from the LGP-30 to a newer Royal McBee system, the RPC-4000; company
sales executives had requested to modify the program so that they could flip a
front panel switch and cause the program to lose (and the user to win). Kaye
reluctantly acceded to the request, but to his own delight, he got the test
wrong, and the switch would instead cause the program to win every time (and
the user to lose)._

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Story_of_Mel)

~~~
abiogenesis
> By the end of the promotion, 31 million people had participated in the game
> [1]

If we assume that each person bought more than 1 bottle of Pepsi and not all
the bottles had been sold by the time the winners were announced, probably a
few hundred million bottles were manufactured. So it is not a remote
possibility that every number got printed in 800,000 caps.

[1] [https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/10/pepsis-number-
feve...](https://www.thevintagenews.com/2018/01/10/pepsis-number-fever/)

------
fredley
I would love to know what the bug was, sadly we'll probably never know. I
imagine the engineer responsible for `NEVER 349` made a mistake that ended up
flipping a single bit, to the `ALWAYS 349` position...

~~~
slim
my guess : they setup a machine that prints the successive numbers inside the
bottle caps and there is no way to skip a number, they had to remove them
afterwards.. someone simply forgot to do that.

~~~
mkl
Making 800,000 extra bottle caps and removing them later seems like a plan
that wouldn't have left the drawing board. Especially with the risk of fraud
from these particular caps.

------
emi420
1996 in Argentina, Coke did a promotion where promised "two caps for a Ramones
concert ticket" (we are huge fans here). Of course they didn't can keep with
this promise and disturbs occurred:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciq9ONHj4bc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciq9ONHj4bc)
(spanish)

~~~
brokenmachine
"disturbs occurred"! I love that expression!

------
mark-r
Not the only time they made a mistake in a promotion, this one was in the
U.S.:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_v._Pepsico,_Inc).

~~~
frogpelt
Relevant news story: [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1996-man-sues-pepsi-for-
not-giv...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/1996-man-sues-pepsi-for-not-giving-
him-a-harrier-jet/)

------
ttterrific
Great piece but click bait title and featured image is Hong Kong democracy
protests...?

~~~
efreak
Clickbait, yes. To be fair, though, the top image is frequently stock photos,
and they probably just did a search for riot or something and picked the first
result.

------
martingordon
This reminds me of the “free iTunes song” promotion Apple and Pepsi ran in
~2005. Some Pepsi bottles had codes under the bottle cap that could be
redeemed for a free song; non-winning caps just said “Sorry Try Again”.

The mistake Pepsi made was that you could actually make out whether a bottle
had a winning or losing cap by looking into the bottle without having to open
it ([https://methodshop.com/2005/02/hacking-pepsis-itunes-
giveawa...](https://methodshop.com/2005/02/hacking-pepsis-itunes-
giveaway.shtml)).

You still had to buy the soda to get the free song, but if you’re going to
drink soda anyway, spending a minute or two picking a bottle with a free song
gave you a nice little bonus.

~~~
londons_explore
I mean that might have been deliberate... News of how to "cheat" becomes free
marketing.

------
BaitBlock
[https://baitblock.app/read/medium.com/better-
marketing/pepsi...](https://baitblock.app/read/medium.com/better-
marketing/pepsis-40-billion-typo-caused-deadly-riots-3d671295d1bd)

Reader mode in case you don't prefer Medium

------
duxup
You'd think maybe as they were being printed you'd record the actual number
being printed on the side somewhere and audit that every once in a while...

------
joezydeco
There was a similar glitch in a contest Kraft held back in the late 1980s.

[https://apnews.com/aa740ca43955c874dadb0394afc22940](https://apnews.com/aa740ca43955c874dadb0394afc22940)

TLDR almost every piece was a winner instead of just a few rare ones.

I managed to mail in a few pieces before the packages got recalled, I remember
being in multiple class action suits and getting multiple waves of settlement
checks and coupons for free food over the next few years. Obviously I was not
going to get 4 vans, 12 bicycles, and 10 skateboards.

Contests now regularly use the "Kraft Clause" to avoid this problem.

[https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c742f572-f3e2...](https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c742f572-f3e2-43cd-
aa64-de47fbe1a926)

 _" “If due to a printing, production or other error, more prizes are claimed
than are intended to be awarded for any prize level, the intended prizes will
be awarded in a random drawing from among all verified and validated prize
claims received for that prize level. In no event will more than the stated
number of prizes be awarded.”_

------
Gummaluri
On a tangent, the author Sean Kernan is a profilic writer on Quora.

[https://www.quora.com/profile/Sean-
Kernan](https://www.quora.com/profile/Sean-Kernan)

------
sergiotapia
I wonder if this is a third-world thing, soda contests for cash.

I remember when I was 12 in Bolivia, we had literal Coca Cola scratch off
cards and had to collect bottle caps with the numbers to make a lot of cash.
Kids would trade bottle caps, rumors floated about fulanito having the rare
cap and he would sell it for the right amount, etc.

Been in the states for a few years now and never heard of something like that
here. Then again I haven't had soda in the same amount of time.

~~~
projektfu
When it debuted, McDonald's "Monopoly" game was a huge deal and people would
eagerly open their tickets to see if they won a big prize. If they won it was
usually a small fries or another ticket, but sometimes it was some money and
one person won $1M.

After a while the luster wore off and it faded into the background. I'm sure
it boosted sales in its first few years quite a bit but now you hardly hear
about it. I'm actually surprised it still happens.

~~~
sidewndr46
I don't think it "wore off" or "faded into the background". The operation was
fraud, at least in the US & Canada

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonald%27s_Monopoly#Fraud)

~~~
projektfu
Well it didn’t start with fraud, back in ‘87.

------
radu_floricica
I wish the article had some numbers on Pepsi's income and expected profit in
that timeframe. It would really put that 8 mil offer in context. I also think
a key point here is the deal Pepsi made with that local market: you buy a lot
of Pepsi, and we give you winnings.

If they made 100 mils profit due to this campaign I think it's a different
situation, ethically, from if they made around 2 mil profit (the amount of the
original prize).

~~~
brokenmachine
Yes I would also love to know how much that increase of 5x their market share
while running the campaign was worth.

I bet it was more than the 8M offered.

------
pretzel_boss
Here is a news article from when it happened if you don't want to go through
medium.

[https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-
xpm-1993-07-27-19932081...](https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-
xpm-1993-07-27-1993208127-story.html)

------
dr_dshiv
This is an incredible story. 349! Everybody wins!

------
Xenoamorphous
It sucks for whoever got the “real” 349 bottles.

------
peter_d_sherman
>"Pepsi executives decided to do a promotional campaign that promised to have
lots of payouts. Each Pepsi bottle cap would have a number that correlated to
a prize that would be announced. There were be lots of small winners and then
two huge winners of $40,000 each.

Pepsi hoped the allure of prize money would convert many of the low-income
Coke drinkers. They strategically planned to give out a total of $2M in
prizes."

[...]

" _This disruptive campaign increased Pepsi’s market share from 4% to 24.9% in
just two months._ "

------
andersco
My biggest surprise re. this story is that I don’t recall having seen anything
about it in US media. Was I just not paying attention, or was it truly ignored
by the likes of the NYT?

------
zerop
Is it just me or others also think that medium has really spoilt our reading
experience on the web... they are putting anything behind paywall, without
author's consent...

This is not what we wanted Medium to become.... Please stop publishing to
Medium.

------
wodenokoto
Man, if I was Coca Cola I would regularly run ad campaigns in Manila that just
said 349 and then a few weeks later something along the lines of “Coke, the
taste you can trust”

I can’t believe Pepsi actually bounced back!

------
Udik
What strikes me as food for thought is the stupidity and wickedness of the
riots. I understand the rage if you own one of the few winning tickets of a
lottery and the organization doesn't want to pay out. But in this case they
knew that it had to be a mistake, as they all had the winning ticket. Were
they really thinking that Pepsi should pay $40k to each and all of them
because they all possessed the same identical plastic cap? Would they not
realize that receiving all almost $20 was a larger collective gain?

And more in general, how do you govern a country where the population exhibits
this kind of inability to see the larger picture and the point of view of the
opponents in a dispute?

~~~
triceratops
> stupidity and wickedness of the riots.

There was indeed stupidity and wickedness but it started with Pepsi, when they
ran an unlicensed lottery and then _fucked it up_. By advertising the $40k
prize for the winning number and then reneging on the prize, Pepsi engaged in
false advertising, and breaking a contract. If they ever pulled that in the US
they'd face a hefty FTC penalty (or at least would have done at the time;
today, who knows?)

> Would they not realize that receiving all almost $20 was a larger collective
> gain?

You come off as out of touch and insensitive with that comment. A "larger
collective gain" means fuck-all to people living in abject poverty. Each of
the winners, in their mind, lost $38,980 - more money than they could hope to
save up in a lifetime. In poor countries the competition for everything is
cutthroat and there's often no collective "national spirit". People will help
their friends, neighbors and family and that's about it.

Why don't you tell me how you'd feel if you won a $100 million lotto jackpot
(after playing for years) and then 2 days later someone told you "oopsies our
bad, here's $200."

~~~
Udik
> Each of the winners, in their mind, lost $38,980 - more money than they
> could hope to save up in a lifetime.

Yes. Then as soon as they meet all the people that have made the exact same
win they must realise something is wrong, right?

> Why don't you tell me how you'd feel if you won a $100 million lotto jackpot
> (after playing for years) and then 2 days later someone told you "oopsies
> our bad, here's $200."

Sure. I'd feel enraged, but once I'd discovered that _everyone else_ won the
same lotto jackpot it would be totally clear it was a mistake and it makes no
sense at all to claim it. I'd be happy to have the jackpot divided in equal
parts among all those who bought the winning ticket (the alternative being
having a new ticket issued for free and a new turn played- so much less
chances to gain anything).

~~~
triceratops
It's more likely that the "winners" would sue the lotto company for false
advertising, breach of contract, and mental distress, and force a much larger
settlement - possibly 1000x what was offered ($200k in my example). They might
even force the company into bankruptcy. But that option isn't available to
poor people in places like the Philippines.

The "multiple winners" thing "makes no sense" to you because you're looking at
it from Pepsi's perspective. Not from the perspective of someone who thought
their life was going to be transformed, and now it's not. Their thought
process is more like "It's not my problem if the people running the lottery
screwed up. I won fair and square according to the rules that were set out.
They have to pay and that's that."

Pepsi marketed the heck out of this thing, gained a ton of market share, and
would stand to make lots of money even after their ultimate $20 million bill.
But instead they reneged on a contract by blaming it on a technical error. I
don't understand why you're so eager to let them off the hook for this - don't
contracts mean anything?

> the alternative being having a new ticket issued for free

There are plenty of other alternatives actually, all the way to "Pepsi
actually pays the $32 billion, in installments". But that's not realistic -
they'd probably just exit the Philippines market instead.

Here's a more realistic alternative that might have gone over better: Pepsi
says, "We get that a lot of you bought Pepsi because of this promotion and we
feel terrible. To make it right, we're upping the prize pot to equal _all_ of
our sales in the Philippines this year. After all, the only reason we made
most of those sales was because of the prize, so we're gonna forfeit those."

------
sradman
TLDR; via Wikipedia [1]

> [May 25, 1992] As part of PepsiCo's local promotion titled Number Fever, it
> was announced that the person who possessed the Pepsi bottle cap with the
> Number 349 is eligible to claim the 1 million peso prize. About 800,000 were
> eligible for the prize instead of an intended single winner. Several
> protests and bombings followed after Pepsi refused to award the 1 million
> prize to thousands of bottle cap holders and said that a computer glitch
> caused the incident. [2]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_in_the_Philippines#Events](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_in_the_Philippines#Events)

[2]
[https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19930726&slug...](https://archive.seattletimes.com/archive/?date=19930726&slug=1712840)

------
MR4D
I would love to know what caused the "error".

For all we know, this was a brilliant hack attack. (I seriously doubt it, but
the possibility can't be discounted.)

------
lowbloodsugar
You'd think the two winning bottles would contain a symbol that the regular
factories were _incapable_ of printing.

------
dr_dshiv
Would the world have been better off if Pepsi had essentially gifted itself to
the people of the Philippines?

------
forgotmypw17
[http://archive.is/Syu0j](http://archive.is/Syu0j)

------
amelius
I'd send them a bill. And a debt-collector.

But I'm curious, was the marketing campaign successful?

------
mcguire
Pepsi's typo may have triggered riots, but it is very unlikely to have caused
them.

------
racl101
Soooo ..... you're saying Filipinos don't like Pepsi?

------
klyrs
Really puts their "live for now" ad into perspective...

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_for_Now_(Pepsi)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Live_for_Now_\(Pepsi\))

------
smithza
I have noticed a few comments about the 'clickbaity-ness' of this blog post.
Aside from the debate of whether the title of this article is fairly (or
truthfully) representative of the content, our tendency towards compelling,
exotic and exciting stories reveals much of our human desire for communion
with one another. We love a good story that draws us in and pulls us away from
reality, if even for a few minutes.

I enjoyed the story and grieve the corporate strong-arming. I would not say
that the company is ethically vindicated for the collateral: the addictive
sugary drinks and desire to wring dry this already-impoverished market for
executives living in the U.S. is an ethically irresponsible and selfish
venture covered by the ideology of capitalism.

------
ouid
That wasn't a computer error.

------
xchaotic
Moral of the story - if you are a big multinational company you can literally
get away with murder and even increase market even with the most botched
marketing campaign selling sugar water

~~~
gambiting
On the other hand - imagine you are a director at Pepsi managing this
promotion. Imagine you personally sit down and send an email(or a courier-
delivered letter I suppose) to the head of whatever factory is bottling your
product, saying "under no circumstances print the number X on the bottle
caps". Then the factory prints number X on 800k bottles.

Why is or should Pepsi be responsible for this? If I send an email to someone
explicitly telling them not to do something, and they do it anyway - why
should I be responsible for it? Unless the bottling factory is their own, but
the article doesn't specify.

~~~
dwaltrip
Leadership is always responsible. They chose to work with the factory. Where
is the vetting? The QA?

Sending an email doesn’t absolve one of responsibility...

------
ponker
It’s great to be powerful, you can completely fuck some shit up and walk away
with a shrug. Pepsi should have been held to pay the $32 billion and if they
didn’t have it, go bankrupt and become the property of the creditors.

~~~
netsharc
Reading the judges' conclusions I have to wonder if Pepsi bribed some people
to get away with the not guilty verdict...

