Talking about the world’s cold drink giant PepsiCo, a mistake had become a canker for them too. Several decades ago, a marketing stunt by Pepsi caused havoc in the Philippines. Pepsi is still not sold in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
PepsiCo and Manila Story
Pepsi used to reward people up to 611 times the average monthly salary in the Philippines at the time. There is a famous saying that sometimes even a small mistake becomes very heavy. Talking about the world’s cold drink giant PepsiCo a mistake had become a canker for them too. Several decades ago, a marketing stunt caused Pepsi to wreak havoc in the Philippines. Soft drink lovers were lured into winning a huge prize through a number printed on the bottom of a Pepsi bottle cap.
Due to a small mistake in printing, the number of winners of this Pepsi contest reached lakhs. After this, lawsuits worth lakhs were filed against soft drink maker Pepsi. Riots broke out in the country and many people died. Even after decades of this incident, Pepsi is still not sold in Manila, the capital of the Philippines.
What was Happened
Actually, on May 25, 1992, at 6 pm people were watching the evening news on TV Channel-2. Pepsi was about to announce its winning number that day. It was a shocking sight for the 65 million people of the Philippines. Pepsi’s glass bottle is packed with a lid, inside which a lucky draw was taken out by writing a number, and people were given big prizes in it.
At that time in the Philippines, there was so much craze among people to drink cold drinks that people used to drink many types of cold drinks to cover the lid of the glass bottle of cold drink. People used to wait for the magic number to be announced in the middle of the evening show of that news channel. At that time, Pepsi used to give a mega prize of 10,00,000 pesos (the local currency of the Philippines) to the lucky number of winners. Currently, its price is around $68,000.
PepsiCo Official Website https://www.pepsico.com/
At that time, Pepsi used to reward people in the Philippines with up to 611 times the average monthly salary. Pepsi has already rewarded many people. In those days pictures of people who won prizes could be seen in newspapers and also on TV channels, which was a big deal for people.
After this, Pepsi hired a new company to forget the growing craze of number games among the people. Thereafter, Pepsi’s monthly sales increased significantly, while its market share also increased from 20 to 25 percent. Pepsi’s bottling plant started working 20 hours a day. Pepsi did a tremendous ad campaign, under which winning numbers were published in 29 radio stations, and 4 newspapers. The prize-winning period has been extended several times along with the winning numbers. After this Pepsi made a mistake.
349 Unlucky Number for Pepsico
Pepsi made 800,000 caps with the number 349 in the number printed on the bottom of the glass bottle cap. The day this winning number was announced, Pepsi was shocked. It was not possible to give such a huge reward to 8,00,000 people in the country in one go.
After this, when people started coming forward to collect their prizes, Pepsi refused to give prizes to eight lakh people at once. After that riots broke out in the country. Dozens of people were injured while five-six people lost their lives. Government offices started being attacked. Pepsi vehicles were set ablaze and the company suffered a loss of at least Rs 200 crore.