In the summer of 1992, something shocking the world happened in the Philippines. There were riots all over the country, and the cause of this riot was actually because of a Pepsi bottle cap. This is simply incredible. What is going on? How does a small Coke bottle cap have such a big deal?
Here we have to talk about another big brand – Coca-Cola. It is one of the most famous beverages in the world and the leading brand in the field of Coke. As early as 1886, this brand was founded in Atlanta, USA and has a very long history. . Since its birth, Coca-Cola has been very good at advertising and marketing. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, Coca-Cola adopted more than 30 forms of advertising every year. In 1913, the number of advertising materials announced by Coca-Cola reached 100 million. One, it’s amazing. It is precisely because Coca-Cola has made great efforts to advertise and market that it almost dominates the American market.
The opportunity for Coca-Cola to enter the global market was World War II. Wherever the U.S. military went, Coca-Cola would go there. A soldier can get a bottle of Coca-Cola for 5 cents.” So in World War II, Coca-Cola and Stars and Stripes were pretty much the same thing. Later, Coca-Cola directly built bottling plants in major US military bases around the world. This series of actions made Coca-Cola accelerate its development of the global market, and Coca-Cola quickly occupied the Asian market.
Another major Coca-Cola brand, Pepsi-Cola, was founded very early, only 12 years later than Coca-Cola, but it can be said to be “not born at the right time”. Coca-Cola was already a national-level beverage at that time, and later the global market was basically It is monopolized by Coca-Cola, and Pepsi has always been marginalized.
It was not until the 1980s and 1990s that PepsiCo entered the Asian market, so PepsiCo decided to break through the Asian market first, and firstly set its sights on the Philippines. As a tropical country with hot weather, carbonated drinks are very popular here. Welcome, the 12th largest beverage market in the world. Coca-Cola was also popular in the Philippines at this time, and it has almost formed a monopoly situation. Pepsi-Cola has made a lot of efforts to break this situation, and it is very anxious.
Just when Pepsi was at a loss, a marketing executive named Pedro Vergara came up with a good marketing idea, which is to open the lid and get a prize. I believe everyone is very familiar with this. This marketing method has been used in many beverages since then. The most common one is “one more bottle”. But what Pepsi-Cola sprinkled in the Philippines this time was not a drizzle of “one more bottle”, but direct money, known as the “Millionaire Project”. Pepsi will print different numbers on the bottle caps. Filipinos who buy Pepsi with numbers on the bottle cap will have the opportunity to get 100 pesos (4 US dollars, about RMB 27) to 1 million pesos (about 40,000 US dollars). RMB 270,000) cash prizes of varying amounts.
The maximum amount of 1 million pesos is only in the two bottle caps, which are engraved with the number “349″. Pepsi also invested in the marketing campaign, spending about $2 million. What was the concept of 1 million pesos in the poor Philippines in the 1990s? The salary of an ordinary Filipino is about 10,000 pesos a year, and 1 million pesos is enough to make an ordinary person become a little rich.
So Pepsi’s event sparked a nationwide upsurge in the Philippines, and all the people were buying Pepsi-Cola. The Philippines had a total population of more than 60 million at that time, and about 40 million people participated in the rush to buy. Pepsi’s market share soared for a while. Two months after the start of the event, some small prizes were drawn one after another, and only the last top prize was left. Finally, the number of the top prize was announced, “349″! Hundreds of thousands of Filipinos were boiling. They cheered and jumped, thinking that they had ushered in the highlight of their lives, and they were finally about to turn salty fish into a rich man.
They excitedly ran to PepsiCo to redeem the prize, and the staff of PepsiCo were completely dumbfounded. Shouldn’t there be only two people? How can there be so many people, densely packed, in groups, but looking at the number on the bottle cap in their hands, it is indeed “349″, what is going on? The head of PepsiCo almost collapsed to the ground. It turned out that the company made a mistake when printing the numbers on the bottle caps through the computer. The number “349″ was printed in large numbers, and hundreds of thousands of bottle caps were filled with this number, so there are hundreds of thousands of Filipinos. Man, hit this number.
What can we do now? It is impossible to give one million pesos to hundreds of thousands of people. It is estimated that selling the entire PepsiCo company is not enough, so PepsiCo quickly announced that the number was wrong. In fact, the real jackpot number is “134″, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos Just drowning in the dream of being a millionaire, and you suddenly tell him that because of your mistakes, he is poor again, how can Filipinos accept it? So the Filipinos began to protest collectively. They marched on the streets with banners, blaming PepsiCo with loudspeakers for not keeping its word, and beating staff and security guards at the door of PepsiCo, creating chaos for a while.
Seeing that things were getting worse and worse, and the company’s reputation was seriously damaged, PepsiCo decided to spend $8.7 million (approximately 480 million pesos) to divide it equally among the hundreds of thousands of winners, who could only get 1,000 pesos each. Around, from 1 million pesos to 1,000 pesos, these Filipinos still expressed strong dissatisfaction and continued to protest. The violence at this time is also escalating, and the Philippines is a country with poor security and can’t help guns, and many thugs with ulterior motives also joined in, so the whole incident turned from protests and physical conflicts to bullets and bomb attacks. . Dozens of Pepsi trains were hit by bombs, several Pepsi employees were killed by bombs, and even many innocent people were killed in the riot.
Under this uncontrollable situation, PepsiCo withdrew from the Philippines, and the Filipino people were still dissatisfied with this “running” behavior of PepsiCo. They began to fight international lawsuits, and established a special “349″ alliance to deal with international disputes. matter of appeal.
But the Philippines is a poor and weak country after all. PepsiCo, as an American brand, must be sheltered by the United States, so the result is that no matter how many times the Filipino people appeal, they fail. Even the Supreme Court in the Philippines ruled that Pepsi had no obligation to redeem the bonus, and said it would no longer accept the case in the future.
At this point, the whole thing is almost over. Although PepsiCo did not pay any compensation in this matter, it seems to have won, but PepsiCo can be said to have failed completely in the Philippines. After that, no matter how hard Pepsi tried, it could not open the Philippine market. It’s a scam company.
Post time: Aug-26-2022