Pepsi, ¿dónde está mi avión?

In a perfect marketplace products win by offering the best mix of attributes for the consumer over the competition. When this is no longer the case things get more complicated. The consumer must be manipulated in some way the actual product takes a back seat. For perpetual underdog soda manufacturer Pepsi to dethrone Coca-Cola the answer was spending huge amounts of money on advertisements, and, as this film details, promotions.

It's interesting a billion-dollar corporation like Pepsi would not do all due diligence when creating and rolling out a major contest. You can be sure they were exacting enough to scrutinize the increased sales over the course of a promotion, but to not understand what they were offering and, more so, the rules where points could be purchased is beyond lax. The Pepsi Stuff promo, with a top prize of a Harrier jet, was such a gaff.

John Leonard, a young college student, bought into the idea of this contest. At first he tried collecting the points finding it rather futile. Then he read the contest rules after picking up a Pepsi Stuff catalog. Realizing enough points for the jet could be purchased at far below the value of the actual jet was the moment things began to get surreal. Having a very wealthy friend comes in now. The friend writes the check for the needed points and John fills out a winning points request for the jet and mails it to Pepsi with the check.

The whole thing sounds like a smart-aleck trick by a typical teenager. That, however, would dismiss the sma@$$ corporation trying to manipulate the buying behavior of the public, particularly the youngest who are likely most susceptible. The moral of this story is if your company is going to play this game you should prepare for all possible outcomes. Pepsi definitely got egg on their face, yet somehow came out of it with minor scratches. One can only imagine what the outcome may have been had this case received a trial by jury.

I find this case extremely interesting. The film did a good job of explaining the timeline of the case and explaining what decisions John Leonard made at various junctions. Truth is companies making the products we buy are master manipulators who dig right down into our pockets without very much moral fiber. In the current market Nike comes to mind recently taking their product out of thousands of smaller retailers. Their endgame can only be to extract more dollars from each sale, perhaps even making product availability less while raising that margin. It's kind of like if the company is big enough they get to write their own rules unless they make a major mis-step like Pepsi. That said, it doesn't look like Pepsi is hurting. This is an entertaining look at corporate shenanigans that is highly recommended.

I didn't like the show because it dragged too much. The whole story could be told in 1h or so. The friendship and adventures are nice, but the mountain climbing had too much screen time.

The advertising by Pepsi was cool and clever back then. They had a nice promotion to trade points for items. The items in the catalog seems cool, I would like to get some of that merchandise in a promo like that these days, but I would probably just buy coca-cola lol

The documentary also shows some problems they had in the Philippines that were much worse than the jet issue. I wish they showed more about the Philippines and how that played out, instead of fillers.

As far as documentaries go this one felt less one sided than most. It certainly keeps you rooting for John and his twenty year old dream to win a falsely advertised Harrier jet. But in the same token it really is a David VS Goliath story, and keeps it relatively light hearted. Pepsi is never overtly painted as the bad guy, and their Ad execs and creatives are allowed to chime in. John and his friend Todd share a great bond over climbing and it's heartwarming at times, especially the fourth and last episode.

If you don't know the end of the story DON'T look it up. I'm really glad I didn't!

As a docu-series goes it's fun , and has the usual twists and turns. Not a bad way to relax for an evening or two. It is not your average overdramatic drama, is mostly narrated by the actual people, with only a few scenes recreated. I dug it because I was a kid when it happened and never know the outcome.

Back when advertising campaigns were very, very different, Pepsi launched an audacious, fun campaign, Pepsi points for prizes, 7 million, would get you a Harrier jet.....just fun right, not for John Leonard.

I have to be honest, I thoroughly enjoyed this four part series, first of all, it was refreshing to watch something that didn't feature serial killers and murders, and it was good to learn of a story I knew nothing about.

Plenty of really interesting interviews, it's a basic David Vs Goliath story, the little guy (albeit one with some hefty financial backing,) taking on a big corporate business, Pepsi co.

It's arguably a little slow and repetitive in parts, and four episodes was definitely too long, but I was never bored, there were plenty of interesting bits, including the insight from Avenatti, and the story in The Philippines, Pepsi did not come out of this looking too good.

Very interesting, 8/10.

When I first saw this documentary in my Netflix suggestions I was very entrigered by the title and I didn't knew this story so I took the risk and I immediatly started to see. After I finish it, I can tell this was a fantastic story very well narrated with some humour cleverly mixed. I love the way the story was told and the way keep pushing me to see more in the next episode.

I really enjoyed saw the perspective of a young kid vs one of the biggest companies in the world, and that inspired me a lot to never be afraid of battle for things we belive and want the most.

I think it's a story that everyone must see.