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.
