In 1992, Pepsi tried to pull off a huge marketing campaign in the Philippines called "Pepsi Number Fever." The idea was simple: check under your bottle cap, and if the number matched the lucky one announced, you could win up to 1 MILLION pesos. 🤑 For a lot of people, that kind of money could change their lives forever.
(© wikimedia)
But then… disaster struck.
On May 25, Pepsi announced that the winning number was 349. Sounds great, except for one tiny problem—they accidentally printed 800,000 bottle caps with that number. Yup, 800,000 people thought they’d hit the jackpot. 🎉 But when Pepsi said it was a mistake and they couldn’t pay up, people lost it.
Protests and riots broke out across the country. Angry mobs flipped Pepsi trucks, attacked offices, and burned property. People felt betrayed, and for good reason—many had spent what little they had buying Pepsi in hopes of winning. Tragically, some even lost their lives during the chaos. 💔
Pepsi tried to fix things by offering 500 pesos (around $18) to anyone with a “winning” bottle cap, but that only made people angrier. Lawsuits piled up, and Pepsi’s reputation in the Philippines was shattered. Decades later, people still remember the fiasco as one of the biggest corporate fails ever.
What’s the lesson here? If you’re a company, don’t mess with people’s trust—and maybe triple-check your promos before launching them. 🥤🔥
