Netflix Revisits Pepsi Promotion Gone Wrong
Pop quiz: What do Hoover appliances, Kraft cheese and Pepsi have in common? Disastrous sales promotions. Consider this:
Kraft runs a promotion giving away one Dodge Caravan ($17,000), 100 bicycles, 500 skateboards and 8,000 packages of cheese. A printing error puts them on the hook for thousands of Caravans and one package of cheese.
Hoover’s UK branch offers customers buying products worth £100 two free round-trip flights to the US (worth about £600). The ensuing financial debacle destroys the company and is arguably history’s worst sales promotion.
Pepsi runs the Pepsi Points loyalty program. Buy Pepsi, get stuff, right? A television commercial for the program shows a high school student flying to school in a McDonnell Douglas Harrier jet (value $37.4 million). The promotion’s terms allow redemption for 7,000,000 Pepsi Points ($700,008.50), and when a college student follows the rules and requests the plane, Pepsi says, “Just kidding!” This leads to massive lawsuits and many negative headlines.
All three efforts resulted in unanticipated public relations disasters, unhappy customers and (presumably) sacked executives.
While the Hoover and Kraft stories have largely been relegated to marketing textbooks, Pepsi’s situation has been turned into a four-part docuseries called “Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?” It’s currently running on Netflix.
The lessons taught by these mega-corporation mistakes are invaluable to the rest of us. Because effective marketing isn’t just a matter of having a good idea, a quality spokesperson and an adequate budget. Indeed, in each of these instances all those boxes were ticked.
But the risk of becoming too enamored with a strategy, layered atop the old saying, “The devil is in the details,” most certainly applies here.
Hoover even ran their plan by risk management professionals and were warned it would be an absolute disaster…yet they refused to listen.
Don’t let this happen to you!
As you’re considering your next big promotion, recognize in advance that catastrophe lurks for those overlooking even minuscule details.
And being too tied to a campaign strategy could lead you to ignore advice that could save your bacon.
However, having outsiders without a vested interest who can honestly analyze your strategies and plans, then having an honest discussion, warts and all, could make all the difference.
And the job you save could be your own.
With that said, I wish you a week of profitable marketing.
Get detail-oriented marketing at www.marketbuilding.com.