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Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

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Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#31

Post by cat199 »

capableweb wrote: post #4

Interesting story, but the clickbait headline is not needed here. Story ends with: > At the end of everything, Pepsi’s total combined losses, between physical, legal, and brand equity costs, would top $20M. Their market share would plummet and take years to rebound. The "$32 billion" seems to come from the amount of bottles who would win the prize, but Pepsi didn't actually pay out the promised amount, so it didn't c…

Don't think this is really that clickbaity - the typo amount accounted to 32B, and the outrage caused by that non-existent 32B lead to riots in which people died, in other words, deadly riots.

sometimes things are legitimately outrageous and worthy of an emotionally charged headline.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#32

Post by 9nGQluzmnq3M »

fredley wrote: post #10

I would love to know what the bug was, sadly we'll probably never know. I imagine the engineer responsible for `NEVER 349` made a mistake that ended up flipping a single bit, to the `ALWAYS 349` position...

It sounds like the bottling factory printing all the other numbers simply missed the memo on not printing 349.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#33

Post by projektfu »

sergiotapia wrote: post #18

I wonder if this is a third-world thing, soda contests for cash. I remember when I was 12 in Bolivia, we had literal Coca Cola scratch off cards and had to collect bottle caps with the numbers to make a lot of cash. Kids would trade bottle caps, rumors floated about fulanito having the rare cap and he would sell it for the right amount, etc. Been in the states for a few years now and never heard of something like tha…

When it debuted, McDonald's "Monopoly" game was a huge deal and people would eagerly open their tickets to see if they won a big prize. If they won it was usually a small fries or another ticket, but sometimes it was some money and one person won $1M.

After a while the luster wore off and it faded into the background. I'm sure it boosted sales in its first few years quite a bit but now you hardly hear about it. I'm actually surprised it still happens.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#35

Post by have_faith »

xchaotic wrote: post #20

Moral of the story - if you are a big multinational company you can literally get away with murder and even increase market even with the most botched marketing campaign selling sugar water

> if you are a big multinational company you can literally get away with murder

Pepsi's cockups are no doubt the catalyst of the events that unfolded but can you say that they are responsible for someone murdering someone else during what happened? are any actions the protestors undertake in anger the responsibility of Pepsi?

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#36

Post by afandian »

ekianjo wrote: post #28
xchaotic wrote: post #20

Moral of the story - if you are a big multinational company you can literally get away with murder and even increase market even with the most botched marketing campaign selling sugar water

> you can literally get away with murder Pepsi killed anyone? That's not what the story says at all. Accidental death is not the same as murder.

Wrong sugar-water vendor.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinaltrainal_v._Coca-Cola_Co.

(edit HN is botching the URL. There's a '.' character on the end)

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#37

Post by capableweb »

cat199 wrote: post #31
capableweb wrote: post #4

Interesting story, but the clickbait headline is not needed here. Story ends with: > At the end of everything, Pepsi’s total combined losses, between physical, legal, and brand equity costs, would top $20M. Their market share would plummet and take years to rebound. The "$32 billion" seems to come from the amount of bottles who would win the prize, but Pepsi didn't actually pay out the promised amount, so it didn't c…

Don't think this is really that clickbaity - the typo amount accounted to 32B, and the outrage caused by that non-existent 32B lead to riots in which people died, in other words, deadly riots. sometimes things are legitimately outrageous and worthy of an emotionally charged headline.

It is clickbaity. There was no "typo" (Pepsi said it was a "system error") and there was nothing that cost them $32B. The only true parts of the headline is "Pepsi" and "caused deadly riots", which I agree with you, is outrageous and should never have happened. But we don't have to lie about the content of a story in order to make this outrageous, it's already outrageous enough with the facts.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#38

Post by fredley »

xchaotic wrote: post #20

Moral of the story - if you are a big multinational company you can literally get away with murder and even increase market even with the most botched marketing campaign selling sugar water

Hey, cut them some slack, at least they weren't trying to destabilise the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company#The_Unite...

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#39

Post by Retric »

have_faith wrote: post #35
xchaotic wrote: post #20

Moral of the story - if you are a big multinational company you can literally get away with murder and even increase market even with the most botched marketing campaign selling sugar water

> if you are a big multinational company you can literally get away with murder Pepsi's cockups are no doubt the catalyst of the events that unfolded but can you say that they are responsible for someone murdering someone else during what happened? are any actions the protestors undertake in anger the responsibility of Pepsi?

Shared culpability is a common thing in the law. A get away driver is not directly robbing a bank, but they still go to prison.

Re: Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

#40

Post by joezydeco »

There was a similar glitch in a contest Kraft held back in the late 1980s.

https://apnews.com/aa740ca43955c874dadb0394afc22940

TLDR almost every piece was a winner instead of just a few rare ones.

I managed to mail in a few pieces before the packages got recalled, I remember being in multiple class action suits and getting multiple waves of settlement checks and coupons for free food over the next few years. Obviously I was not going to get 4 vans, 12 bicycles, and 10 skateboards.

Contests now regularly use the "Kraft Clause" to avoid this problem.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=c742f572-f3e2...

"“If due to a printing, production or other error, more prizes are claimed than are intended to be awarded for any prize level, the intended prizes will be awarded in a random drawing from among all verified and validated prize claims received for that prize level. In no event will more than the stated number of prizes be awarded.”

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