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Pepsi’s $32B Typo Caused Deadly Riots

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

#91

Post by Quarrelsome »

seankernan wrote: post #82
stickfigure wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This critique is unnecessarily pedantic. If I issue you a $200 check and (through whatever error) it ends up being written for $200,000,000, we would fairly call it a "$200MM typo" despite the fact that it would bounce. The headline delivered exactly the story it promised. I was surprised I had never heard about it before.

Hey there (I'm the author of the piece). I was about to make this exact point. Perfectly said. As a writer, creating a headline is always a balancing act. You want to drive interest and create curiosity but you also don't want to mislead readers because that will burn them and they'll never read your stuff again. I felt I delivered on that curiosity. But the internet is a big place. Someone will always find a bone to…

I had fun reading and thought the headline was fine, thanks!

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

#92

Post by danso »

The Mental Floss writeup from 2018 has actual details:

https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/558202/pepsi-number-feve...

> To determine winning numbers, Pepsi recruited D.G. Consultores, a marketing firm based in Mexico. The numbers were generated via computer, then secured in a safe deposit box in Manila. From there, the list would be used to “seed” bottle caps in the bottling plants. Each night, the company would announce the day’s winning number on television.

> Quickly, Pepsi executives in the Philippines and stateside convened for an emergency meeting at 3 a.m. on how to proceed. Economically, honoring the perceived value of all of the caps was virtually impossible to justify—it would’ve cost the company tens of billions of dollars. Instead, they opted to declare it a computer error and offered $18 to $20 to cap holders as a “goodwill gesture.” What was originally earmarked to be a promotion with $2 million in total prizes ballooned to $10 million.

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

#93

Post by csomar »

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.

Unless OP changed the title, there is nothing that infer that Pepsi lost $32Bn in the process. Just that the size of the mistake was $32Bn.

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

#94

Post by kwhitefoot »

baby wrote: post #79
arkades wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People think Wikipedia is complete??? I could add stuff in my field of specialty constantly . I just don't want to jump through all the hoops that come with being a wikipedia contributor, so I keep all my notes on a private wiki.

This selfish

Do you contribute to Wikipedia? I have, and to Wikibooks, and it can be a thankless task when you run into an admin who is more interested in formatting than content and more interested in the enforcement of petty rules than in helping the author get it right.

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

#95

Post by frosted-flakes »

giarc wrote: post #71
frosted-flakes wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's still a thing with Tim Hortons' "Roll up the rim to win" campaign, where you can win money, cars, barbecue grills, dougnnuts, or coffee when you buy a coffee. Actually, it was cancelled this year, because millions of people handing pieces of coffee cup rims to workers isn't good when there's a global pandemic going on.

It wasn't cancelled, it was just moved to their app. When you scanned your card/phone you would get credits to "roll up". I only realized when I opened the app (instead of using mobile wallet) and saw I had 25 "roll ups" to use.

It's not a physical thing though. It's just another form of virtual points.

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

#96

Post by john-radio »

rjbwork wrote: post #87
baby wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This selfish

Perhaps it is the wikipedia administration, moderation, and editing team that have put up such barriers who are selfish. It is selfish to expect others to jump through your hoops to contribute advanced technical knowledge out of the kindness of their hearts.

Just a reminder that you're only assuming that the information that arkades would like to add is even accurate. (No offense to them, I'm sure it is, just pointing out that the process of editing that encyclopedia is burdensome for a reason).

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

#97

Post by hnlmorg »

capableweb wrote: post #37
cat199 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's not a lie though. All the title says is $32B of wealth was accidentally advertised (in this case, prize money based on numbers in a bottle caps). The headline doesn't say it cost Pepsi that amount, it just says the typo (ok, that bit isn't strictly accurate) was for the amount of $32B. A typo isn't the same thing as a payment.

Anecdotally the article was pretty much what I expected from the title: a large amount of wealth was accidentally promised (I assumed by physical property worth $32B and where the quantity was accidentally an order of magnitude more) and Pepsi, like all successful businesses, wormed out of delivering. As it turns out the story was more absurd than the headline lead me to believe but largely it was accurate to my assumptions based on the title.

Moving on from the title: this article did make me wonder what would have happened to the Philippine economy had Pepsi paid out (assuming they had the money to do so). With 800,000 people suddenly winning enough to buy a luxury house, I bet that would have caused house prices to rise massively and likely did all sorts of other massively disruptive things to the economy. Any other theories on this "whatif" scenario?

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

#98

Post by pixelbath »

duxup wrote: post #5
9nGQluzmnq3M wrote: post #3

For everybody who was saying "Wikipedia is complete, there's nothing left to write about" yesterday, as far as I can there is not a word about this on the whole site, certainly not on the Pepsi page. Time to get to work! https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?search=Pepsi+349&ns0=1&... Edit: I stand corrected, there is a single paragraph in here. Nothing standalone/linkable though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_in…

Is this something that should be on the Wikipedia Pepsi page? While it is an interesting story I don't really think it is the kind of thing I'd be looking for.

There are many times I'm glad that individual people don't decide the guidelines for inclusion on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Notability_(events)#...

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

#99

Post by stickfigure »

cdubzzz wrote: post #67
stickfigure wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This critique is unnecessarily pedantic. If I issue you a $200 check and (through whatever error) it ends up being written for $200,000,000, we would fairly call it a "$200MM typo" despite the fact that it would bounce. The headline delivered exactly the story it promised. I was surprised I had never heard about it before.

Eh, I think it's debatable and not pedantic. I literally clicked on the link because I inferred the headline to mean that Pepsi made a typo that somehow cost them $32B. And re: your example, I would not call that a "$200MM typo", I would call it a typo. If I intended to write a check for $200 and later when it was cashed found I had accidentally wrote it for $220, I would call that a $20 typo.

> If I intended to write a check for $200 and later when it was cashed found I had accidentally wrote it for $220, I would call that a $20 typo.

So my example was a "$199,999,800 typo"? Can't we just round up?

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