Friday 24 January 2020

I Think We Have All Seen Similar Advertising Champagnes,

buy a product and receive X number of points, 


eventually amassing enough to redeem against a product, in 1995, Pepsi ran a promotion in which they offered merchandise for "Pepsi points." You could redeem your Pepsi points for clothing and accessories and all sorts of neat stuff, as you can see in the original ad below, the prizes ran all the way up to a Harrier jet for seven million Pepsi points,

but here is the thing, Pepsi allowed people to buy Pepsi points, and somebody at Pepsi did not do the maths, but John Leonard did, at the time, each AV‑8 Harrier II Jump Jet brought into action cost the United States Marine Corps over $20 million and, thankfully, there is a simple way to convert between USD and Pepsi Points, Pepsi would let anyone buy additional points for 10 cents each, he reasoned that he could buy enough points to exchange them for the Harrier, all it would cost him was roughly $700,000 for a $20 million Harrier! he put $700,008.50 into escrow with his attorneys to back the check, He was serious, at court the case involved a lot of discussion over whether the commercial in question was obviously a joke or if someone could conceivably take it seriously, the case was so serious that Leonard v. Pepsico, Inc. is now a part of legal history, did he get the jet? Well have a read here about the case, and how to eloquently explain the difference between a million, billion and trillion, it is in fact an interesting read.


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