Pepsi Number Fever

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Pepsi Number Fever was an promotional Philippines exclusive campaign held by PepsiCo back in 1992 and it led to riots and five deaths. [1] [2]

Background

Pepsi , 7up and Mountain Dew bottles would have cups with each one having a 3 digit number from 001 - 999. Then , the winning number would appear at TV and if the person had the same number in the cup he would win 1 million pesos , which in dollars is 40,000 $. [3]

Pepsi Number Fever "349" Incident

The contest was normal for an while until , PepsiCo's computer glitched and all Bottle Cups had the 349 number on them. Then all people got cups with 349 on them. But instead of winning 1 million pesos , each person got 500 pesos , which is 18$. [4] [5] The offer was accepted by 486,170 people , which costed to Pepsico 8,9 million dollars (240 million pesos).[6] However many irani people refused this offer , as they formed an Consumer Group called The 349 Allience. The protests were normal , for a while until in February 23 1993 , a school teacher and a 5 year old boy were killed by a homemade bomb. [7] Then In May 1993 , three PepsiCo employees were killed in Davao by a grenade throw in an warehouse [8]

PepsiCo's response

Then in 2020 , during COVID-19 pandemic , Bloomberg published an article about the incident and Pepsico Stated the following: