Leonard vs. Pepsico, Inc | Hacker News Reader

Leonard vs. Pepsico, Inc

en.wikipedia.org

81 pointsEndXA60 comments

So Coke had a similar auction thing and I quickly realized that the top prizes could be nabbed for cheap because it would take people forever to collect enough ringpulls and mail them in so they could bid on things. So my friends and I cleared the entire CITY of Coca-Cola. Every grocery store. Pallets of it.

This was just one de-ringpulling session of about 800 cans here:

https://imgur.com/a/kE0djNt

This is what happened next though... (spoiler: I didn't get my merch)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36989718

Very clever! They should have hired you to run future campaigns.

IANAL, but this judgement seems really odd to me when I contrast it with the judgement made against Red Bull's use of "Red Bull gives you wings."

To me, it seems less far-fetched to believe that one could redeem an excessive amount of points for an expensive product than to believe consuming a drink would actually give one wings.

More broadly, though, I don't know which side I favor. Letting advertisements be a little cheeky seems like it brightens the world, but the false advertising line seems quite hard to pin down.

The lawsuit against Red Bull was not actually about gaining physical wings, but rather, the fact that Red Bull implied their drink was a super energy drink with that slogan and related materials, when in reality, it was about as energy-fueling as a cup of coffee [0]. This court case, like the McDonald’s Hot Coffee case, are commonly twisted out of context to sound so absurd and frivolous, when in reality there’s quite a good reason for it.

[0] https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/red-bull-settles-false-adve...

I don't feel this explains Red Bull's response to the lawsuit, then?

Red Bull still show ads with the slogan. I saw one on Twitch yesterday. The only difference is now there's three i's in wings. So it's just "Red Bull gives you wiiings."

I thought that edit was to try and make it clear that the wings were in jest. It seemed similar to Pepsi Co's "Just Kidding" addition to their jet offer.

If it was really about false advertising and not the implication itself... then shouldn't the ads either stop entirely or continue without modification?

EDIT: oh, maybe I am completely off-base here. It looks like the slogan always had three iii's and I'm just assuming it changed in response.

The coffee one where it's brewed between 195-205 yet people say keeping it at 180 was negligence?

That's always bugged me ever since I made pour over, McDonald's essentially heated their coffee to the temperature it'd be if it was made fresh. Sure it was hotter than competitors, but it was hardly an impossible temperature for coffee to be. It's literally brewed hotter than they served it.

I am not sure how that analogy is supposed to work, would you mind if I handed you a knife at 900F when they're forged around 1000F and above?

It's not an analogy lol if you brew coffee and immediately pour it in a cup, it could easily be 180. There's a world where your cup or brew vessel is ridiculously cold and it drops to 165, but that doesn't change the fact the coffee is brewed at 195-205 degrees.

Your argument is closer to a strawman.

Yeah I mean sunlight is made at 10,340 F and human beings sometimes complain about the heat in the summer.

It wasn't negligence.

Internal emails were found during discovery explicitly describing their strategy of keeping the coffee that hot so that fewer customers would avail of the free refills, because by the time it had cooled enough to comfortably drink the majority of customers would leave the store.

> but it was hardly an impossible temperature for coffee to be

Yes, its true that the law (the things enforced by government, not "laws of nature", which are unrelated despite the similarity of name) generally prohibits things which are seen as undesirable but possible, and is far less concerned with prohibiting things which are actually impossible.

Don't confuse the brew temperature and the serving temperature they aren't the same thing.

Coffee grounds are at room temperature (when properly brewing) meaning that the temperature of the actual coffee is significantly less. It might be as high as 180 but doubtful fresh brewed coffee is any hotter (I would bet it is lower but not willing to test).

Additionally McDonald's got in trouble for intentionally harming it's consumers. When discussing internally about incidents of burning executives thought that the cost of paying for medical bills was less than the cost of refills.

Aka they said "we know this will harm people but ensuring people can't get free refills is more important".

It harmed that woman in a very bad way, that should be enough to convince anyone that it was entirely too hot.

Then there's the fact that they KNEW and did it anyway.

Deception has become the norm in advertising.

Walk into any fast food place, look at the menu, order something, then compare what you got to the picture on the menu.

We're all numb to it now, but the simple fact remains that you were sold X, and provided with X-.

There was a window of time in which marketing execs designed promotions without testing the mechanic...the "Hoover flights to the USA promotion" that ran in the UK in the 90s was similarly gamed and resulted in Hoover UK entering administration IIRC, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoover_free_flights_promotion

It was disastrously successful to the point where 'hoover' has been synonymous with 'vaccuum cleaner' ever since over here!

> On November 17, 2022, a docuseries about the case titled Pepsi, Where's My Jet? was released on Netflix.

I think it's four episodes. The only problem is that we know the outcome and series tries to keep you in suspense.

The docuseries has a lot more information than the Wikipedia article.

For example, interviews with some of the people who worked on that Pepsi commercial.

Not every movie is watched for the outcome alone :)

Yeah, the interviews with the Pepsi execs, most specifically the guy that was in charge of their marketing, were the actual most interesting part of that docuseries.

It also explored a related Filipino Pepsi promotion that didn't end so well. That one was heartbreaking.

Yes... it's a moderately interesting court case that has often been used to introduce law students to the concepts of offer and acceptance (and ancillary concepts like puffery), but I felt like the docuseries was trying quite hard to make the whole episode more interesting than it was. Maybe I am just jaded by all the insane financial shenanigans that have occurred since...

I don't think the outcome is relevant to a docuseries.

It's not like we watch a 9/11 doc wondering what's gonna happen to the twin towers or one about OJ's trial wondering whether he'll be judged guilty or not.

There are still central questions people may have about the historical events in both of your examples, and that a documentary may shed light on. Not so with this trial.

I think it was decent but it could have been a single episode or at least a 90 minute movie length doc. I felt like they were stretching for it to fill 4 episodes.

> The only problem is that we know the outcome

The promotion/lawsuit happened over 15 years ago, and this event is hardly ingrained in pop culture. Not to mention the documentary is also marketed to people outside the US. What makes you so confident to say "we know the outcome"?

I watched the series not that long ago and before that vaguely remember hearing that someone won a jet, a memory sparked by the series itself. But that's it. The series was great, kept me in complete suspense. Sometimes it pays to be uninformed!

I found it pretty compelling, despite knowing the outcome for years. Then again, I never watched tiger king, so this style of documentary was fresher to me.

There's at least one flyable Harrier in private ownership.[1] But it wasn't in private ownership and flyable when this case was decided. Used military jets aren't that hard to come by.[2] It's the restoration and maintenance that get you.

[1] https://artnalls.com/team-shar-is-alive/

[2] https://robbreport.com/motors/aviation/gallery/fighter-jets-...

Ruled on by Kimba Wood, the same judge who destroyed Limewire. Some judges just don't know how to have fun.

Was there any mention of the jet elsewhere, e.g. in some printed t&c? If it was only in a random tv ad, then I side with Pepsico too. And I wish I had a spare 700k for a random stunt like this.

No, the jet was only in the commercial (according to the documentary).

They thought they had a case since Pepsi “forgot” to put a fine-print disclaimer at the bottom like most other commercials.

More like $1.3M in today's dollars.

> I wish I had a spare 700k for a random stunt like this.

The guy didn't have that much either: "Leonard […] convinced five investors to lend him a total of $700,000".

Man should've been the CEO founder talking to angels and VCS..

so a total loss. makes even cryptocurrency safe by comparison

No loss. Pepsi never cashed the check

Some loss — there were likely some lawsuit costs.

168 comments | 2-years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28188929

The TV commercial: https://youtu.be/ZdackF2H7Qc?feature=shared&t=13

There's a quite entertaining documentary about the saga on Netflix, "Pepsi, Where's My Jet?".

Was it really that entertaining? Don't get me wrong, I liked the story, and maybe I might have ADHD, but I feel like it just dragged on unnecessarily just to squeeze more episodes out of what was a pretty short story:

- kid sees pepsi ad offering Harrier Jet for 6 million Pepsi points

- kid talks a wealthy business-man friend into a plan of getting 6 milion Pepsi points

- Pepsi tries to strike deal with them into giving up on the jet in exchange for $MILLION USD

- kid says no to deal and takes Pepsi to court for the jet

- Pepsi gets corporate friendly judge that sides with them and the kid and his business-man friend loose

THE END, we don't need the back story of every character and their mom, just to turn this story into 3-6 episodes.

This is a classic Netflix move. 4-, 6-, and 8-episode “docuseries” that could easily be a single movie. Lots of padding to drag it all out.

Honestly, this is where small youtubers win over Netflix. They get to the point and make a 10-30 minute video about a topic that would be 6+ episodes on Netflix. And Youtube is basically free, or a small subscription.

I think this is the first time I have seen YouTubers offered as an example of people who get to the point

Indeed. 10-30 minute video is way too long for this story anyway, and the only reason YouTubers make videos this long, is because they round up to magic monetization thresholds (first one is 8 minutes, IIRC?).

There's definitely two worlds on Youtube. (1) The good ones who put out those 10 or 20-minute videos that just get to it. (2) The rest of them who have useless 1-minute intros, followed by 3 minutes of "Today I'm going to show you X, and Y, and you'll be shocked at how Z doesn't do what you think. But first..."

I've built up a pretty good subscription list that doesn't have (2)'s in it.

waiting for the Cold Fusion episode about this, which gets 3 million views

I guess I'm easily entertained...

This reminds me of the frequent flyer miles hacks one guy figured out.

EDIT: here it is, the pudding guy:

David Phillips is an American civil engineer best known for accumulating frequent flyer miles by taking advantage of a promotion by Healthy Choice Foods in 1999.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Phillips_(entrepreneur)

I also think of pudding guy every time something like this comes up.

There was someone who did something similar with Tesco (UK Supermarket) Clubcard Points (a reward system which, I believe, essentially returns essentially 1% of your supermarket shopping spend in return for correlating shopping data with your demographics !)

In the early days (1997) of the system, there was a 'bonus' points points offer on Bananas, sufficient that the cost of the bananas was offset by the rewards. Although searching for the article, the benefit was only 8%, and the total reward was only about 25 GBP (about 40 USD at 1997 exchange rates)

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/banana-economics-buy-942l...

>The Pentagon stated that the Harrier Jet would not be sold to civilians without "demilitarization", which, in the case of the Harrier, would have included stripping it of its ability to land and take off vertically.[10]

Thank you Pentagon,very lame!

That seems to imply that there is a price at which they WILL sell one to a civilian, though.

Sure, civilians own all sorts of obsolete and de-commissioned military gear. Small arms obviously, but also tanks and planes.

If you've got loads of obsolete tanks, of which some are kinda sorta working, others are mostly useful only as spares and your mission is to turn that into money but without harming national security, selling say half a dozen of them to a movie props company, makes lot of sense. Deactivate the main weapon, remove auxiliary weapons, strip out any sensitive materials from the interior, and it still looks like a tank on screen, but it's not a real threat because it's deactivated. They can use it to shoot war movies, as background for politics movies, &c.

Serious adversaries don't need obsolete tanks. If you're Russia, a working 1970s tank is of no value to you. Russia have perfectly good tanks newer than that, and their crews were already trained on them. However you don't want some minor power or non-government entity to buy these and re-arm them somewhere that can't defend itself, you don't want your obsolete tanks to show up in a guerilla war in South America, so you can guarantee that with "Not for export" type paperwork.

There's a place in Vegas where you can drive one around and crush scrapped cars.

There was also a police-footage show with an episode about a guy who built a DIY tank-- a bulldozer with a bunch of cement slabs mounted to it. He terrorized a neighborhood on his way to demolish city hall over some grievance, beached it, and shot himself while police tried to breach it.

There was no way out for him but a bullet to the head or breach—he welded himself in. https://youtu.be/w7QG1w3ixkM?si=6afvV_acZbfqdkKz

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer

If you want something you can drive around your neighborhood, you want an armored car with rubber tires (not metal treads, not rubber treads).

For instance, the UK's M8 Greyhound.

I've wanted a mortar and mortar munitions for as long as I can remember, but you can't own army surplus as it's a "destructive device" which is bullshit if I've ever heard it.

I was curious about why The Pentagon would be the desired seller, when it's a British plane, and in my searching came across this little tidbit:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/three-iconic-harrier-j...

> The owner of the Harrier jump jets, former US Marines pilot Art Nalls, hopes wealthy British collectors will buy the trio of iconic jets which are the only flyable civilian versions in the world

Reply on news.ycombinator.com