Hello, Hive moviegoers! Today I bring you a documentary-like Netflix mini-series, based on a Pepsi commercial. I know it may sound a bit strange and even uninteresting, but I assure you it's worth watching. I leave you with the review.
In the 90s, Pepsi and Coca Cola were engaged in a commercial war, as Coca Cola was the absolute market leader at that time. Because of this, Pepsi started to put more effort into advertising and since it was the decade when everyone was watching TV, they used it to their advantage by hiring famous athletes and big celebrities, such as David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Cindy Crawford, etc., to be part of their commercials. In short, Pepsi was breaking through and becoming unstoppable.
As part of a campaign to sell more Pepsi, they invented Pepsi points, which were obtained when buying the drink in bottles or cans. These Pepsi points could be exchanged for shirts, jackets, accessories, etc.
At the time of showing the commercial with the entire catalog of products they had available, you could see at the end a Jet, which could be "claimed" if you accumulated 7,000,000 points, which for many was a joke.
Since there was no fine print in the ad to indicate that it was a joke, technically the person who accumulated the 7,000,000 points was supposed to receive the Jet from Pepsi. Unfortunately for them there was one guy who took the Jet very seriously and made it his personal challenge to accumulate all the points.
The boy took all this so seriously that he created a business plan to find out how and in how much time he would get his points, which clearly involved a lot of money, as there were many cans to buy to reach his goal.
The documentary series practically tells the story of the boy who made it his mission to get that plane and the Pepsi legal team that went to great lengths to prevent it.
I know this is a little hard to believe, as it is absurd to think that such an important company would have the luxury of simply giving away a jet. However, we must understand that for many people, since it was not specified that it was only advertising, this would be a difficult but possible challenge.
The scale of this conflict is beyond belief, because they are involved in an important legal matter that even takes them to trial and as this was a boom in the 90s, public opinion and journalists did not know which side to be on, because although Pepsi had admitted its mistake and had defended itself by saying that any normal person would know that it was a joke, it also took into account the opinion of consumers who did not see it that way.
The mini-series shows us that marketing in advertising must be done with care, because we already know that this kind of things that usually seem absurd, can happen.
Hasta aquí la reseña, Espero les haya gustado mucho y muchas gracias por leer.
So much for the review. I hope you liked it a lot and thank you very much for reading.
Texto traducido en: DeepL