The_Pepsi_Contest_That_Killed_5_People(360p)

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Transcript

00:00In 1992, Pepsi ran a contest in the Philippines that ended up killing five people.

00:06The contest was called Number Fever, and the idea was simple.

00:10Every evening, the news would reveal a winning number.

00:13Tomorrow's winning number is 373.

00:16And if you had a Pepsi bottle cap with that number, you won a million pesos.

00:22Now, a million pesos in 1992 was life-changing for the average Filipino.

00:28So this contest became very popular.

00:31Will you be the next millionaire?

00:33Families would stockpile Pepsi bottle caps in their homes.

00:36Many people would root through dumpsters trying to find winning caps.

00:41According to Pepsi, half of the country's population was actively participating in the contest.

00:46And it was because of this popularity that Pepsi decided to extend Number Fever for an additional five weeks.

00:53And this is where things went terribly wrong.

00:56You see, throughout the contest, Pepsi was in complete control of how many winners there were.

01:02They relied on a computer program to seed two winning caps into bottling plants.

01:07Two winning caps meant that there could only be two winners, and Pepsi would stay within their budget.

01:13But something went wrong after they extended the contest.

01:17The computer program glitched, causing some numbers to be mixed up.

01:21And on May 25th, 1992, at 6pm, the Channel 2 Evening News called the winning number 349.

01:29And while there were only supposed to be two winners, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos began to celebrate.

01:36You see, 349 was already designated as a non-winning number.

01:41And because of this, bottling plants were free to print that number as much as they wanted.

01:46This resulted in over 600,000 349 caps circulating in the Philippines.

01:53349 was such a common cap that many people had more than one.

01:59That night, the streets went wild with celebration.

02:02They were all rich and could finally stop worrying about money.

02:07Hundreds of people rushed to the Pepsi factory with their winning caps.

02:11It soon had to be shut down and guarded by police.

02:14The company quickly realized that they had messed up big time.

02:18Pepsi executives had a meeting in the middle of the night to try and come up with a solution.

02:23It would have cost them tens of billions of dollars to honor each winning cap.

02:28So instead, they put the blame on the computer and offered 500 pesos for each winning cap.

02:35Now, 500 pesos was only around 18 dollars.

02:38This was 0.05% of the original prize.

02:42And while some took them up on this offer, most refused and became even more angry.

02:48They didn't care about some computer error.

02:51Pepsi was a multi-billion dollar corporation.

02:54In their eyes, they had to honor the full prize amount.

02:57But Pepsi didn't budge and violent protests and riots broke out.

03:02Ultimately leaving five people dead and dozens injured.

03:06349 winners stormed the Pepsi factories, throwing Molotov cocktails into the windows

03:12and bombing Pepsi trucks that drove by.

03:14Over the next year, the angry mob took a more organized approach to fight Pepsi.

03:20Coalition 349 was a group of winners that took legal action against the company.

03:25They elected a local preacher named Del Fiero as their leader.

03:28He rounded up over 800 349 winners in an attempt to sue Pepsi for over 400 million dollars.

03:36Now, the chaos continued well into 1993.

03:39At which point, a new twist in the story started circulating.

03:44Old newspaper headlines suggested that Pepsi was somehow responsible for bombing their own trucks.

03:51These headlines were based on a testimony from a police officer.

03:55He alleged that in order to paint Coalition 349 as terrorists and damage their position in court,

04:01Pepsi hired mercenaries to infiltrate these groups and cause the riots.

04:06More testimonies surfaced of people claiming that Pepsi had paid them to start trouble and cause mayhem.

04:12A Pepsi lawyer quickly denied the allegations.

04:15And that was basically the end of it.

04:18In 1993, the court finally put an arrest warrant out for nine Pepsi executives.

04:24This was a huge win for Coalition 349.

04:27But unfortunately, it was one of their only.

04:30In the following months, almost all of the civil suits and criminal complaints were tossed out of court.

04:36And in 2006, the court officially closed the book on all of the remaining court cases.

04:42They found that Pepsi had not been negligent in the number fever disaster.

04:46When it was all said and done, Pepsi only had to pay one small fine of 150,000 pesos.

04:53Many Filipinos who experienced number fever are still traumatized to this day.

04:58Even mentioning the word Pepsi around certain groups is frowned upon.

05:03Pepsi was recently asked for their response to the number fever disaster.

05:07And they came out with this statement.

05:09These events took place almost 30 years ago.

05:12And none of the executives familiar with this program are at PepsiCo anymore.

05:16We deeply regret any pain and suffering our mistake caused to the people of the Philippines.

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