"Pepsi has had a long and sometimes controversial history with promotions over the years. They were famously sued for not providing a customer with a Harrier Jet after he collected enough points under the rules of the Pepsi Points contest in the 1990s. In 2017, during the height of the Black Lives Matter movement, Pepsi ran a campaign featuring Kendall Jenner alleviating police tensions by handing a cop a can of Pepsi as crowds cheered."
"Buy a bottle of Pepsi and look under the cap for a three-digit number. A winning number would later be announced on the news. If you matched the number, you could win one million Philippine pesos. At the time, that was about $68,000 U.S. dollars. The average yearly income in the Philippines was closer to $1,200. This was a literal fortune."
"On the big night, the number was drawn: 349. The population of the Philippines erupted in euphoria. 600,000 people had a cap that said 349. But it was never supposed to be the winner. It was the generic loser number printed on most caps. Something had gone terribly wrong, and it would soon become Pepsi's most misguided campaign ever."
Numbers Fever was a Pepsi promotion in the Philippines that awarded one million Philippine pesos for matching a three-digit cap number. At the time one million pesos equaled roughly $68,000 while average annual income was about $1,200, making the prize extraordinarily large. Reports indicated over 32 million people participated and roughly 600,000 caps showed the drawn number 349. The number 349 was actually a generic loser printed on most caps. The contest had already seen stolen winning caps and murders of Pepsi salespeople; the error precipitated widespread anger and fatalities.
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