A Pepsi promotion in Mexico that seemed designed to address consumer anxiety ended up causing some angst instead. The major causes of anxiety in Mexico, a country beaten down by regular economic crises, are uncertainty about future income, job loss and rising food prices. (For more on anxiety in Mexico, click here to download our AnxietyIndex Mexico report.) In the states of Puebla and Veracruz—where poverty rates are high and families regularly struggle to buy the basics—Pepsi distributors launched a promotion in which people could redeem two specially marked bottle caps at small corner stores for an egg (yes, a fresh egg).
The “Now Pepsi is worth an egg” campaign, which ran during April and part of May, was supported with TV, press and, of course, posters outside the corner stores. Problems began to surface when shopkeepers would not redeem the Pepsi caps, even those that displayed the promotional materials outside. Consumers started blaming Pepsi, though the point-of-sale materials stated that Pepsi was not responsible for the availability of eggs.
The idea of demonstrating the brand’s empathy and solidarity with struggling consumers, and helping them in a real way, was a good one. But Pepsi distributors failed to fully consider the logistics behind the idea. Once a brand launches a promotion, it has to deliver an immaculate implementation, strengthen it, ensure the participation of partners, put monitoring and control programs in place, provide a call center for consumers and so on. In this case, something that could have been historical became hysterical.
Photo Credit: dos tapas un huevo? by ~brickarms on deviantART
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