Pepsi-iTunes Promo: 5 Million Songs

[MacBytes]

Category: News and Press Releases
Link: Pepsi-iTMS contest produces weak redemption numbers (http://www.macbytes.com/link.php?sid=20040428160814)
Posted on MacBytes.com (http://www.macbytes.com)

Approved by Mudbug

[ALoLA]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?

[Belisarius]

I imagine the redemption rate was pretty poor considering how terrible Pepsi's distribution was. Throughout the entire promotion, I never saw even one bottle in any of my local grocery stores. In fact, it was pretty much hit-or-miss in local convenience stores as to whether or not I'd find iTMS caps.

I pretty much dring Diet Coke exclusively (as soda goes), but I was ready and willing to drink nothing but Diet Pepsi throughout the promotion. I only wish Pepsi could've delivered.

[1macker1]

sheesh, only 5 million out of 100 million. That's not a good promotion.

[Krizoitz]

sheesh, only 5 million out of 100 million. That's not a good promotion.

Pepsi really shot themselves in the foot on this one, poor distribution really lost them alot of customers.

[grapes911]

I'm a Coke man, but I drank pepsi like crazy. I had over 50 caps and won nothing. I thought I heard it was 1 in 3 wins. Maybe it was like 1 in 100 wins so stead of 100 million wins, it was really 10 million. 5 mil out of 10 mil ain't bad.

[MacRumors]

Cnet reports (http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5201676.html) that Pepsi and Apple gave away 5 million of the potentially 100 million songs during the Pepsi/iTunes promotion.

The 5 million songs given away were included in the 70 million total songs announced today during the iTunes conference call.

Unredeemed codes can still be used by April 30th, 2004.

[NusuniAdmin]

Didn't I say only 5-20 million would redeem their songs, oh ya whos yo daddy!!!!

[micvog]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?

I didn't see a single one where I live (just northwest of L.A.). :mad: I am not sure whether it was intentional or not, but Pepsi had some definate logistics problems with this promo on the west coast. On the positive side, I hate Pepsi and wasn't looking forward to drinking the swill. Long live Coca Cola!

EDIT: Not to defend Pepsi, but thinking about this further, the grocery strike in southern California may have somehow impacted distribution of the iTMS caps.

[DreaminDirector]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?

I drink Pepsi anyway and I was ready to buy more than usual, however I only found a few places that had them. Oddly enough, one was a Target.

P.S. - out of like 10 caps, I won once.

[AmigoMac]

Cnet reports (http://news.com.com/2100-1025_3-5201676.html) that Pepsi and Apple gave away 5 million of the potentially 100 million songs during the Pepsi/iTunes promotion.

The 5 million songs given away were included in the 70 million total songs announced today during the iTunes conference call.

Unredeemed codes can still be used by April 30th, 2004.

Bad, Bad, Bad ... 5% only ... I was waiting no less than 20% ...

:( :mad: :eek:

EDIT: Aprox 3 months and? .... Nada? Communication problems with pepsi, steve?

[Awimoway]

I never saw any. SoCal was screwed.

[CompUSAMacNerd]

I wonder who is hoarding the rest :)

[evolu]

5% = redeemed
3% = apple's marketshare


So it looks like some PC users redeemed their free tracks.

wish it was more, but that works!

[winmacguy]

a 5% redemption for the promotion, not exactly a boost in sales. Great idea to start out with but VERY POOR execution from Pepsi.

[eSnow]

Wow 5% only. Kinda cheap promotion...
I wonder if this is because a lot of bottles were not sold in time or because people don't care enough to download yet another kind of software.

[bertagert]

5% = redeemed
3% = apple's marketshare


So it looks like some PC users redeemed their free tracks.

wish it was more, but that works!

That's 5% of 100 million (not 5% of all computers). So, your theory is not correct. Alll 5 million could have come from the Mac community alone.

I think the problem was Pepsi not promoting this give away. 75% of the downloads were probably from the Mac zealots like us. I remember talking about it with friends and they had no idea Pepsi was giving away songs(nor did they care). More tv ads would have made more people play. Either way, pepsi got what they wanted out of this. A lot of air time.

[latergator116]

My local convenience store had them for a couple of weeks, then got rid of them. I think I did pretty well - I won 9 out of 11 caps.

[applemacdude]

I blame sucky ass advertising...

[Awimoway]

I blame Pepsi:


Lousy advertisements
Lack of advertising
Scant and ill-timed distribution

[whfsdude]

Well figure that lots of people don't even use computers, like really use them. People at my school used to give me the caps because many of them ran 98 or were stuck on dial-up. Very few people are able to figure out anything on the computer. Now this is changing but I go to an inner-city school and most people just don't even care. I think broadband will get kids more interested in computers but most of them don't have it. It's not the cost, most of them just don't like change.

[php]

I think the problem might have been that the promotion was only available on bottles of Pepsi. If the promotion included Pepsi in cans, I would have tried it and I'll bet many other people would have also.

[Flowbee]

I wonder who is hoarding the rest :)

Your local landfill.

[jrv3034]

Wow 5% only. Kinda cheap promotion...
I wonder if this is because a lot of bottles were not sold in time or because people don't care enough to download yet another kind of software.


You're probably right. I didn't see iTunes bottles in NYC until the end of February/beginning of May. I'm sure if the promo lasted until May 30th instead of April 30th, we'd see that number climb up at least by 1 or 2 million more.

And also, most non-techie people don't care enough to download iTunes in the first place.

[iggyb]

Geesh. What an abysmal failure. Of course, since the SuperBowl, I think I saw a promotional commercial once. I think.

:(

[Mudbug]

never saw 1 cap. not one.

I'd happily redeem the other 95 million that are floating around somewhere.

[johnnowak]

I STILL haven't even seen one of these bottled ANYWHERE in Greenwich Village. What the crap kind of promotion is this!?

[Flowbee]

I'm a Coke man, but I drank pepsi like crazy. I had over 50 caps and won nothing. I thought I heard it was 1 in 3 wins. Maybe it was like 1 in 100 wins so stead of 100 million wins, it was really 10 million. 5 mil out of 10 mil ain't bad.

You must have the worst luck east of the Mississippi. Either that, or there was someone at the store you were buying from who was using the 'tipping' trick to find the winners before you got there.

I bought 12 bottles, won 6 songs. Only a few stores in my area carried the iTMS bottles, though.

[Windowlicker]

do we have any statistics of other campaigns? I mean, is 5% really that little? I wouldn't think any other campaign would be more than 15% (MAX!!).. still, I would have thought abnout something around 10%..

[Rower_CPU]

I agree on the distribution problems. Southern California didn't see any bottles for what, a month into the promo? Big Gulp and Slurpee cups were around at 7-11s, but I doubt most people bothered cutting them to see if they won or not.

Besides, my winning percentage was something like 15% - nowhere near the 33% mark. What gives!?!?! ;)

[Lancetx]

I blame Pepsi:


Lousy advertisements
Lack of advertising
Scant and ill-timed distribution


My thoughts exactly. Oh well, I never bought Pepsi before this promo and I won't be buying any more now that it's over either.

[wordmunger]

I have to say, the five percent doesn't surprise me. When I drink a Pepsi, I'm not in a position to download music. I might be out shopping, or in the park taking a walk. I'm not going to hang on to a winning bottle cap for a lousy single song.

It's the same thing with contests at McDonalds, etc. If I win a free order of fries, I tend just to throw it away--I'm at McDonalds, so I've just eaten, and even if I did manage to save it for next time, why would I cash in my free fries--generally the value meal costs the same as buying a big mac and a coke and getting the fries for free.

[Lancetx]

They were only estimating a 15-20% redemption rate initially anyway. However, that was before Pepsi bungled the distribution though. I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

[pgwalsh]

I think from from a marketing prospective 5% is pretty good. They usually only expect a 1% to 3% return on marketing campaigns.

You have to keep in mind that many people do not own a computer; many people do not know what iTunes is; many people are lazy and will never figure it out. When you start accounting for those people and how many people drink such and such softdrinks, your expectations will lower.

I'll check myself today.. I have a bunch of newphews and neices that drink soda, but I doubt they know what itunes is...

[Performfreak]

I ended up getting 30 free songs from it. I go to school at a college where Pepsi has exclusive rights to be the only soft drink sold. I think I might've bought a total of three bottles of Pepsi, the other 27 came from caps I found.

[Some_Big_Spoon]

This has been said, and will be said time and time again: Apple's advertising is appauling.

If they had bothered to show commercials more than once (superbowl), maybe do some print ads, radio ads, then they would have reached their goal. they chose not to do this. The same goes for their hardware and software. If they advertised, they'd sell and be in a better position.

Steve's view of Apple is that it's like an exclusive club: so cool that you on't have to advertise. People will just show up (buy) because it's so cool, even though they know nothing about it. That;s not a way to run a publicly traded company fighting the sperad of DRM and insecure systems (M$)

*cue newbies and Apple Store references, but i'm right.

[fluidinclusion]

Well, 100 million isn't that many, so there are a lot of places to be distributed. I redeemed about 37 caps, assembled from myself and coworkers, but many stores here in Michigan (convenience stores) still have unsold bottles - they didn't show up right away). Still more perplexing is that our local Meijer Store (a huge store and a regional competitor to WalMart) did not have even ONE of these bottles, at least that I saw. I wonder if stores can opt in or out of promotional sodas, perhaps the price is different?

I would echo the sentiment about many people on Windows 98 (or mac os < or =9). They can't claim the codes, even if they wanted to. Everyone I work with, except three people, have Windows 98 or older and didn't know about the promotion. Of the others, one is a Mac OS X user, but wasn't interested in iTunes. Another has XP, but doesn't have an internet connection and also wasn't interested. The third has XP, but had no idea about the promotion.

To be honest, I expected 10-20 million to be redeemed, but 5 million (still a bit to go) isn't horrendous, considering that most people ignore ALL soft drink promotions. The only other promotion I ever paid attention to was the Pepsi name game in the 1980's (which won me $30).

Many people who are really into music either already bought CD's or got copies from friends. Die hard computer users that are really into music also are likely to have downloaded MP3's or Windows Media files (the kids in my neighborhood sure have). No one gets revenue from that (except maybe Kazaa advertisers).

At least Apple has 5 million more songs added to it's total. At worst, I'd give the 70% of their goal a "C" grade. Lots of competition and lack of awareness mean that this will take a while.

I'd really like to see the total numbers and some sales charts through time for all sites/services. Hopefully iTunes can stay on top.

Keep moving forward. (I just got a 12" Powerbook on Monday, by the way. My first Powerbook and my second Apple laptop (had a clamshell before). It sure is small. I like it a lot (Forrest Gump voice).

[Jiffy_526]

I think the pepsi idea works i get all sorts of free music

:rolleyes:

[Nny]

I redeemed 59 myself. Would have bought more, but supplies dried up late-February. Had a fun time explaining to my wife why I was buying 99 cent Diet Pepsi 20 oz. bottles six at a time when I could buy a 24 pack of 12 oz. cans for the same price.

[BobVB]

I'm a Coke man, but I drank pepsi like crazy. I had over 50 caps and won nothing. I thought I heard it was 1 in 3 wins. Maybe it was like 1 in 100 wins so stead of 100 million wins, it was really 10 million. 5 mil out of 10 mil ain't bad.

If I got the bottles at the major grocery stores I would get about 1:3 but if I got them at fast food or whatever they didn't have any at all.

Maybe the night time cashiers were using the cheat to take the winners out of circulation for themselves?

[tibor]

Your local landfill.

More like everyone who found out you could game the system. C'mon people, you never heard that you could just look under the cap to see which bottles were winners? STF - I read about it here.

No wonder some of you were zero for however many tries. Other people cleaned the shelves of the winners. I know it happened it my town.

-d

[Rower_CPU]

...
If they had bothered to show commercials more than once (superbowl)

They did. I saw the commercial several times on network TV, as recently as last week.

Agreed on the rest of Apple's marketing, though, but as others have said, Pepsi deserves equal if not more blame for not getting distribution going in time.

[foofan]

I found the best place to win was the 7-eleven cups. Most that I bought during my lunch breaks were winners. I also realized that it is real easy to slightly peel back lip of cup with your fingernail. If you see the word "please" it is a loser. If you see the word "winner" , use that cup. My local 7-11 still has tons of cups.

[pgwalsh]

I found the best place to win was the 7-eleven cups. Most that I bought during my lunch breaks were winners. I also realized that it is real easy to slightly peel back lip of cup with your fingernail. If you see the word "please" it is a loser. If you see the word "winner" , use that cup. My local 7-11 still has tons of cups.Cheater!
:p

I never bought one... I'm not a softdrink fan.. .Now if they did it with beer or bottled water, then I might win.

[Dahl]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?
Worst campaign ever ?

I never saw a single bottle and only found out late that 7-eleven were the place to get them.

[TWinbrook46636]

"Worst... Promo... Ever..."
- Comic Book Guy

[a_iver]

If they had bothered to show commercials more than once (superbowl), maybe do some print ads, radio ads, then they would have reached their goal. they chose not to do this. The same goes for their hardware and software. If they advertised, they'd sell and be in a better position.


Well. Kinda, sort of. Think of all the appearance they make in TV shows like Drew Carey, and in the background in commercials. The only problem is seeing them in the background doesn't make me want to buy one.

To me it kind of seems like Apple thinks they are more popular than they are. If they did have at least 30% computer users using macs it might make more sense. Also I did hear a few commercials on radio for iTunes as well as several iPod Giveaways.

But if they advertised on TV as much as Dell, well then holy crap that would be awesome. But then again, that is a lot of money for that kind of advertising.

[Jovian9]

No grocery stores carried these in my area.......only some convenience stores....and that took until the 3rd week of March to happen. I would have bought a lot more but it became too inconvenient to go to places I do not normally go just to find these pepsi bottles. Very lousy distribution.

[LaMerVipere]

I didn't see ANY here in Chicago! :(

And I was all ready to buy like truckloads of Pepsi too. (I'm a coke man though)

At least now I can go back to hating Pepsi. :)

Does anyone remember the lil Pepsi/Coke talk between the girl and her teacher from the movie "Election"? ;)

[JohnGillilan]

I did alright . . . :)

http://www-scf.usc.edu/~jgillila/

[bar italia]

I blame Pepsi:


Lousy advertisements
Lack of advertising
Scant and ill-timed distribution


Sounds a lot like Apple.

[contempt]

i'm sure some brilliant person out there can figure out the algorithm for generating these codes. I mean, there are millions of un-redeemed songs that's waiting for all of us to download!

[mrsebastian]

that promotion was pure [bleep]!!! distribution was certainly a problem, but the lack of advertising was horrible. so bad that i can barely remember the stupid commercial they had at the superbowl (that was during the superbowl wasn't it?).

secondly, like many others have said, i never even saw a promotional pepsi bottle anywhere, except for the cups from 7-11 and out of the 20 or so i bought, i only got 2 winners :(

[ITR 81]

5 million isn't good.
We can only hope some are holding out until the 29th or the 30th to redeem all their free tracks.

I won 13 out of 18 bottles which isn't too bad.

We had bottles a few days before the SB even started.

Maybe if Pepsi would have ran the commerical some more or if maybe they have some instore promo's...


Either way iTMS should hit 100 mil. by mid July at the rate of 2.7 mil. a week.
But it could be sooner if iTMS Europe goes online in June.

[seamuskrat]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?
Not in Los Angeles. I am a regular Diet pepsi buyer and i but a ton each week. I have YET to see any iTunes bottles. I finaly saw some 16 ounce bottles from a vending machine. But they never made it to any grocery store chains.
I called the reginal pepsi distributors, and they blamed it on the now over grocery store strike and lack of demand. yet I noticed last night we have the Skrek 2 bottles, and that promo stars April 30th. Go figure.

[J-mac]

I live in a rural area of Arizona and we had plenty of bottles with the iTunes caps. I was surprised to hear people in metropolitan areas couldn’t find them. They were very popular in my office (our network is all Mac). I didn’t think Pepsi did a very good job of advertising the promotion, probably because they had distribution problems. :(

[Snowy_River]

This has been said, and will be said time and time again: Apple's advertising is appauling.

If they had bothered to show commercials more than once (superbowl), maybe do some print ads, radio ads, then they would have reached their goal. they chose not to do this. The same goes for their hardware and software. If they advertised, they'd sell and be in a better position.

Steve's view of Apple is that it's like an exclusive club: so cool that you on't have to advertise. People will just show up (buy) because it's so cool, even though they know nothing about it. That;s not a way to run a publicly traded company fighting the sperad of DRM and insecure systems (M$)

*cue newbies and Apple Store references, but i'm right.

Just as a reality check (and please note, I'm not a newbie), this had nothing to do with Apple's advertising. This was a Pepsi promotion. That was made clear from the beginning. While this was a deal between Apple and Pepsi, Pepsi was the one responsible for advertising the promotion. Pepsi was the one responsible for distributing the bottles (or is there some way that you want to blame that on Apple, too?).

Yes, this promotion was a flop, but the flop wasn't Apple's fault. They upheld their end of the bargain.

[nagromme]

A failure? Hardly. Not as huge as it could have been, but still a good thing.

It was lots of good exposure for Apple, and certainly drew some people immediately--plus lots more down the road as part of mindshare-building.

I too thought it would do better--until I realized it was only on single bottles. I buy packs, and save more than .33 per bottle in doing so--so although I expected to redeem many caps, I redeemed NONE. (I prefer Coke, but boycott them for their pollution in India.)

Pepsi's choices are what determined the outcome, not Apple--and Pepsi may or may not have made money on the deal. But Apple surely did--they got paid for the music AND got the publicity! Including TV advertising they didn't pay a dime for.

[rjwill246]

While I can't speak for the whole time the promotion was on, the yellow-topped bottles were seen in only a few stores and one of the major supermarkets got them in during the last week of March in the Reno area... not very good on Pepsi's part and odd given that this was planned for months.

[FriarTuck]

Pepsi's fault. Distribution stunk.

But... I was 4 out of 5 on Liter bottles, and 3 out of 5 on 20 ouncers.

[dukemeiser]

As of right now I've redeemed 195 songs....yes 195, that's not a typo. I'd say close to 130 were found/given to me. I would raid the recycling bins at college and got several caps. Two Pepsioholics gave me all of their caps that they had won. The rest of them I bought. My area had really good distribution of caps.

[mullmann]

I never saw any promo bottles here in Houston. Not to say that they didn't exist, but I'm at two large grocery stores each once a week anyway and I've been looking for months. Terrible, terrible job by Pepsi.

[estevan2737]

From Pepsi's perspective...they received a ton of press, sold some sugar water to people who normally purchase competitor products, and only had to pay Apple for 5% of the total downloads they were giving away.

I suspect they are reasonably happy with the results.

Had no problem getting the bottles in Phoenix and only purchased one prior to learning about the tipping. I think I ended up with 12 free songs.

Speaking of which...Ben and Jerry's is giving away 50,000 free songs to those who take an Oath to Vote in the upcoming US Presidential Election. My wife and I will be dld'ing our freebies tonight. :)

[jeffgarden]

Sorry if someone else already said this, I only read the first page of replies

but isn't it kind of funny that the redemption rate was almost identical to the commonly used market share for apple computers ? not funny haha, just...interesting

[DeadEye686]

The distribution of the Pepsis was unfortunate. I was lucky, though -- I bought approximately 20 bottles and won 8 free songs.

[Blue Moon]

I drink Pepsi anyway and I was ready to buy more than usual, however I only found a few places that had them. Oddly enough, one was a Target.

P.S. - out of like 10 caps, I won once.

The caps appeared in Santa Cruz about a month ago whereas the Pepsi bottles started appearing at my local markets (I live in Los Angeles) about a week and a half ago. So Cal definitely got the short end of the stick but the bottles did make it here.

The greatest thing about this whole promotion was that you could actually see which bottles were winners before you opened the bottle (so I never lost). My g-friend (who lives in Santa Cruz) works at a coffee shop where she could take as many Pepsi bottles as she wanted and so together we got about 40-50 free songs. She also would ask people for their caps if they weren't going to use 'em.

[Macmaniac]

I did not see a single bottle that offered the promotion, and I'm in NJ, the junk food and soda capital of the world. Shocking! I never saw the ad for the promotion after the super bowl, way to go Pepsi, way to suck!

[Flowbee]

More like everyone who found out you could game the system. C'mon people, you never heard that you could just look under the cap to see which bottles were winners? STF - I read about it here.

No wonder some of you were zero for however many tries. Other people cleaned the shelves of the winners. I know it happened it my town.

-d

Well, not as many people were doing this as you seem to think. With only 5% of the winning caps redeemed, it's pretty clear that most people who got a winner either didn't know what to do with it or didn't care.

[bertagert]

This was Pepsi's promo, not Apple's. Apple has nothing to do with it besides the itunes part.
From a successful ad view, Pepsi got a ton of press and probably sold an extra 10 million bottles. Sounds like they made out quite well.
I redeemed the 200 max limit. Some bought, most came from the office trash. Not as gross as you think. My co-workers put all Pepsi bottles into my itunes recycle can for me :D.


Yes, it didn't look good for Apple as some news sites would have you think. But, both Pepsi and Apple made out on this deal. So, stop complaining that it was a bad promo.

[Blue Moon]

Well, not as many people were doing this as you seem to think. With only 5% of the winning caps redeemed, it's pretty clear that most people who got a winner either didn't know what to do with it or didn't care.

Or...as others have suggested, distrubution was incredibly slow.

[Dragon88]

Well the promotion went pretty well in my case. I usually buy an assortment of pepsi and coke products, but since I first saw the iTunes giveaway bottles I've been buying Pepsi. I think I won about 5-6 songs, but it got me to download the software and try it. I had only been a little interested before, but hey free songs, why not? I've now purchased about 50 songs and I just ordered a 15gb iPod.

[mklos]

Geesh. What an abysmal failure. Of course, since the SuperBowl, I think I saw a promotional commercial once. I think.

:(

Exactly! Pepsi never even advertised this promotion. So how are people going to know or remember about it. Now I was a fortunate one who got these bottles everywhere in my area (Upstate NY) and even in pop machines and I bought I'd say 10 bottles of Pepsi with these caps on them and I won 8 times. I'm not really a Pepsi drinker. I wish they would of done this promotion with Coca-Cola instead of Pepsi.

[Wonder Boy]

apple got their (doctor evil voice, with finger near mouth) 100 million dollars, so it wasnt a total loss.

btw-0-2 on caps.

[benoda]

I didn't see a single one where I live (just northwest of L.A.). :mad: I am not sure whether it was intentional or not, but Pepsi had some definate logistics problems with this promo on the west coast. On the positive side, I hate Pepsi and wasn't looking forward to drinking the swill. Long live Coca Cola!

EDIT: Not to defend Pepsi, but thinking about this further, the grocery strike in southern California may have somehow impacted distribution of the iTMS caps.


I didn't find any until about 2 weeks ago (Culver City). I bought 2 bottles - won two songs. I would've bought a heck of a lot more had I been able to find them. A friend and I even drove around one night trying to find some with zero luck. Motarola sucks...errr Pepsi sucks.

[Sonofhaig]

I'm sure we'll be seeing lots of Pepsi itunes caps over the next two months.
Won't that be fun? Thanks Pepsi, good job! :rolleyes:

[ThomasJefferson]

Crash and Burn, Steve.

[mklos]

This has been said, and will be said time and time again: Apple's advertising is appauling.

If they had bothered to show commercials more than once (superbowl), maybe do some print ads, radio ads, then they would have reached their goal. they chose not to do this. The same goes for their hardware and software. If they advertised, they'd sell and be in a better position.

Steve's view of Apple is that it's like an exclusive club: so cool that you on't have to advertise. People will just show up (buy) because it's so cool, even though they know nothing about it. That;s not a way to run a publicly traded company fighting the sperad of DRM and insecure systems (M$)

*cue newbies and Apple Store references, but i'm right.

This wasn't Apple's promotion, it was Pepsi's so Apple has no reason to advertise it. Apple just provided the service (iTunes/iTunes Music Store) for the promotion. It's Pepsi's fault that they didn't distribute/advertise this promotion. Apple didn't loose anything from it because they didn't have anything to loose in the first place. So quit blaming Apple for everything...this isn't the first time you've done this!

[mklos]

apple got their (doctor evil voice, with finger near mouth) 100 million dollars, so it wasnt a total loss.

btw-0-2 on caps.

Well they didn't exactly get the $100 Million...they only got the money for the songs that were redeemed. So actually they only got $5 Million and out of that they probably only got about 5 or 10% or it and the record labels/artists got the rest.

[bitfactory]

I'm a Coke man, but I drank pepsi like crazy. I had over 50 caps and won nothing. I thought I heard it was 1 in 3 wins. Maybe it was like 1 in 100 wins so stead of 100 million wins, it was really 10 million. 5 mil out of 10 mil ain't bad.

over 50 and won NOTHING? you must have been buying from stores that had someone who "tipped" a lot. 50 without winning is damn near impossible.

[jbembe]

I redeemed 59 myself. Would have bought more, but supplies dried up late-February. Had a fun time explaining to my wife why I was buying 99 cent Diet Pepsi 20 oz. bottles six at a time when I could buy a 24 pack of 12 oz. cans for the same price.

yeah, I had one of those conversations with my wife as well!!

I still have this insidious plan to go to my local 7-11 tommorrow or friday and try to purchase the remainder of the big gulp cups with entries before the redeem deadline passes. I wonder if they'll go for it!!

[itsa]

They showed the ad's on TV like crazy and the stores just started caring them last week where I live. I'm a pepsi lover... but they suck right now.

[marco114]

Either I am just way lucky... or we got all the Winners. These were out of a vending machine, so there was no peeking, but most of the people in our building said that they also had a really high percentage of "wins". We are in North Carolina.. we had them for about two months. It stopped back about a month ago.

[Flowbee]

Or...as others have suggested, distrubution was incredibly slow.

Highly unlikely that only 5% of the bottles made it into stores.

[elo]

I played 18 times and won 17. Seriously. That, to me, says something was wrong with their distribution.

Even so, the promotion was a flop. Since I was winning so much, I started asking around to see who else (who went to the same convenience store) had won. Several of my friends said they had, but all of them had thrown away their caps because they didn't know what it was or thought it was something Mac only (just because of the Apple logo). They were very surprised to hear that I had gotten free music out of this, as I use a Windows machine myself.

I think part of the problem was the lack of associated advertising. Pepsi's Super Bowl ad was unenlightening and I never saw it repeated. Nothing seemed to tell people they could play the tunes on their PC, with or without an iPod.

Apple should try more cross-marketing promotions, but it may not be able to rely on the other company to do all of the publicity.

elo

[rosalindavenue]

I don't like Pepsi products-- I bought one bottle-- it was a winner-- I put it on the counter by my laptop to redeem and my wife threw it away-- story of my life. :(

[itsbetteronamac]

I'm a Coke man, but I drank pepsi like crazy. I had over 50 caps and won nothing. I thought I heard it was 1 in 3 wins. Maybe it was like 1 in 100 wins so stead of 100 million wins, it was really 10 million. 5 mil out of 10 mil ain't bad.

I bought like 30 or more and I only lost maybe 5 times. So it was at lease one in three. Also I was one of the first cities to get the bottle caps. Milwaukee Wisconsin. I started getting them even before the promotion started.

[iBot]

The pepsi promo arrived late in my L.A. neighborhood, but I've been buying itunes Pepsis for about a month now. You can still find them all over Hollywood and in the Miracle Mile district. Rite Aid and Ralphs have them (and it's really easy to do the bottle tipping trick to make sure you only buy winning caps). I'm gonna make one more trip this week to Rite Aid to get another half dozen winning caps. Gotta get the rest of the Nellie McKay album.

Hint: When you tip the bottle to the proper angle and "look up its skirt" to the underside of the cap, if you see the word "Song," it's a winner. However, if you see the word, "Again," don't bother buying -- it's a loser.

[ingenious]

i never saw them here in Kansas. it took looking in a shell station over spring break in Houston on vacation to find two bottles, one of which i picked. i did not (afair) look under the lid until after i bought it either :p . So i was 1 for 1... wow i could mess with stats and say i was 100% which would be true, but misleading.

[jaw04005]

None here in the Memphis area. I think Pepsi did a horrible job of distribution.

[MarkCollette]

Please please please, all of you people who drink a lot of coke or pepsi: STOP NOW!

Your body, and your dentist will thank you. Besides the cavities, the main threats from drinking so much pop are osteoporosis, from the pop leaching the calcium from your bones, and malnutrition, as you ingest empty calories, with no nutritional value.

A better choice is to drink unsweetened fruit juice.

But, if you ignore that piece of advice, please, at the very least:

1. Brush you teeth several times a day
2. Take multivitamins that include calcium

[bousozoku]

Please please please, all of you people who drink a lot of coke or pepsi: STOP NOW!

Your body, and your dentist will thank you. Besides the cavities, the main threats from drinking so much pop are osteoporosis, from the pop leaching the calcium from your bones, and malnutrition, as you ingest empty calories, with no nutritional value.

A better choice is to drink unsweetened fruit juice.

But, if you ignore that piece of advice, please, at the very least:

1. Brush you teeth several times a day
2. Take multivitamins that include calcium

Does your post have anything to do with the promotion, which is the thread's topic? It's nice that you care so much but considering that you're completely off-topic, your post could be deleted. (So could mine since I'm responding to yours!) :D

I never saw any iTunes bottles in the Orlando area. I'm not a Pepsi drinker but I usually look for Apple-related promotions.

[FoxyKaye]

I found the best place to win was the 7-eleven cups. Most that I bought during my lunch breaks were winners. I also realized that it is real easy to slightly peel back lip of cup with your fingernail. If you see the word "please" it is a loser. If you see the word "winner" , use that cup. My local 7-11 still has tons of cups.

LOL - me too! I never had time enough to exploit this to its fullest when I was dashing in and out of a 7-11, but by peeking under the lip I'm 2 for 2 on slurpies. :p

I never saw a single promo Pepsi bottle after checking in three corner stores and two supermarkets in San Francisco on a fairly regular basis. If it weren't for 7-11 cups, I'd never have participated at all. :rolleyes:

Pepsi really screwed the pooch on this one. :mad:

[Inspector Lee]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?

The 7-11 here in East Lansing, MI also carried the cups... for a few weeks. The advert stayed up the whole time but no more cups. When they ran out of cups, I asked the manager if they were getting more and he said he had no idea. I liked this option because I could get a Coke.

I didn't see any bottles in the grocery stores either. It was late March and they were still doling out Super Bowl promos. I could get the bottles virtually anywhere on campus but I never saw a six or eight-pack in a store. Still redeemed about 30...

[fpnc]

I live south of Raleigh/Durham North Carolina and I never saw a single iTunes-Pepsi cap in either of the two grocery stores that I use. I specifically checked several times each month and never saw a single iTunes/yellow bottle cap.

This seems a bit ironic, since I remember Steve Jobs going out of his way to personally thank the two (or three) persons who apparently struck this iTunes giveaway deal with Pepsi. Obviously, he gave praise too soon as I think it's obvious that the promotion was badly run (or that the bottles were poorly distributed). I've also heard that some market areas actually decided not to carry the promotion.

[AidenShaw]

Come on, guys and gals - all the talk about 'Tunes is forgetting that Apple is a computer company! What about next week's new G5 Powerbooks?....

Ooops, maybe Apple forgot too. ;)

It's funny to see all the talk about how important market share is in the areas where Apple is gaining it ('Tunes and the 'Pod)...and how unimportant it is where they're losing it (computers).

spin-meisters...

[Get A Mac]

I attend the University of Virginia, and everybody in my dorm uses iTunes and knows about the promotion. UVA is a Pepsi campus, so there were iTunes bottles galore!

Unfortunately, I don't know a single person who downloaded a song. I asked them why, and they said that they didn't want to give Apple a credit card number and e-mail address just to download a free song. After all, they can go on Kazaa or Limewire and download songs without registering for anything.

This is an even larger problem with kids who don't have a credit card. I'm sure that the largest consumers of 20 oz. sodas from 7-11 and vending machines are young people. Adults drink a lot less soda, and tend to buy 2-liter bottles or 12-can packs from the supermarket.

Nevertheless, this didn't bother me, because all my friends gave me their winning caps. :)

[flyfish29]

sheesh, only 5 million out of 100 million. That's not a good promotion.

depends on who you are talking about. As far as marketing goes, Pepsi should be happy with the numbers. Redemption rates are usually very very low for things such as this and even for mail in rebates. I would bet that the sales of pepsi rose over the promotion period where they had adequate distribution. I also wonder if all pepsi bottlers took part in the promotion. Many migh have had so many bottles left over from the march madness promotion that they skipped this one...which often happens when independent businesses (in this case bottlers) are involved with a national brand. Many might have thought that by the time they cleared out the other promotion this one would not have enough time to run until the deadline came about.

In NH I was 23 for 23 in free songs...course most of them were Sierra Mist and easy to view the four lines of text vs the three for non-winners. The bottles were all over here for the last two + months! In fact, the best deal I got was 14 for 14 and each 20 oz. bottle only cost me $.69 for the Sierra Mist! What a deal! :D

[TomSmithMacEd]

I'll tell you why. Kids don't care!! They grew up on downloading for free. They don't know any better. It turned out great for me, becuase I got so many free caps when I don't drink carbonated beverages.

So bad for Pepsi and Apple. Good for me!

[frankly]

I'm a Coke man, but I drank pepsi like crazy. I had over 50 caps and won nothing. I thought I heard it was 1 in 3 wins. Maybe it was like 1 in 100 wins so stead of 100 million wins, it was really 10 million. 5 mil out of 10 mil ain't bad.

Did the bottles you were buying even have the iTunes logo on them???

1 in 3 caps did win. They even had the caps on 1 liter bottles here. I didn't realize that until I bought one and won without even paying attention to the label on the bottle.

Later, Frank

[frankly]

This has been said, and will be said time and time again: Apple's advertising is appauling.

If they had bothered to show commercials more than once (superbowl), maybe do some print ads, radio ads, then they would have reached their goal. they chose not to do this. The same goes for their hardware and software. If they advertised, they'd sell and be in a better position.

Steve's view of Apple is that it's like an exclusive club: so cool that you on't have to advertise. People will just show up (buy) because it's so cool, even though they know nothing about it. That;s not a way to run a publicly traded company fighting the sperad of DRM and insecure systems (M$)

*cue newbies and Apple Store references, but i'm right.

Two things:

I see iTunes/iPod ads all the time when I'm watching television.

This was Pepsi's promotion. Why should Apple pay to advertise it? That is why they call it a cross promotion. You get benefit from someone else's promotion. When McDonald's gives away a car, a cruise, or anything else you don't see those companies advertising McDonald's.......

Later, Frank

[frankly]

I did not see a single bottle that offered the promotion, and I'm in NJ, the junk food and soda capital of the world. Shocking! I never saw the ad for the promotion after the super bowl, way to go Pepsi, way to suck!

And yet there is another guy from NJ that won so many times that he is giving away 8 codes over on the MacAddict forums.

Later, Frank

[OnaMacSince1989]

Looks like a lot of winning caps were in Central Ohio...I redeemed over a dozen caps and didn't really drink any more than normal. Seemed to find a winner better than 1/3rd of the time. I also never had any trouble finding the iTunes bottles in stores. With this type of 'contest', a 5% redemption rate is actually very good. I'm sure Apple is very pleased with the results. :)

[frankly]

As of right now I've redeemed 195 songs....yes 195, that's not a typo. I'd say close to 130 were found/given to me. I would raid the recycling bins at college and got several caps. Two Pepsioholics gave me all of their caps that they had won. The rest of them I bought. My area had really good distribution of caps.

I thought the limit was 100?

[bertagert]

I thought the limit was 100?

10 songs a day and 200 total.

[evilgEEk]

Yet another victim of horrible distribution. Not a single iTMS pepsi sold in or around where I live. I did buy four bottles of Sierra Mist (didn't win once) at one point because I was on vacation in a larger city.

I hate all cola drinks, Dew is my nector of choice, but the caps were only on Pepsi cola and Sierra Mist...at least what I saw anyway.

Absolutely horrible, way to go Pepsi. Too bad Apple won't extend the deadline.

[mjtomlin]

It sounded good when Steve announced it, "300 million bottles - 100 million winning caps" Apparently most of those bottles are still sitting in a warehouse somewhere? Some stores in Cleveland, OH had the bottles, but not many. I actually don't drink Pepsi, but a friend kept giving me his caps ... 17 free downloads, oh yea!

[nagromme]

It's not Apple's deadline to extend. It's a Pepsi promo, Pepsi pays for the redeemed songs, and Pepsi controls the details.

The funny part will come when people find iTunes bottles after it's over, and miss the fine print, and download iTunes anyway. They'll then find a free song from Apple on the home page, and be hooked on iTunes after all :)

So Apple still has lots of free iTunes ads on Pepsi labels :)

[Trimix]

sheesh, only 5 million out of 100 million. That's not a good promotion.

Sorry, but the opposite is true - lots of bruhahaha, and look what it cost them - zilch, so for Pepsi this is a sure winner. Lots of attention for relatively little investment. :rolleyes:

[Windowlicker]

I have to say, the five percent doesn't surprise me. When I drink a Pepsi, I'm not in a position to download music. I might be out shopping, or in the park taking a walk. I'm not going to hang on to a winning bottle cap for a lousy single song.

It's the same thing with contests at McDonalds, etc. If I win a free order of fries, I tend just to throw it away--I'm at McDonalds, so I've just eaten, and even if I did manage to save it for next time, why would I cash in my free fries--generally the value meal costs the same as buying a big mac and a coke and getting the fries for free.

my point exactly. you couldn't have said it better.

[SiliconAddict]

Don't know. Don't care. I had a friend give me their cap and that account for 100% of the tunes I obtained for free. *shrugs* its a buck. Its not like I'd win the lotto so all told I purchased 1 Pepsi to try my luck which in that case wasn't that lucky. Now if we were talking winning an album (9.99+ value) that would be a different matter. As it stand *shrugs* don't really care. I have a feeling that most people who did win a tune probably felt the same.
Look at it this way. Someone walks off the street picks up a winning bottle. What is required to redeem that .99 cent song? Install software on your computer, create an iTunes account, figure out how to redeem the track (I've had a few friend who have won who couldn't figure out how to redeem the track. Never mind that it was staring them right in the face on iTMS's home page.) and purchase a single song. That's a whole heck of a lot of work for a .99 cent track.
Or maybe not. Who knows.

[Windowlicker]

I would raid the recycling bins at college and got several caps.

haha! you have any idea how silly that sounds?!! ;) but I have to admit the volume you redeemed those tunes is quite impressive..

[Lancer]

Atleast people in the US had some chance to get free iTunes.

Outside the US after 1 year we still have no iTMS, we had no Pepsi promotion and we can't even access the newly anounced free songs.

[bankshot]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?

I've been seeing them just about everywhere in Orange county and LA county the last week or two. Waaaay too late. Pepsi blames it on the supermarket strike?? Yeah right! :rolleyes: More like that freaking Lakers promotion that went on forever. God I hate the Lakers! :mad: :p

I did play early on with the 7-Eleven cups. Made out just slightly above 33% before I quit. Most music I want is full albums and isn't in the iTMS anyway. Then I found 6 songs I wanted recently so I started getting cups again until the bottles showed up. Amazingly I was 3 for 3 on the bottles without even peeking (well, not as amazing as my 7 for 8 run with the cups one week). Got my 6 songs, so while it's tempting to go grab as many bottles as I can until Friday, I won't.

One thing to look for: some 7-Elevens have a coupon where if you buy a sandwich (you know, in that tiny, tiny section of the store with healthy foods) you get a free Sierra Mist. That's how I got my 3 caps, totally free! Just be sure you don't get the chicken salad sandwich. :eek: The turkey and swiss was MUCH better. :D

[Peej]

I never saw any. SoCal was screwed.

Yeah, I didn't see any, from Pasadena to Malibu and every point in-between. Bummer, dude.

:cool:

[Savage Henry]

As much as I would have liked more, I doubt that if the promo had been in the UK I reckon only 2-3% would have redeemed. Perhaps Steve's fabled remark about 'sugar water' has come back to bite him on the ass.

Although I do think that Pepsi could have done better, but Pepsi is as Pepsi does ...

[five04]

i won 3 songs. then again i only bought 3 bottles. pepsi is rather expensive and when i do buy it i get it in 2 litre bottles. this was pathetic marketing from pepsi but then again, i don't think they wanted too many people to actually redeem the songs. they got a lot of media without having to pay too much. it seems to me that apple got the shaft on this deal.

[Hugh]

Don't feel bad guys. Here in Erie PA, I only saw 3 caps here. I happen to win one. But the places around here didn't have any, not to mention that any one that sold Pepsi here had it on sale. You can get Pepsi pretty cheap during that whole time with the iTunes. That's cook if you are a Pepsi drinker, bad if you wanted iTunes caps. :(

-Hugh

[MarkCollette]

Does your post have anything to do with the promotion, which is the thread's topic? It's nice that you care so much but considering that you're completely off-topic, your post could be deleted. (So could mine since I'm responding to yours!) :D

I never saw any iTunes bottles in the Orlando area. I'm not a Pepsi drinker but I usually look for Apple-related promotions.

Oh, yeah :) If people save their money from buying not pop and from avoiding health problems, then they can afford to buy more Macs! :D

And on a side note: When is Apple going to open the Canadian iTunes store !?! We have some other option here, for $0.99 per track, but it's WMA, which I won't touch with a ten foot pole. We're waiting for you Apple! And at my University, we've got a Pepsi only contract, so they should feel free to partner with Pepsi here too :) Then I could get the caps from friends ;)

[reyesmac]

Why not give away songs randomly to people who buy iTunes music. It would be like a lottery, if I buy a song, I have a 1 in 10 chance of winning an album. Something like that. The odds have to be good and the amount of songs has to be big. Its not like it costs them much to do that, seeing as how they can give away so many songs like they tried to do with Pepsi.

[applefans]

sheesh, only 5 million out of 100 million. That's not a good promotion.

How many active computers users among pepsi drinkers?
How many music fans among active computer users who are pepsi drinkers?
How many music fans who are active computer users as well as pepsi drinkers?
How many music fans + active computer users + pepsi drinkers have iTunes?
How many music fans + active computer users + pepsi drinkers having iTunes care about this promotion?
How many music fans who are iTune users that care about this promotion and are active computer users who drinks pepsi did buy pepsi during this period?

5 % is a reasonable percentage. I am happy for Steve Jobs who make such a big noise with so little cost.
:rolleyes:

[Llywelyn]

Part of it is that in some regions (e.g., New Orleans) there were competing promotions running from pepsi--something involving Hornets tickets that took precedence. I never even saw a bottle for iTunes the entire time during the promotion.

[Nermal]

Atleast people in the US had some chance to get free iTunes.

Outside the US after 1 year we still have no iTMS, we had no Pepsi promotion and we can't even access the newly anounced free songs.

I tried to download one of those "free" songs, and it asked me for a credit card number :(

What's even more annoying is that Apple said iTMS was coming to NZ in February 2004, um it's April now so where is it?

[Chip NoVaMac]

5% = redeemed
3% = apple's marketshare


So it looks like some PC users redeemed their free tracks.

wish it was more, but that works!

Actually in a redemption type of promo 5% is actually very high.

Also look at from Pepsi's standpoint. They probably didn't want to give away $100 million dollars away anyhow. That was probably the reason for the lack of promotion. Apple carried the ball for them on that.

I also stated back at the start how do we truly know that Pepsi would put 100 million caps out there? Couple that with poor distribution of the caps around the country.

[Chip NoVaMac]

I redeemed 59 myself. Would have bought more, but supplies dried up late-February. Had a fun time explaining to my wife why I was buying 99 cent Diet Pepsi 20 oz. bottles six at a time when I could buy a 24 pack of 12 oz. cans for the same price.

My partner and i redeemed a total of 284 between the two of us. And would have had more if the bottles didn't disappear from the shelves only after one month.

[proglife]

I think from from a marketing prospective 5% is pretty good. They usually only expect a 1% to 3% return on marketing campaigns.

You have to keep in mind that many people do not own a computer; many people do not know what iTunes is; many people are lazy and will never figure it out. When you start accounting for those people and how many people drink such and such softdrinks, your expectations will lower.


I couldn't agree more. If you think this is a failure then I think you fell hard for the 100 million songs spin. Do you think they were sitting around the board room saying "we're actually going to give away 100 million songs"? I think iTMS would be sweating hard right now if they had to give away that many.

THIS IS A POSITIVE FOLKS! 5 MILLION downloads is very very very good.

iTunes caps were abundant around here (Annapolis, MD). I won about 40% of the time, but my boss won about 80% of the time.

[omnivector]

i'm pretty sure the promotion was for 100 million bottles, not songs. 100 mil / 3 (1 in 3 chanes) = 33 million. 5 mill out of 33 mill is a 15% redemption rate. that's not too shabby when you compare it to 5%.

[jcshas]

What a shame! :(

[FriarTuck]

In my case, the promotion was a net loss for Pepsi.

When I first heard about the promotion, I stopped buying dietPepsi, intending to deplete my supply (I usually have 6-18 24 ounce bottles on hand) and refresh it with the iTunes bottles.

As time passed and no iTunes bottles were available, I continued to refrain from buying dietPepsi, thinking the yellow caps would appear any day now. I didn't want to be a sucker and buy at the wrong time.

Eventually I ran out of dietPepsi and the yellow caps still hadn't appeared. So I started drinking bottled water.

Sure, I occasionally found an iTunes bottle in a convenience store and bought one, but Pepsi lost my guaranteed 6-10 bottle per week/bulk purchase habit thanks to their lousy management of this contest.

Jerks.

[mklos]

Come on, guys and gals - all the talk about 'Tunes is forgetting that Apple is a computer company! What about next week's new G5 Powerbooks?....

Ooops, maybe Apple forgot too. ;)

It's funny to see all the talk about how important market share is in the areas where Apple is gaining it ('Tunes and the 'Pod)...and how unimportant it is where they're losing it (computers).

spin-meisters...

If I see something about G5 PowerBooks one more time I think I'm gonna puke! I'm so sick and tired of seeing this! Everytime Apple has some kind of new some dumbass says "Oh...that means G5 PowerBooks next Tuesday". Its not even funny anymore! Why the hell would Apple release a G5 PowerBook now anyways when they've just been updated. Its extremely doubtful that you will see anything of a G5 PowerBook this year so why waste your time pissing and moaning about it!

[frankly]

i'm pretty sure the promotion was for 100 million bottles, not songs. 100 mil / 3 (1 in 3 chanes) = 33 million. 5 mill out of 33 mill is a 15% redemption rate. that's not too shabby when you compare it to 5%.

Nope, it was 300 million bottles, 100 million chances to win.

Press release. (http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/28pepsi.html)

Frank

[denm316]

The urnaround could have been better, but I know friends who saw the commercial and still were not sure what it was all about.

Sure the commercial was clear to us Apple fans, but some normal consumers may not have caught on.

[KREX725]

I think from from a marketing prospective 5% is pretty good. They usually only expect a 1% to 3% return on marketing campaigns.

You have to keep in mind that many people do not own a computer; many people do not know what iTunes is; many people are lazy and will never figure it out. When you start accounting for those people and how many people drink such and such softdrinks, your expectations will lower.

I agree completely. Advertising campaigns don't usually see a high level of redemption anyway. I'd like to see some numbers regarding other promotions under Coke and Pepsi caps. I doubt it's much higher.

I for one got lucky and redeemed nearly 25 of them. I had my whole office giving me their caps.

[sillycybin]

This looks bad. Apple dropped the ball......again.

[Spagolli94]

I don't think this is as big a failure as you all are making it out to be.

Let's say Pepsi produced 100 million bottles with free song caps. Out of those, 70 million were sold. 50% of the buyers had computers (down to 35 million) and 50% of them had broadband (down to 17.5 million) and 50% of them were interested in digital music (now down to ~9 million).

APPLE GOT OVER HALF OF THESE PEOPLE TO USE ITUNES, many for the first time. Many of these people, now that they had to download the software are likely to remain apple music customers.

When you look at it like this, I don't think it was a failure at all.

You guys are all assuming that 100% of the bottles were acutally sold to people who all had computers, broadband and were interested in digital music. That's just not so.

[fixyourthinking]

As one analyst put it, "Remember, Apple couldn't even hit a quarter of their conservative -- and some say realistic -- goal. That does not spell s-u-c-c-e-e-s in my book."

No, that doesn't spell "success" in ANY BOOK - especially a dictionary.

Could someone please explain to me why it seems Think Secret posts negative stories ALL THE TIME and has a negative spin on almost everything else? They seem to know an aweful lot about the MacAdam and Elite Computer protest/litigation problems ..... hmmm is there a link?

Concerning those that only won 1 in 10 or less - why didn't you follow the easy tipping instructions. I am 32-35 - 2 were bought at my local Walmart where they had placed sleeves on them.

I suppose I was lucky because the main southeast bottler for Pepsi is in Athens GA - about 70 miles from me.

I don't think this is as big a failure as you all are making it out to be.

Let's say Pepsi produced 100 million bottles with free song caps. Out of those, 70 million were sold. 50% of the buyers had computers (down to 35 million) and 50% of them had broadband (down to 17.5 million) and 50% of them were interested in digital music (now down to ~9 million).

APPLE GOT OVER HALF OF THESE PEOPLE TO USE ITUNES, many for the first time. Many of these people, now that they had to download the software are likely to remain apple music customers.

When you look at it like this, I don't think it was a failure at all.

You guys are all assuming that 100% of the bottles were acutally sold to people who all had computers, broadband and were interested in digital music. That's just not so.

My thoughts exactly - then you break it down further - those who like the iTunes Store that also drink Pepsi and those that have a portable player that will play them and those that were just generally confused and thought that it was STILL stealing or thought that it was exclusively an Apple Promotion.

I KNOW older people that think ALL downloaded music must be stolen or illegal AND I know people who think iTunes ONLY works on Macs or if it has an Apple Logo and says Apple Computer it must be Apple/Mac ONLY.

I'd say; if we take ALL that into consideration they actually had a 75-90% redemption rate.

[Llywelyn]

This looks bad. Apple dropped the ball......again.

Please enlighten us how Apple had anything to do with this?

[sillycybin]

Please enlighten us how Apple had anything to do with this?

It is mostly Apples' promotion and it bombed. The commercial was lame. Nobody could find contest bottles, let alone winning ones. Most people had no idea the promotion even existed.

[niter]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?

I actually purchased quite a few on a late March trip to Anaheim. These few were scattered between LAX and Laguna Beach.

However, I do agree about the bottle caps. Virginia Tech had plenty, but a lot of other people in other areas seemed to not have any. Being that there was 1/3 chance of winning and 100 million bottles...and most people knew how to get the winning bottles (I never purchased a non winning bottle)...I would have thought there would have been more winnings.

I am interested to know how much pepsi in that size was sold during the promotion. What percent of what was sold actually won?

[Knute5]

It's tasteless and goes flat in a second. I'd sooner drink Clamato...

[QuiteSure]

Every once in a while reality pokes into Steve's reality distortion field. It's hard to say whether the 5 million redemptions is a success or a failure. Based upon Steve's RDF, of course it's a failure. But after stepping out of the RDF it's not so clear. After all, nothing is either good nor ill but thinking makes it so.

Isn't that someone's sig? :p

[benpatient]

oh this is rich...

i like how you guys are all blaming pepsi...

i'm willing to bet that at least 50% of the winning caps have been put on bottles of pepsi that are already in landfills.

people just threw them away because they weren't really interested.

just because 1 out of every 3 computers seen on TV is a Mac doesn't mean that people in general really have any interest in them.

[shamino]

Pepsi screwed up big-time, and I knew it the moment I read their press-release back in January.

They only put promo caps on 20oz and 1L bottles. I have never ever seen this size sold in grocery stores. Grocery stores only sell 12oz cans, 24oz bottles and 2L bottles. So I never even had the opportunity to buy into this promo, and believe me, I wanted to.

I found only one place selling 20oz bottles of Pepsi - in one of those mini refrigerators at the check-out line in Wal*Mart. Not exactly the place that one goes to buy groceries (unless your grocery shopping consists entirely of salty snack-foods.) And I'm not going to pay the inflated prices charged at these point-of-sale cases - even if every bottle is a winner, it would be cheaper to buy a 24-pack of cans of Coke and just buy the songs at ITMS. (Or just skip the soda altogether :) )

Assuming this wasn't a colossal mistake, then they were obviously choosing to target people other than me. Probably those people who do their grocery shopping at Wal*Mart and not at real grocery stores. I wonder how many of these people have computers running Windows 2000/XP, credit cards, internet access, and a desire to install iTunes. I wonder how many of these people have the desire to install iTunes, prize or not. Probably about 5%

[shamino]

oh this is rich...

i like how you guys are all blaming pepsi...

i'm willing to bet that at least 50% of the winning caps have been put on bottles of pepsi that are already in landfills.

people just threw them away because they weren't really interested.

just because 1 out of every 3 computers seen on TV is a Mac doesn't mean that people in general really have any interest in them.
Ummmm....

I assume you're aware that iTunes is available for Windows (has been for some time now) and that all those winning caps can be redeemed using the Windows version, right? So people who have no interest in Macs can still get free music through this promotion.

But I suppose facts should never be allowed to get in the way of a good rant. :rolleyes:

[iPC]

http://www.winnetmag.com/windowspaulthurrott/Article/ArticleID/42503/windowspaulthurrott_42503.html

Love how the windows site blames Apple, and not Pepsi, for the failure.

Lets face it, 1 free song is not worth waiting for iTunes to download, install, and then you have to pick a song. If you are on dialup, why bother?

I guess that is why I was never impressed with the idea.

[iPC]

In my case, the promotion was a net loss for Pepsi.

When I first heard about the promotion, I stopped buying dietPepsi, intending to deplete my supply (I usually have 6-18 24 ounce bottles on hand) and refresh it with the iTunes bottles.

As time passed and no iTunes bottles were available, I continued to refrain from buying dietPepsi, thinking the yellow caps would appear any day now. I didn't want to be a sucker and buy at the wrong time.

Eventually I ran out of dietPepsi and the yellow caps still hadn't appeared. So I started drinking bottled water.

Sure, I occasionally found an iTunes bottle in a convenience store and bought one, but Pepsi lost my guaranteed 6-10 bottle per week/bulk purchase habit thanks to their lousy management of this contest.

Jerks.
To your benefit (health).

[sachmo]

Those caps where easy to lose. I through one away and a maid at a hotel I was staying at through one away also.

I live in the Chattanooga, TN area and we had a good supply of drinks the second half of the promo. I know a couple of people that won a lot of songs.

One thing that might up the number greatly is if people are holding on to the last day to redeem all there winners at one time.

[sorryiwasdreami]

sheesh, only 5 million out of 100 million. That's not a good promotion.

Not for Apple. It was a genious promotion for Pepsi, however. We buy lots of soda; we don't receive songs. Besides, those bottles left over from the 100 million will still be sitting on the shelf after the April 30th song-redemtion date, and will probably still sell.

By the way, this writer cringes at the thought of dumping Pepsi down it's throat.

[ClimbingTheLog]

I saw lots of the bottles in New England, with about a 2/3 winning percentage.

They were in all the convienience stores and presumable WalMart because the Pepsi display was always cleared out of Pepsi 16 oz bottles.

But they didn't get here until a month after the promotion, and they were gone about a month ago - or so I thought - yesterday I saw a massive delivery of them at Target, too late to participate in the promotion.

At best this means there's lots of old stale Pepsi on the market on a regular basis. A good side effect of the promotion is you at least have some idea how old the product is.

But as to the 5% - what's the percentage of people who have ever bought music online? How many people would really suffer the multi-hour modem download to save a buck? Now what was the average # of redeemed songs per person - this is the important number. This campaign was to bring new buyers in, but in reality it was probably just a boon for the existing market.

[ClimbingTheLog]

A better choice is to drink unsweetened fruit juice.


Which brand has iTunes codes? ;)

[KREX725]

Let's say Pepsi produced 100 million bottles with free song caps. Out of those, 70 million were sold. 50% of the buyers had computers (down to 35 million) and 50% of them had broadband (down to 17.5 million) and 50% of them were interested in digital music (now down to ~9 million).

APPLE GOT OVER HALF OF THESE PEOPLE TO USE ITUNES, many for the first time. Many of these people, now that they had to download the software are likely to remain apple music customers.

Although I do think the promotion was successful (read any advertising book and you'll see most promotions do not see high response percentages for redemption), your numbers would assume that each song was redeemed by one person. I redeemed nearly 25 to 30.

Back to the success of it, think about all of those other promotions on the bottle caps out there. How many of those have you redeemed. Honestly, unless it's a free soda, I toss it in the trash.

[jydesign]

Think of how much money is spent on TV advertising for which there is rarely any way to gain a solid metric of success.

Then think: itunes songs cost .99cents, Pepsi costs more $ most of the time.

Then think: I for one don't drink soda, but I do buy on iTMS, so I'll just buy my songs directly - not indirectly, by purchasing a chance to get a song with a bottle of sugar water. And I'll laugh at the sugar junkies gambling on bottlecaps.

Then think: How much F*n great PR Apple got on this promo, the articles, the buzz, etc.

Then think: Pepsi - an old brand - mainly got a boost from being associated with the iPod - a popular new fangled gadget, but didn't get the same attention as Apple

So for me, if they didn't get a lot redeemed so what. Did any of the other players in the legal download space have both a successful popular useable product + a huge PR stunt centered around the Super Bowl for which people are still buzzin about? NO sireeee

Bottom line, this is a marketing and PR home run for Apple folks

[mklos]

It is mostly Apples' promotion and it bombed. The commercial was lame. Nobody could find contest bottles, let alone winning ones. Most people had no idea the promotion even existed.

It wasn't Apple's promotion it was Pepsi's promotion. Apple just provided the service (iTunes/iTunes Music Store). So for Apple is was free publicity. Why don't people understand that! Apple had nothing to do with this promotion except for the ITMS part of it. It wasn't Apple's job to advertise it, or make sure that the bottles got distributed all around the US. Apple didn't design/produce the commercial, Pepsi did. When you see a McDonald's promotion to win a Corvette do you see GM advertising it? Do you see GM making sure all of the game pieces got to all the McDonald's in the US? No, because GM has nothing to do with the promotion except provide the damn Corvette.

Ooops...someone took a ***** wrong...lets blame Apple for that too!

[sibelius]

I can't believe the people here!!! First of all, Pepsi stated that they did not expect any MORE than 10 million people to cash in on the iTunes giveaway. Of the 100 million bottles produced there simple are not that many people out there, who drink Pepsi, who even give a crap.

Promotions are ALL about media play... NEVER about actual performance. "We're giving away a BRAND NEW HUMMER H2" is something great to claim. Actually having someone claim the Hummer isn't something you're as interested in. Pepsi and Apple did great... they made a big stink about the promotion and got loads of press from it. What do they care if anyone cashed in on the deal? They don't. They already got their press... that's what they're after (and every other major corporation, by the way).

I am very sorry for those who did not get the caps... or for those who got cheated. That person who claimed to have purchase 100 bottles and never got a winner was either a liar, or was purchasing from places where the stockboys were cheating and stealing the winning bottles (by tippin the bottles about 20 degrees and looking up through the top-side plastic of the bottle which will allow you to see the underside of the cap).

Some areas were void of the bottles alltogether. I was... for a long time. Then they started pouring in. This is the Houston, Texas area. Me and my roommate collected over 100 winning caps. We had about a 70% win rate (without cheating)... so maybe Texas just got most of the winners???

Anyway... I thought it was a great promotion. Both Pepsi and Apple got what they needed in the beginning (all the press). A lack of advertising on Pepsi's part made awareness poor, and helped to hinder Apple from hitting the 100 million downloads mark for their first iTunes year, but oh well. That's marketing for ya.

Either way, you people seem to be yapping about how much you got screwed. IT'S A GIVEAWAY PEOPLE.... YOU ARE NOT ENTITLED TO ANYTHING. NO GUARANTEES. Be glad if you got anything. geeze


sibelius

[JeffTL]

This has been said, and will be said time and time again: Apple's advertising is appauling.

If they had bothered to show commercials more than once (superbowl), maybe do some print ads, radio ads, then they would have reached their goal. they chose not to do this. The same goes for their hardware and software. If they advertised, they'd sell and be in a better position.

Steve's view of Apple is that it's like an exclusive club: so cool that you on't have to advertise. People will just show up (buy) because it's so cool, even though they know nothing about it. That;s not a way to run a publicly traded company fighting the sperad of DRM and insecure systems (M$)

*cue newbies and Apple Store references, but i'm right.


Apple wasn't responsible for this; Pepsi was.

[Chip NoVaMac]

Apple wasn't responsible for this; Pepsi was.

Not to mention why should Apple have paid for what Pepsi should have?

[ALoLA]

Sure enough, as some others have posted, bottles are indeed here in the L.A. area now. I picked up one from 7-Eleven this afternoon. 1-1 with that, and I didn't cheat either. :) Too bad it's so late in the game. By the way, the cup promo was no longer available.

[gregorypierce]

Did Apple get paid for all 100 million or only the 5 million that were redeemed. If only the 5 million redeemed - I can see how Pepsi wouldn't be falling over itself to get the bottles out there.

[gschumsky]

We did get them in a few places in San Diego (really southern california), mainly Target, mobile/exxon stations, and every other 7-11, about late March. All the yellow caps were on the diet pepsi/diet vanilla pepsi only. The regular pepsi still had Lakers(??) or Foot Locker caps. I got 5 out of 8. A couple weeks ago they started showing up in our vending machines at work. The Peecee users here couldn't care less (they have all the music they need from Napster/Kazaaa...) and were giving me their winning caps (their answer was it was only worth .05 cents anyway, and their music player was way better than any Apple product..too bad for them).
I even found one crushed in a gas station parking lot. Now, if Apple had gone to Coke, this would have been way more successful, IMO.

[wdlove]

I'm kind of sad that only 5 million has been redeemed. The local deli that I visit each week last week and this week only had the 1 liter size with the yellow cap. Actually they had some of the yellow caps without the free song logo. Because of my poor eyesight a female high school assisted me with tipping. Ended up checking almost all of their stock to get 2 winners. She was 100% accurate. Now I have 21 free songs, because of procrastination I will be downloading. Actually I kind of glad that the promotion is over, it will be nice not to be so concerned about taking the time to check bottle. Especially when I had to depend on others! :D

[bousozoku]

Did Apple get paid for all 100 million or only the 5 million that were redeemed. If only the 5 million redeemed - I can see how Pepsi wouldn't be falling over itself to get the bottles out there.

I would bet that Pepsi has been paying as the codes have been redeemed. I would wonder if Apple would partner with them again.

[jkeithh]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?

We didn't even got those in Louisiana. We never got any sort of Pepsi product here with the iTunes caps.

[macjohnmcc]

[QUOTE=Belisarius]I imagine the redemption rate was pretty poor considering how terrible Pepsi's distribution was. Throughout the entire promotion, I never saw even one bottle in any of my local grocery stores. In fact, it was pretty much hit-or-miss in local convenience stores as to whether or not I'd find iTMS caps.[QUOTE]

I was just in a Rite Aid tonight and saw Pepsi bottles with the yellow iTunes Caps. Didn't buy one. Figured hey I get a free song each day for a week already without paying anything. Though I don't get to pick what song is free.

[rdowns]

This looks bad. Apple dropped the ball......again.

This was a Pepsi promotion, not an Apple one. iTMS was simply the vehicle Pepsi used. It was up to Pepsi to promote this. Apple did give the promotion prominent position on their home page for a week or so.

Would have been nice if they ran a simple ad. Pepsi will distribute 300 million yellow cap bottles and 100 million of them will win you a free song that you can download from the #1 Internet music store, iTMS. It works for Windows and Macintosh computers. Choose from over half a million songs. Hurry though, this offer will end on April 30th.

Of course they didn't do that because the promotion would have cost them many, many millions more. The media buzz was what they were after, not increasing their costs. After all, this is a money loser for Pepsi. Giving away a 99¢ song per 3 bottles is more than their cost to produce and distribute those 3 bottles.

[InsiderTravels]

I don't drink soda at all; I only drink bottled water. However, we (my boyfriend and I) grabbed all the caps out of the recycle bin at his work almost daily. Also, the majority of people who gave him caps for me didn't have a clue what they were for. They continually asked him why he wanted them and seemed confused by the idea of downloading "free songs."

All in all, I ended up with 76 winning caps, and I just downloaded the final 5 songs today. I got over 300 MB of music from this promotion and didn't have to buy a single Pepsi to do it. And this from somebody who doesn't spend all that much time listening to music anyway.

I did think it was rather strange, though, that Pepsi only put the caps on regular Pepsi – not Mountain Dew or anything else they put out. I'd think the promotion would have been more successful if they'd stuck them on all their products. Maybe they'd have actually gotten me to buy their crappy purified water brand instead of the spring water I usually buy.

[ALoLA]

I saw the caps on other products, like Diet Pepsi (which I bought) and Sierra Mist. I didn't win with today's bottle, but I did see how the "cheat" works. Of course, it's much easier to see after drinking some of the soda and not having the plastic fog up from the temperature difference straight out of the frig at 7-Eleven. :) I might try one last time on the way home. :D

[Engagebot]

that was a typical marketing screw-up.

we STILL have no caps around south Louisiana. Entire LSU campus, and not one itunes cap...

[mrgreen4242]

The 7-11 here in East Lansing, MI also carried the cups... for a few weeks. The advert stayed up the whole time but no more cups. When they ran out of cups, I asked the manager if they were getting more and he said he had no idea. I liked this option because I could get a Coke.

I didn't see any bottles in the grocery stores either. It was late March and they were still doling out Super Bowl promos. I could get the bottles virtually anywhere on campus but I never saw a six or eight-pack in a store. Still redeemed about 30...

Hey, I'm in EL too. I was doing great from the 7-11 cups at first... like 4 for 4, then I hit a streak of losers... I was getting Slurpees in them, myself, which I also liked, since I don't care for Pepsi much. All in all, I think I ended up with like 20 free songs, 14 of which I actually haven't used yet... Do the codes that you have entered before the 30th ever expire??

On an unrelated note, my dad, who just got his first computer less than a year ago (sorry, it's an old PC I got for him thru eBay... his next will be a Mac, promise... he LOVES my iBook :)) went nuts with the iTunes promo... he got like 65 songs (many from coworkers), and he's on DIAL-UP. Not just any old dial-up, but 100 year old farmhouse crappy phone lines <30kbs dial-up! He is apparantly a patient man.

I got him an iPod recently, since he has been systematically converting all his CDs to mp3/aac, and has, since the Pepsi promo, been buying all his new (non-local band) music via iTunes... he loves that, too, so an iMac or an iBook isn't far off for him ;-). So the promo has been successful in that regard, introducing new customers to iTunes.

Rob

[geezusfreeek]

I don't think it was so much a failure. Nobody expected so many to be actually redeemed.

I bought about 25 and won about 20. Maybe the people in my area made up about 4% of the redemptions....

[ingenious]

"It has exceeded our wildest expectations during its first year, said Jobs. "We are really excited that with iPod and iTunes we can show with Apple's innovation, engineering and marketing can do, when we're not limited by our five percent operating system marketshare ceiling."

So with great marketing, apple could show the world its awesome OS X engineering and marketing! I haven't ever seen an OS X commercial, tho
:( didnt really know about it til my school got PBs.

[Blue Moon]

So with great marketing, apple could show the world its awesome OS X engineering and marketing! I haven't ever seen an OS X commercial, tho
:( didnt really know about it til my school got PBs.

Operating systems don't really get the limelight when it comes to marketing, hardware is sold as a complete package (including the operating system), although I don't understand why Apple doesn't have more commericials which show more than just the iPod; all those switch testimonials never even featured the hardware itself did they? In my opinion Apple needs to exploit their superiority in creative design a whole lot more (that goes for both the OS and hardware).

[Chip NoVaMac]

Operating systems don't really get the limelight when it comes to marketing, hardware is sold as a complete package (including the operating system), although I don't understand why Apple doesn't have more commericials which show more than just the iPod; all those switch testimonials never even featured the hardware itself did they? In my opinion Apple needs to exploit their superiority in creative design a whole lot more (that goes for both the OS and hardware).

Maybe they need to show that Mac's are a better computer "tool". Show the advantages of the OS, and the apps. Also show that a vast majority of computer use can be done with programs that are available for both Windows and the Mac.

They could also do something to get Outlook PC to easily port over to either Mail or Entourage.

[sibelius]

Maybe they need to show that Mac's are a better computer "tool". Show the advantages of the OS, and the apps. Also show that a vast majority of computer use can be done with programs that are available for both Windows and the Mac.

They could also do something to get Outlook PC to easily port over to either Mail or Entourage.

There is a good reason why Apple doesn't spend billions on a television advertising budget. It's simply not worth it. In the advertising world you have to show a good ROI (return on investment). If your goal is to sell more computers then you need to show that the sales numbers increase because of the television commercials. If your goal is mindshare (just putting the Apple brand into people's heads) then you have to prove that works (through more costly surveys and commercials).

The thing about television advertising is this: It's usually not worth it, unless you have billions to toss into it. Consider this, the money you put donw for a commercial on TV is "gone in 30 seconds". One that commercial airs it's over, gone forever, never to be seen again (along with the huge cost). If you print an ad in an industry magazine, however, not only is it cheaper... but it will last forever!! (or at least until the subscriber tosses the publication out). With TV, people flip channels during commercials, go to potty breaks, get something to drink, or just yap with other people in their house. The chances that someone in the computer market (ready to buy) is watching one out of several hundred available stations... in a specific time slot... paying attention to your commercial... well... those are not good odds. That's why you have to toss so much money into commercials for them to be affective. Magazine ads are soooo much more affective for Apple. And they put out a LOT of them.

But Apple doesn't really advertise the Operating System. Why? Because people just don't "get" it. I work at a software development company. And other than the developers there, most people don't understand the difference between a local drive (like your C: drive) a networked drive or a floppy disk. They typically just understand what they're used to using. There is also a general misunderstanding out there about Macintosh computers. Most people think Macs are this mysterious computer only used by graphic designers to do 'cool' stuff. Even those who are interested in looking at a Mac for purchase ask me the same questions... "Can it run my copy of Excel? Word?" Well... technically 'yes', with the appropriate software. But you don't need to worry about that... Microsoft makes a version for the Macintosh.

People just don't understand, though... If the Mac can't run their PC software then they see it as something that isn't for 'them'. "Oh... I do a lot of office work and I have to be able to use PowerPoint and Word, and the Macintosh won't run my version of those applications". They just don't understand that it will run PowerPoint and Word, just not their specific PC-only disks... Mac has their own disk versions. Get it yet? Nope. They still don't get it.

And this is why Apple (and Microsoft) do not put out commercials specifically about the coolness of their operating systems. Microsoft will put out commercials about new Operating Systems being released, or that it makes your life better... but never anything specific. Apple doesn't do commercials about its operating system because you have to educate the viewer too much in order for them to understand what it is you're trying to say... far too much content for a 30-60 second television spot.

That's why these Operating System gaints mostly advertse their hardware/software. Apple will show off it's slick fruity-colored iMacs and show happy people making their own DVDs as if it were as easy as boiling water. Apple will advertise DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro HD, and other major applications, etc. because THAT's what people understand. Get them to want the applications and you've pretty much sold them on the operating system.

Look at PlayStation 2 and XBox. Sure... people can find out about the processor differences, number of active polys on the screen and other items... but that's not selling anyone on the game system. It's what the system RUNS that sells people on it. PlayStation 2 is an excellent system, and a far better value out of the box than the XBox. The XBox, however, plays some games much smoother... plus it has HALO, which alone is worth the price of the game system.

So... sorry for the mini-novel, but that, in a nutshell, is why you don't see the advertising OS wars on television commercials. People don't 'get' it, so it doesn't sell.

sibelius

[Multimedia]

Did anyone see any bottles in the L.A. area? All I saw were the cups at 7-Eleven. I was 0-5 with those. :P Seems like it was more of a marketing flop on Pepsi's part. Weren't they also slow getting the bottles out to the areas that did get them?
I Live 35 Miles South Of Cupertino And NEVER SAW ONE BOTTLE.

I looked for them repeatedly in my grocery stores and they NEVER SHOWED UP. What a crock. Really disappointed me. I was poised to buy a bunch and they never reached Santa Cruz County Shelves.

[mklos]

There is a good reason why Apple doesn't spend billions on a television advertising budget. It's simply not worth it. In the advertising world you have to show a good ROI (return on investment). If your goal is to sell more computers then you need to show that the sales numbers increase because of the television commercials. If your goal is mindshare (just putting the Apple brand into people's heads) then you have to prove that works (through more costly surveys and commercials).

The thing about television advertising is this: It's usually not worth it, unless you have billions to toss into it. Consider this, the money you put donw for a commercial on TV is "gone in 30 seconds". One that commercial airs it's over, gone forever, never to be seen again (along with the huge cost). If you print an ad in an industry magazine, however, not only is it cheaper... but it will last forever!! (or at least until the subscriber tosses the publication out). With TV, people flip channels during commercials, go to potty breaks, get something to drink, or just yap with other people in their house. The chances that someone in the computer market (ready to buy) is watching one out of several hundred available stations... in a specific time slot... paying attention to your commercial... well... those are not good odds. That's why you have to toss so much money into commercials for them to be affective. Magazine ads are soooo much more affective for Apple. And they put out a LOT of them.

But Apple doesn't really advertise the Operating System. Why? Because people just don't "get" it. I work at a software development company. And other than the developers there, most people don't understand the difference between a local drive (like your C: drive) a networked drive or a floppy disk. They typically just understand what they're used to using. There is also a general misunderstanding out there about Macintosh computers. Most people think Macs are this mysterious computer only used by graphic designers to do 'cool' stuff. Even those who are interested in looking at a Mac for purchase ask me the same questions... "Can it run my copy of Excel? Word?" Well... technically 'yes', with the appropriate software. But you don't need to worry about that... Microsoft makes a version for the Macintosh.

People just don't understand, though... If the Mac can't run their PC software then they see it as something that isn't for 'them'. "Oh... I do a lot of office work and I have to be able to use PowerPoint and Word, and the Macintosh won't run my version of those applications". They just don't understand that it will run PowerPoint and Word, just not their specific PC-only disks... Mac has their own disk versions. Get it yet? Nope. They still don't get it.

And this is why Apple (and Microsoft) do not put out commercials specifically about the coolness of their operating systems. Microsoft will put out commercials about new Operating Systems being released, or that it makes your life better... but never anything specific. Apple doesn't do commercials about its operating system because you have to educate the viewer too much in order for them to understand what it is you're trying to say... far too much content for a 30-60 second television spot.

That's why these Operating System gaints mostly advertse their hardware/software. Apple will show off it's slick fruity-colored iMacs and show happy people making their own DVDs as if it were as easy as boiling water. Apple will advertise DVD Studio Pro, Final Cut Pro HD, and other major applications, etc. because THAT's what people understand. Get them to want the applications and you've pretty much sold them on the operating system.

Look at PlayStation 2 and XBox. Sure... people can find out about the processor differences, number of active polys on the screen and other items... but that's not selling anyone on the game system. It's what the system RUNS that sells people on it. PlayStation 2 is an excellent system, and a far better value out of the box than the XBox. The XBox, however, plays some games much smoother... plus it has HALO, which alone is worth the price of the game system.

So... sorry for the mini-novel, but that, in a nutshell, is why you don't see the advertising OS wars on television commercials. People don't 'get' it, so it doesn't sell.

sibelius

On the other hand Apple has all of these great products and almost no one knows about them because Apple never advertises them. Apple just released a new eMac a couple of weeks ago and I'm willing to bet you that hardly anyone outside the Mac community knows about it because Apple didn't advertise that they now have a newer, faster, cheaper eMac out. You say that Apple advertises on magazine ads, well I've never seen an ad in a magazine that wasn't a Mac related magazine, like MacWorld for example. If advertising isn't so effective then why does Apple advertise the hell out of the iPod? Why does the iPod sell so good? I'd like to think not only because its cool, but also because Apple has gotten the word out to the public about the iPod, and that it will run on Macs and PCs. iPod commercials are all over the place on TV. Apple could even advertise 2 things at once. They can advertise iPhoto running on an eMac, or iMovie running on an iMac, etc... That way they get like a 2 for 1. They advertise the iMac and iLife '04. Many people don't know about iLife '04 and what it can do. There isn't anything like it at all on the PC side. So why doesn't Apple tell people about it! Another thing I don't like is that Apple never gives hardly any incentives to buy their machines. They never give free RAM with a purchase of an iMac, or a free AirPort Extreme Card. They only do these kind of things when they need to get rid of them. Well if they did this in the first place they wouldn't need to try and lower the inventory of a specific machine.

I do agree though that Apple should not advertise its OS. If you can get people to buy the computer they will see and learn the OS. OS X is far easier to learn than Windows is.

You have to spend a little money to make a little money. Apple should quit hoarding its 4.5 Billion and actually start spending some of it on useful things like advertising.

2 more things that Apple should do. First they need to really nail the educational sector and get it back. If you can get Macs in the hands of kids (Apple's future) then when they go out in the world and get their own computer they will get a Mac because that is what they know how to use and thats what they've always used. That being said, Apple also needs to grab a chunk of the business sector. Like I said people will only use what they know. Even Steve Jobs said that. If you can get Macs in large businesses and people start using them then people will start to look more seriously at the Mac. There is a huge myth out there that Macs aren't good for business and thats a bunch of crap! Actually Macs would be better for businesses. They are more stable, no viruses for them (currently), and easier to use. In the business world, time is money and if you have to spend an extra $200 or $300 for a Mac its definitely worth it if they will give you hardly any problems at all. There was a rumor that FedEx was switching to the Mac because it was more secure and more stable than Windows, but seems to have fallen by the way side. That would be a great start for Apple. If it works and works well then I think other companies will see this and start to consider the Macintosh platform.

Apple really needs to do something because they are just barely getting by right now. They are basically breaking even every quarter with sluggish computer sales. Heck Apple can't even sell 1 million Macs per quarter. The iPod even out sells their computers. This is NOT good. They came out with the PowerMac G5 that is really powerful, quiet, etc and its not even selling very good. Apple can't continue to just barely make it.

[Chip NoVaMac]

There is a good reason why Apple doesn't spend billions on a television advertising budget. It's simply not worth it. In the advertising world you have to show a good ROI (return on investment). If your goal is to sell more computers then you need to show that the sales numbers increase because of the television commercials. If your goal is mindshare (just putting the Apple brand into people's heads) then you have to prove that works (through more costly surveys and commercials).

sibelius

Never said that it should be only on TV. I handle advertising for my company, for me TV IMHO is not a great medium for a lot of the reasons you state. That doesn't say that it doesn't work.

One solution would be co-branding ad with Apple and Microsoft. But that won't happen since M$ is able to have a monopoly with their OS.

Apple should be interested in increasing their market share. It is the key to survival for companies. Sale 101 tells us that you need to answer the customers objections.

The objection that most have in the Mac line is being compatible with the applications they know and use. A majority of those apps are available for the Mac. The other objection that comes up is the number of programs available for each OS. Never mind most are programs that aren't worth the money, or programs that they would never need. I guess it goes back to the SUV mentality.

[jaw04005]

On the other hand Apple has all of these great products and almost no one knows about them because Apple never advertises them. Apple just released a new eMac a couple of weeks ago and I'm willing to bet you that hardly anyone outside the Mac community knows about it because Apple didn't advertise that they now have a newer, faster, cheaper eMac out. You say that Apple advertises on magazine ads, well I've never seen an ad in a magazine that wasn't a Mac related magazine, like MacWorld for example. If advertising isn't so effective then why does Apple advertise the hell out of the iPod? Why does the iPod sell so good? I'd like to think not only because its cool, but also because Apple has gotten the word out to the public about the iPod, and that it will run on Macs and PCs. iPod commercials are all over the place on TV. Apple could even advertise 2 things at once. They can advertise iPhoto running on an eMac, or iMovie running on an iMac, etc... That way they get like a 2 for 1. They advertise the iMac and iLife '04. Many people don't know about iLife '04 and what it can do. There isn't anything like it at all on the PC side. So why doesn't Apple tell people about it! Another thing I don't like is that Apple never gives hardly any incentives to buy their machines. They never give free RAM with a purchase of an iMac, or a free AirPort Extreme Card. They only do these kind of things when they need to get rid of them. Well if they did this in the first place they wouldn't need to try and lower the inventory of a specific machine.

I do agree though that Apple should not advertise its OS. If you can get people to buy the computer they will see and learn the OS. OS X is far easier to learn than Windows is.

You have to spend a little money to make a little money. Apple should quit hoarding its 4.5 Billion and actually start spending some of it on useful things like advertising.

2 more things that Apple should do. First they need to really nail the educational sector and get it back. If you can get Macs in the hands of kids (Apple's future) then when they go out in the world and get their own computer they will get a Mac because that is what they know how to use and thats what they've always used. That being said, Apple also needs to grab a chunk of the business sector. Like I said people will only use what they know. Even Steve Jobs said that. If you can get Macs in large businesses and people start using them then people will start to look more seriously at the Mac. There is a huge myth out there that Macs aren't good for business and thats a bunch of crap! Actually Macs would be better for businesses. They are more stable, no viruses for them (currently), and easier to use. In the business world, time is money and if you have to spend an extra $200 or $300 for a Mac its definitely worth it if they will give you hardly any problems at all. There was a rumor that FedEx was switching to the Mac because it was more secure and more stable than Windows, but seems to have fallen by the way side. That would be a great start for Apple. If it works and works well then I think other companies will see this and start to consider the Macintosh platform.

Apple really needs to do something because they are just barely getting by right now. They are basically breaking even every quarter with sluggish computer sales. Heck Apple can't even sell 1 million Macs per quarter. The iPod even out sells their computers. This is NOT good. They came out with the PowerMac G5 that is really powerful, quiet, etc and its not even selling very good. Apple can't continue to just barely make it.

Apple will never get the education sector back to they start offering $399 computers to educational customers. I've worked in the school administration offices, and the bottom line and the bottom line only is what the school board and superintendents look at. They could careless how much potential value the "extra" software that comes with the computer is. Why pay $700 for an eMac when you can purchase a 2.6Ghz Dell for $399 and use the same monitor you bought with the previous computer, two years before? On that note, why pay $700 for a 1.25Ghz G4 when you can get a much faster 2.6Ghz P4 (and it is a lot faster despite the processor debate). The fact is the only thing comparable to that 2.6Ghz Dell is a Power Mac G5 or at least a Dual Power Mac G4, and there is no way Apple is going to sell those for $399. Only in "wealthy" districts like the one in Maine that Apple promotes will ever see Macs again at their current prices.

[mklos]

Well its actually $699 (for an eMac) for schools and thats before any state aid you get with each computer purchase. So with state aid its only around $500 per eMac or less. Actually the problem with Macs in schools is Mac Support. When something does go wrong there isn't any Mac Technicians in the area to service them so they have to be sent somewhere. I work in a school as a PC Technician and I know a couple of Superintendents that want to go Mac but there isn't any one to support them and asking a PC tech to service them is like asking them to cut arms and legs off, unless your like me being a Mac person servicing PCs just because its the only job I can get right now. An eMac comes with a built-in display already so there is no need to be able to use your older displays. eMacs will last a school a lot longer than 2 years. Schools really don't care about the speed of a computer. If a Technology Director, Coordinator, or Superintendent is up with technology then they will know that a 1.25 GHz G4 will be more than enough power to do what most students need to do which surf the net, and use an Office Suite. Thats basically all students need to do.

[Chip NoVaMac]

Well its actually $699 (for an eMac) for schools and thats before any state aid you get with each computer purchase. So with state aid its only around $500 per eMac or less. Actually the problem with Macs in schools is Mac Support. When something does go wrong there isn't any Mac Technicians in the area to service them so they have to be sent somewhere. I work in a school as a PC Technician and I know a couple of Superintendents that want to go Mac but there isn't any one to support them and asking a PC tech to service them is like asking them to cut arms and legs off, unless your like me being a Mac person servicing PCs just because its the only job I can get right now. An eMac comes with a built-in display already so there is no need to be able to use your older displays. eMacs will last a school a lot longer than 2 years. Schools really don't care about the speed of a computer. If a Technology Director, Coordinator, or Superintendent is up with technology then they will know that a 1.25 GHz G4 will be more than enough power to do what most students need to do which surf the net, and use an Office Suite. Thats basically all students need to do.

Not to mention lower support costs... those PC techs are worried about their jobs if Mac's replaced PC's in school.

[mklos]

Only in "wealthy" districts like the one in Maine that Apple promotes will ever see Macs again at their current prices.

I believe those computers are bought by the state and not the school districts. Any district can afford Macs.

Not to mention lower support costs... those PC techs are worried about their jobs if Mac's replaced PC's in school.

Yes if they really look into switching to the Mac platform the little higher cost will pay for itself just because of things like that. You won't need as many technicians, or technicians there everyday. OS X doesn't let you do anything, which is great for schools. For example, students can't install anything without knowing the administrator password because just about anything you install requires an administrator username/password. Plus they hardly ever break down, there aren't any viruses for them so thats not a worry. I the school I work for which is a small K-12 school that uses PCs we've gotten 2 worms so far this year...each time taking over 5 hours to get rid of it, and about 8 viruses on different machines. All things that a PC Technician needs to be there to fix. Those are things on the Mac side that you don't have to worry about.

[sibelius]

Plus they hardly ever break down, there aren't any viruses for them so thats not a worry.

I love Macs, but the fact is that there ARE viruses out there that can affect the Macintosh platform. For a while there was nothing, simply because of the brand new operating system... and then again there really isn't that much out there specifically for the Macintosh OS X system. But, it is built upon UNIX... and there are baddies out there for UNIX, so...

There are common mis-truths that just continue to circulate about Macintosh computers (obviously these aren't all of them; nor are they the biggest ones):

1 - They're way too expensive; I can't afford one
2 - They're not for 'real' business use... only for 'creative' people
3 - They are not subject to worms and viruses
4 - I can't switch to a Mac because I only know how to use PC

1 - Macintosh computers are MORE expensive out of the box. After you get them out of the box, however, you quickly see that they are cheaper in many cases. Consider that an operating system will allow you to do nothing but create new folders and send text documents to the trash... you need SOFTWARE to really make your computer sing and dance. And the Macintosh computer comes stocked with a load of cool software. Windows & Mac both have eMail and Web Surfing applications... but only the Macintosh includes, with the new computer, free software for Music, Video Edinging, DVD Authoring, etc., etc. The iLife suite of applications alone will offset the savings of a PC you may have purchased. And that's only the top... there are a lot of other cools applications that come with the Mac.

2 - These people simply do not understand the difference between an "operating system" and a pice of "software" or an "application". Windows and Mac are different, but the software they run typically is not. Photoshop and Excel work and run pretty much the same on the PC as they do on the Macintosh. There are, however, some software that's only written for the PC, as the same can be said for the Macintosh. But for 90% of business use you'll find the software available to both systems... and it works the same on both.

3 - Macintosh computers are subject to Worms, Trojan Horses, Viruses, and all sorts of other baddies... just like PCs. Macintosh is built on the generally-accepted "most secure" UNIX flavor/core out there so it is harder to 'hack' into... but if someone didn't need to 'hack' your system to install a bug then it's not very hard to put one on your machine. The simple fact of the matter is that most people in this working world work on PCs. These people, when they get pissed off, want to hurt their old company... so they make/distribute PC bugs. There just are not that many unhappy Macintosh users out there. Even Mac users that hate their jobs still tend to think of their Macintosh as a 'friend'... so you just simply have fewer people who want to waste the time coding bugs for the Mac side. The other type of people who write these nasties are those who are out for their 15 minutes of fame. They like to see their 'work' spead all over the world. These are typically people who start those bogus 'Virus Warning' or 'Bill Gates will send you $100 for forwarding this eMail to 100 people you know' type of bogus eMails. They just like knowing that something they did was spread all over the world. It's a status symbol to them. Once they get tired of the eMails they move on to other, bigger, more affective things... viruses. And since they want maximum exposure with these, they typically just ignore the Macintosh platform. Beware... bugs for the Mac DO exist.

4 - I think I already covered this one up above. If you can use Photoshop on a PC, you can use it on a Macintosh. Same program. I work in a software development company... and over half of the peope here don't realize that a networked server is not in their computer 'box' on their desk. They don't know how to drag items from a floppy disk to their desktop (they never knew you could manually place anything on the desktop -- they are amazed to know that not everything has to be saved in "My Documents"). These are all PC users, mind you. If it can't be done with copy/paste then it can't be done at all... in their eyes. I can't tell you how many times someone has said "I can't save this logo from the website... it won't let me". That's because they don't understand the concept of drag-n-drop... simply click on the image and hold down and drag it to your desktop... it will place the image there. But they have a hard time viewing the desktop AND an open application at the same time anyway, so that blows their minds also. Either that, or just right-click on the web image and resist the temptation to try to copy/past and just look down the drop-down menu... "Save Target As..." is the option you're looking for. WOW!! It's like I worked some magic. Anyway, my point is not to make fun of PC users (some Mac users are just as bad)... rather, my point is that at this level of understanding I see no loss in 'ramp-up' time if they were to switch platforms.

All that said, most people that still think Macs are overpriced toys are usually people that 'game' all day long, or that got suckered into purchasing the biggest/baddest PC the store had to.... get this... balance their checkbooks. I have news for them... get a PlayStation 2, XBox, and a calculator and save yourself hundreds of dollars.

sibelius

sorry for the off-topic post... just kinda flew with it, I guess...

[mklos]

I love Macs, but the fact is that there ARE viruses out there that can affect the Macintosh platform. For a while there was nothing, simply because of the brand new operating system... and then again there really isn't that much out there specifically for the Macintosh OS X system. But, it is built upon UNIX... and there are baddies out there for UNIX, so...

3 - Macintosh computers are subject to Worms, Trojan Horses, Viruses, and all sorts of other baddies... just like PCs. Macintosh is built on the generally-accepted "most secure" UNIX flavor/core out there so it is harder to 'hack' into... but if someone didn't need to 'hack' your system to install a bug then it's not very hard to put one on your machine. The simple fact of the matter is that most people in this working world work on PCs. These people, when they get pissed off, want to hurt their old company... so they make/distribute PC bugs. There just are not that many unhappy Macintosh users out there. Even Mac users that hate their jobs still tend to think of their Macintosh as a 'friend'... so you just simply have fewer people who want to waste the time coding bugs for the Mac side. The other type of people who write these nasties are those who are out for their 15 minutes of fame. They like to see their 'work' spead all over the world. These are typically people who start those bogus 'Virus Warning' or 'Bill Gates will send you $100 for forwarding this eMail to 100 people you know' type of bogus eMails. They just like knowing that something they did was spread all over the world. It's a status symbol to them. Once they get tired of the eMails they move on to other, bigger, more affective things... viruses. And since they want maximum exposure with these, they typically just ignore the Macintosh platform. Beware... bugs for the Mac DO exist.



If you read my other post I said that there isn't any viruses for Mac OS X YET! As of today (May 3) there are NO live (aka out in the world) viruses, trojan horses, worms for Mac OS X. What was announced a few weeks ago wasn't actually a live trojan horse, but rather the potential for a trojan horse to be developed. That wasn't even something that was actually made. If you haven't noticed that if you use anything other than Norton Anti Virus 9 (which detects PC viruses too), the other versions of NAV the virus definations file size never changes. All they do is change the month and release it every MONTH. Yes, thats every month, not everyday like on the Windows side. If there were viruses, etc for OS X then they would be doing the same in releasing updates everyday or week.

Now this isn't to say that there will never be any viruses, worms, etc for OS X. Its probably only a matter of time before the first one hits OS X. Also if you have Macs and PCs on the same network then yes, the PCs will still effect the way the Macintosh performs, especially if its a worm because it will clog up network traffic. If you have PC servers with Macs then the same is true. If the servers are infected then not only are the PCs useless, but also the Macs until you repair the problem on the server(s).

[shamino]

1 - Macintosh computers are MORE expensive out of the box. After you get them out of the box, however, you quickly see that they are cheaper in many cases.
Even this is not always true.

Yes, you can get $500 PCs, but anybody who actually goes shopping for these machines quickly finds out that they need more memory, a bigger hard disk and a CD-RW. And once you add that, you're now more expensive than an $800 eMac - which is a great machine right out of the box with no upgrades.

People who say Macs cost more are not making a fair comparison. They usually compare bargain-baement PCs against Apple's PowerMac towers, which are server-class systems. If you actually go to a PC vendor's site and put together a comparable PC, you find that the prices are very similar, and in some cases, the Mac costs less.

I just visited Dell's site to do just this - to put together a PC with features comparable to Apple's stock dual 2GHz G5 system (which sells for $3000).

The cheapest dual-processor Dell system is a Precision workstation with two 2.8GHz Xeon processors. I chose 512K cache, to match the G5's 512K per-processor cache. Upgrade to 512M memory. I chose an nVidia Qudro NVS 280 with DVI support video card (the cheapest DVI-capable card they offer - a Radeon 9600 Pro isn't available). Add a SoundBlaster Audigy card in order to get digital audio. Upgrade to DVD+/-RW. Upgrade to a 120G SATA hard drive (160G isn't available) and a SATA controller card. Add a FireWire interface card.

All of this, including Dell's rebate offers, is about $2650. (About $2900 without the rebates). Compare this to $3250 for a dual 2GHz G5 ($3000 plus AppleCare, since Dell's standard warrantee is 3 years.)

So our difference in price is about $600. But the Dell has an inferior video card, a smaller hard drive, fewer empty PCI slots (the Dell has three in use, for the audio, FireWire and SATA interfaces), less RAM capacity (4G vs. 8G) and an inferior software bundle. And all this assumes that a dual 2.8GHZ Xeon performs comparably to a dual-2GHz G5 (which is not necessarily true.)

Upgrade the video and hard drive to something comparable or choose a faster processor (maybe with more cache) and most (if not all) of that $600 savings will evaporate.

In short: although it is definitely true that the total cost of ownership for a Mac is less, the intial purchase price is comparable and sometimes less as well if you compare similarly-configured systems.

3 - Macintosh computers are subject to Worms, Trojan Horses, Viruses, and all sorts of other baddies... just like PCs.
But it is equally true that the number of them that have actually been developed is FAR less than those that have been developed for Windows. To date, there has been only one for OS X, and that was a "proof of concept" trojan developed by an antivirus company in order to create publicity. (There have been many for older versions of MacOS, but I haven't heard of any of these being found in the wild for over 10 years.)

It is definitely true that Macs CAN be infected, but it is equally true that a Mac user taking no precautions is unlikely to actually be infected, whereas his Windows counterpart is not likely to be as lucky.

[bcsimac]

Here in the Memphis area, they had a stupid Grizzlies ticket giveaway and so it wasn't until just last week that the darn iTunes bottles started to show up at all. They only showed up on Sierra Mist bottles. I only drink diet soda so it wasn't any good for me. They ran the Grizzlies ticket promotion right through the playoffs of all dumb things. Playoff tickets were soldout three weeks before the NBA playoffs started. So let's see, the first time I find an iTunes bottle is like April 26th and the promo ended April 30th.....that's a really fair chance to do anything with the promo!(do you sense the sarcasm here.....I hope you do!) Good going Pepsi.....NOT!

[sibelius]

... If you read my other post I said that there isn't any viruses for Mac OS X YET! As of today (May 3) there are NO live (aka out in the world) viruses, trojan horses, worms for Mac OS X. ...

Your reply forced me to re-read my message, and I'll admit that it probably wasn't as clear as it should have been. I think we're both on the same page. My point was that while OS X may not have a lot of virus action, that's not the only way into your Macintosh. It's built off UNIX and other application/languages can see their way in as well... JAVA, Shockwave, Shockwave FLASH, etc., etc. I just wasn't clear on that, so there it is. I'm not saying there are a bunch of 'em out there... but they are there (again, I'll have to rely on your knowledge of their 'live' status, as I only work with the 'caged' ones here in Houston).

sibelius

[sibelius]

Even this is not always true.

People who say Macs cost more are not making a fair comparison. They usually compare bargain-baement PCs against Apple's PowerMac towers, which are server-class systems. If you actually go to a PC vendor's site and put together a comparable PC, you find that the prices are very similar, and in some cases, the Mac costs less.

It is definitely true that Macs CAN be infected, but it is equally true that a Mac user taking no precautions is unlikely to actually be infected, whereas his Windows counterpart is not likely to be as lucky.

Dude... I am sooo with you on this. Maybe my post didn't come though properly/clearly, but I actually agree with you. I'm just saying that, even if you PROVE that the Dell cost more than the Mac once you 'add it all up' the PC people still can't seem to get their heads around it. It's like they're looking right at you, but turn away once you tell them the price difference after additing up all the required extras. Like you're speaking alien to them. They just don't get it. They walk away as if you were trying to tell them that you really did see Elvis alive in a mall just a few minutes ago. It's a hard sell. But that was my point. I don't agree with them, I was just stating the facts: that PC people think certain things about Macs. And I listed some of those things. I wasn't trying to say they were true or that I believed them. Sorry about that one.

sibelius

[iBook]

I recently bought a diet Pepsi as part of the iTunes promotion. When I opened the cap, it wasn't a winner. Not a big deal, but I noticed the printing and the plastic seal were different than the bottles from early in the "contest." Anyone know if Pepsi caught on that people were tilting the bottles to identify winners :rolleyes: and changed the bottle accordingly?

[Chip NoVaMac]

I recently bought a diet Pepsi as part of the iTunes promotion. When I opened the cap, it wasn't a winner. Not a big deal, but I noticed the printing and the plastic seal were different than the bottles from early in the "contest." Anyone know if Pepsi caught on that people were tilting the bottles to identify winners :rolleyes: and changed the bottle accordingly?

Oh, yeah! That is how many got their winning caps....