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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%.
 
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.
 
AidenShaw said:
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!
 
omnivector said:
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.

Frank
 
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.
 
pgwalsh said:
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.
 
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.
 
Here's breaking news... "in" from Think Secret

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.
 
ALoLA said:
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?
 
Diet Pepsi is Horrible...

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

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%
 
benpatient said:
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:
 
FriarTuck said:
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).
 
Won 6x but only redeemed 4

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.
 
1macker1 said:
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.
 
Pepsi Frikked Up

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.
 
Spagolli94 said:
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.
 
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