Speaker 1: Hi, I'm Carol Masser and I'm Jason Kelly. It's time
Speaker 1: to listen to one of this week's feature stories. While
Speaker 1: in May two millions of Filipinos turned on the evening news,
Speaker 1: Pepsi was about to announce the winning numbers for a
Speaker 1: special promotion called Number Fever that was gripping the nation. Jason,
Speaker 1: it certainly was, and a three digit number had been
Speaker 1: printed on the underside of bottle caps. A million pacos.
Speaker 1: That's about sixty eight thousand dollars, you asked in today's dollars.
Speaker 1: It was the largest prize available that published odds of
Speaker 1: winning that amount, where twenty eight point eight million to one.
Speaker 1: Number Fever was such a success that Pepsi began to
Speaker 1: challenge Coca Cola's long time dominance. Monthly sales were jumping
Speaker 1: to fourteen million dollars from ten million dollars, market share
Speaker 1: was growing to from nineteen percent, and then the winning
Speaker 1: number was announced three hundred forty nine. What ensued was
Speaker 1: perhaps the deadliest marketing disaster in history, and it remains
Speaker 1: one of the business world's great cautionary tales. And error
Speaker 1: at a bottling plan led to six hundred thousand winners,
Speaker 1: not to mention lawsuits, riding, and even deaths. The Coola
Speaker 1: contest with six hundred thousand winners decades ago. Pepsi's number
Speaker 1: of fever promotion captivated consumers and promised to end Coke's
Speaker 1: dominance in the Philippines, but an error at a bottling
Speaker 1: plant led to disaster. By Jeff Maisch. Marily So, a
Speaker 1: woman in her early fifties with graying hair, runs a
Speaker 1: Sorry Sorry store out of her one room home in
Speaker 1: a concrete building beside a railway track in Manila. In
Speaker 1: the steamy heat of a summer afternoon, Shirtless children appear
Speaker 1: at her window clutching coins. With a kind smile, she
Speaker 1: serves them warm bottles of water and Royal True, one
Speaker 1: of a few sodas she displays, alongside tiny shampoo, seshets
Speaker 1: and single cigarettes. There's one brand she refuses to sell.
Speaker 1: If someone asks for a Pepsi, her expression sours. For
Speaker 1: more than twenty eight years, she's nurtured bitter resentment against
Speaker 1: the company. I didn't have a job back then, she says,
Speaker 1: starting in on her Pepsi story. It was six pm
Speaker 1: on ma and So was among the seventy of Filipinos
Speaker 1: watching the Channel two evening news. Then twenty three, she
Speaker 1: was living in a wooden shack beside the tracks with
Speaker 1: four children under five. Pepsi was about to announce the
Speaker 1: winning number in a promotion that had gripped the Philippines
Speaker 1: sixty five million people. Her husband, a house painter, had
Speaker 1: spent their last centavos on special number fever bottles of Pepsi,
Speaker 1: hoping one of the three digit numbers printed on the
Speaker 1: underside of the caps would match one of the winning
Speaker 1: numbers locked inside a vault. Across the Philippines seven thousand,
Speaker 1: six hundred and forty one islands. Ads had promised people
Speaker 1: you could be a millionaire. A million pesos worth about
Speaker 1: sixty eight thousand dollars today was the largest prize available,
Speaker 1: six hundred and eleven times the country his average monthly
Speaker 1: salary at the time. The published odds of winning that
Speaker 1: amount were twenty eight point eight million to one, but
Speaker 1: Pepsi had already minted eighteen millionaires. They appeared in its ads.
Speaker 1: Realist A one. A bus driver named Nema Balmas became
Speaker 1: known as Mrs Pepsi after joking that drinking cola put
Speaker 1: her husband in the mood. Number of Fever was the
Speaker 1: brainchild of an executive named Pedro Virgara, a Chilean who
Speaker 1: worked for the promotions department in New York. After a
Speaker 1: successful US rollout, Pepsi Coli International Chief Executive Officer Christopher
Speaker 1: Sinclair made it part of his strategy to fight Coca
Speaker 1: Cola abroad. Since becoming the global arms youngest CEO at
Speaker 1: thirty eight, Sinclair had developed a reputation as a battlefield commander,
Speaker 1: visiting seventies seven countries in six months. He was dismayed
Speaker 1: to find the world's grocery aisles awash with Coca cola
Speaker 1: red as Fortune put it. Pepsi hired a Mexican company,
Speaker 1: d G Consultaures to bring Number Fever to Argentina, Chile, Guatemala, Mexico,
Speaker 1: and the Philippines, where it truly caught fire. Monthly sales
Speaker 1: there quickly jumped from ten million dollars to fourteen million dollars,
Speaker 1: and its market share from nineteen point four percent to
Speaker 1: twenty four point nine. Bottling plants roared twenty hours a day,
Speaker 1: doubling their usual production. An aggressive ad campaign dominated the media,
Speaker 1: with twenty nine radio stations and four newspapers circulating the
Speaker 1: winning numbers. The promotion, initially scheduled to end on May eighth,
Speaker 1: was extended five weeks. By then, number fever was verging
Speaker 1: on number hysteria. Cops jailed a maid accused of stealing
Speaker 1: her employer's winning crown. As the bottle caps were known.
Speaker 1: Two Pepsi sales people were murdered following a dispute over
Speaker 1: another crown. The night of May, so murmured a prayer
Speaker 1: as the blue of the television shown her children's eyes.
Speaker 1: When Pepsi announced the winning number, her husband is Sagani,
Speaker 1: r fold through their crowns and found the one three
Speaker 1: forty nine, a million paceos. Her prayer had been answered.
Speaker 1: The couple danced and laughed until the TV started to
Speaker 1: rattle in a passing freight train drowned out their shrieks
Speaker 1: of joy. Five miles across town, Ernesto did Guzman Dalima,
Speaker 1: a tricycle taxi driver, was dashing downstairs to tell his nephew,
Speaker 1: Simon Marcello that his three forty nine crown had just
Speaker 1: won him fifty thousand paceos. Marcello was already celebrating he
Speaker 1: had a three forty nine worth a hundred thousand paceos,
Speaker 1: enough to quit his job as a cocktail waiter in
Speaker 1: the city's red light district. Similar scenes were playing out
Speaker 1: across the country. A bus driver had three one million
Speaker 1: paso three forty nine. A mother of twelve whose children
Speaker 1: went through ten bottles of Pepsi a day had won
Speaker 1: thirty five million paceos. Winners raced to the iron gates
Speaker 1: of Pepsi's bottling factory in Quezon City, just northeast of
Speaker 1: Manila to claim their prizes. As the crowd grew, a
Speaker 1: secretary die out. The marketing director Rosemarie Vera. There seems
Speaker 1: to be many three crowns in circulation among people I know,
Speaker 1: the secretary said, According to an account in the Philippine
Speaker 1: Daily Inquirer, at ten PM, someone from the company telephoned
Speaker 1: the Philippine Department of Trade and Industry and said a
Speaker 1: mistake had been made. Within a year, a violent consumer
Speaker 1: uprising would be underway, with riots and grenade attacks, leaving
Speaker 1: dozens injured and five dead. It was perhaps the deadliest
Speaker 1: marketing disaster in history and remains one of the business
Speaker 1: world's great cautionary tales. I don't think that from the
Speaker 1: onset people would look at this and say people could
Speaker 1: actually die, says Lee Auster, a University of Idaho professor
Speaker 1: and the co author of a risk management textbook that
Speaker 1: included number fever as a case study. But even then,
Speaker 1: like the nuclear power industry or aviation, people have to
Speaker 1: be on top of things and realize that catastrophic events
Speaker 1: that can happen at the end. In response to a
Speaker 1: request for comment on the events described in this story,
Speaker 1: Pepsi said it would be unable to verify them. These
Speaker 1: events took place almost thirty years ago, and none of
Speaker 1: the executives familiar with this programer at PepsiCo anymore, and
Speaker 1: given that the Philippines is just emerging from one of
Speaker 1: the world's longest COVID lockdowns, we have been unable to
Speaker 1: access stored records on this matter, the company wrote, but
Speaker 1: it said we deeply regret any pain and suffering our
Speaker 1: mistake caused the people of the Philippines. America dominates many
Speaker 1: aspects of Filipino life, from the kaleidoscope of beverages and
Speaker 1: most sorry Sorry stores to a fondness for swing dancing
Speaker 1: and apple pie. The US took control of the islands
Speaker 1: from Spain in eight after defeating the country's revolutionary government
Speaker 1: in a vicious three year war. It established military bases
Speaker 1: and colonial rule, and its influence remained long after independence.
Speaker 1: In the US, interfered in presidential elections, tacitly supported Ferdinand
Speaker 1: Marcos during his brutal two decades of rule, and generally
Speaker 1: used the country as proxy turf for the Cold War,
Speaker 1: sometimes in bizarre ways. At one point, the CIA helped
Speaker 1: suppress a communist peasant rebellion by faking vampire attacks to
Speaker 1: scare superstitious guerrillas into leaving their positions. Two American companies
Speaker 1: also used the Philippines for a different kind of proxy war.
Speaker 1: PepsiCo and Coca Cola duked it out there in ways
Speaker 1: that would never have been allowed in the US, employing
Speaker 1: espionage and other dirty tricks. At one point, during the
Speaker 1: Marco Sarah, Pepsi executives were caught cooking the books to
Speaker 1: show higher sales than Coke, forcing a ninety million dollar
Speaker 1: right off. Coke kept the upper hand mainly by undercutting
Speaker 1: Pepsi's prices. By it had expanded its share of the
Speaker 1: cola market to so high that it no longer bothered
Speaker 1: to advertise number of fever hit Coke like a sucker punch.
Speaker 1: Rodolpho Salazar, president of Pepsicola Product Philippines, boasted that half
Speaker 1: the country's population was participating, making it the most successful
Speaker 1: marketing promotion in the world. As Pepsi's sales jumped, Coke
Speaker 1: executives scrambled unsuccessfully to devise their own promotional game, even
Speaker 1: recalls Barbara Gonzalez, Coke's former corporate communications director in the Philippines,
Speaker 1: buying a whole truck of bottles to find out what
Speaker 1: is the ratio of what we call the seating the
Speaker 1: winning crown to the non winning. Coke's Filipino president Jesus
Speaker 1: King King Seldran, a World War Two hero who sometimes
Speaker 1: showed up at bottling factories in a tank, publicly admitted
Speaker 1: he was concerned. There was reason to be skeptical, though
Speaker 1: that the promotion would end as a clear win for Pepsi.
Speaker 1: During the rollout in Chile earlier that year, a garbled
Speaker 1: facts had led a wrong number to be announced, triggering riots,
Speaker 1: and swindlers in the Philippines were creating fake winning crowns,
Speaker 1: leading people to claim they'd been wrongly denied prizes. Even
Speaker 1: before the three fort nine. Error emerged when disaster struck on.
Speaker 1: Pepsi initially tried to change the winning number. Newspapers reported
Speaker 1: the next morning that the real number was one thirty four,
Speaker 1: only adding to the confusion, the company locked the factory
Speaker 1: gates in Quezon City, and by mid morning policemen and
Speaker 1: soldiers were wrestling with three forty nine holders who were
Speaker 1: lobbing rocks at the building. Executives inside, we're trying to
Speaker 1: phone headquarters in New York, but Sinclair was unreachable, schmoozing
Speaker 1: on a yacht at an annual gathering of bottlers, according
Speaker 1: to a report in Asia Week magazine. Sinclair declined to
Speaker 1: comment for this story. Protests carried on through the next night.
Speaker 1: At three am, Pepsi decided it would pay three forty
Speaker 1: nine holders who came forward over the following two weeks,
Speaker 1: a goodwill gesture of five paces. Executives calculated that if
Speaker 1: half the six thousand crowns that had been minted with
Speaker 1: the number three forty nine were cashed in, the damage
Speaker 1: would be contained at six million dollars. Among those assembled
Speaker 1: outside the factory was Vicente del Fierro Jr. An advertising
Speaker 1: consultant and a preacher for a charismatic Catholic sect. Del
Speaker 1: Fierro had called the promotion a social disease that nurtures
Speaker 1: the gambling instinct in our children in an open letter
Speaker 1: to a newspaper, but despite his opposition, his daughter Simbelle
Speaker 1: held a winning crown. He later wrote that he saw
Speaker 1: security guards tossing glass soda bottles at the crowd, and
Speaker 1: that a policeman charged at him with a riot shield.
Speaker 1: He took cover at a nearby Duncan donuts, jammed with
Speaker 1: agitated winners. Outside, Pepsi trucks rumbled past, flanked by guards
Speaker 1: carrying automatic weapons. A manager tried to escape the factory,
Speaker 1: but protesters threw stones at him. A bomb threat would follow.
Speaker 1: Hours later, Del Fierro stood on a table at the
Speaker 1: donut shop and demanded quiet. Then he asked for volunteers
Speaker 1: to draw up a list of winners names. As reporters
Speaker 1: gathered around, he announced a crusade, aid it's about Third
Speaker 1: world countries being exploited by multinationals. He said many three
Speaker 1: forty nine holders took up Pepsi's offer of five pesos
Speaker 1: for their crowns. In the first two days, the company
Speaker 1: paid out more than twelve and a half million pesos.
Speaker 1: The final bill ended up close to ten million dollars.
Speaker 1: According to Asia Week, It didn't take long for Pepsi
Speaker 1: to trace the source of the error. Three forty nine
Speaker 1: designated a non winner in the original promotion had been
Speaker 1: mistakenly chosen as a winner for the contest extension. The
Speaker 1: company reported that crowns from the extension had been printed
Speaker 1: with a different seven digit security code, and that none
Speaker 1: of these would be honored. The explanation didn't appease the protesters,
Speaker 1: as del Fierro rallied support for his campaign, which he
Speaker 1: called Coalition three forty nine. He got an early boost
Speaker 1: from an unlikely source, Celdron Coke's local CEO, who instructed
Speaker 1: an employee to offer del Fierro ten thousand pesos start
Speaker 1: up money. According to the now former staffer, who spoke
Speaker 1: on condition of anonymity, can I have a megaphone? The
Speaker 1: employee recalls del Fierro asking when the contribution arrived. Sel
Speaker 1: Dron passed away in Coke didn't respond to emailed requests
Speaker 1: for comment. Coalition three forty nine organized rallies outside Pepsi plants,
Speaker 1: where del Fierro would yell into his new p A system.
Speaker 1: He also started preparing a lawsuit he hoped would win
Speaker 1: class action status, promising crown holders a huge settlement. He
Speaker 1: accepted five pesos for legal fees from those who could
Speaker 1: afford it, and worked pro bono for those who couldn't.
Speaker 1: De Guzman Dalina, the Manila taxi driver, arrived with his
Speaker 1: nephew at del Fierro's house one night, not long after
Speaker 1: the draw, to find three forty nine holders lined up
Speaker 1: around the block. Inside. Del Fierro's wife, Nori, a glamorous
Speaker 1: cookbook author, was making food for the crowd. Del Fierro
Speaker 1: said he'd take the fight all the way to New York,
Speaker 1: a city he knew mainly from Frank Sinatra songs. We
Speaker 1: are committed to pursue this crusade until the very end,
Speaker 1: he wrote in a letter to the Manila Chronicle. God
Speaker 1: is definitely bigger than the fiftieth largest corporation in the world.
Speaker 1: When the story hit international papers, Kenneth Ross, PepsiCo International's
Speaker 1: primary spokesman, portrayed the activists as opportunists. Quick buck artists
Speaker 1: have lured thousands of unwinning Filipinos with very empty promises
Speaker 1: of a huge settlement for the payment of an upfront fee.
Speaker 1: He told the associated press. Groups with names such as
Speaker 1: United three forty nine and Solid three forty nine actually
Speaker 1: were charging fees, with some asking as much as a
Speaker 1: thousand pesos for membership. Maralissa and her husband signed up
Speaker 1: with the preacher brother Bambi Santos, who said God had
Speaker 1: called him to fight Pepsi. They agreed to pay him
Speaker 1: thirty of any future settlements and joined his rallies and
Speaker 1: protests in the provinces. Farmers were reported to be selling
Speaker 1: their cattle to afford the ernie to Manila, and the
Speaker 1: chaos continued. Protesters in Quezon City burned tires, Speculators offered
Speaker 1: wads of cash for three forty nine in hopes of
Speaker 1: a bigger payoff later. Even police weren't immune to the frenzy.
Speaker 1: One National Bureau of Investigation officer arrived at the Kaezon
Speaker 1: City plant with an empty attache case to carry home
Speaker 1: his million pasos. Pepsi either pays, he told a reporter,
Speaker 1: or they closed down. As days turned into weeks and
Speaker 1: then months, some ten thousand claimants filed suits demanding money.
Speaker 1: Molotov cocktails crashed into Pepsi factories and dozens of delivery trucks,
Speaker 1: their drivers dousing the flames with seven Up. The Pepsi
Speaker 1: Coola hot Shots basketball team changed its name to the
Speaker 1: Seven Up on. Kola's executives began traveling with bodyguards, and
Speaker 1: the company moved American employees out of the country, save
Speaker 1: for one who had worked in Beirut. We were eating
Speaker 1: death threats for breakfast Vera, the marketing direct later told
Speaker 1: a reporter At a riot in Manila, a sixty four
Speaker 1: year old protester named Passiencia Salem, whose husband had died
Speaker 1: of heart failure during March, told a journalist, even if
Speaker 1: I die here, my ghost will come to fight Pepsi.
Speaker 1: Why had the contest sparked such anger. It was the money,
Speaker 1: of course, but it wasn't only that. The scandal tapped
Speaker 1: into rising anti colonial sentiment in the Philippines, which was
Speaker 1: then flaring over the American military presence. Following fraud failed negotiations,
Speaker 1: the US was withdrawing from the last of its six bases.
Speaker 1: The closures were a victory for nationalists, but they came
Speaker 1: at the cost of hundreds of millions of dollars in
Speaker 1: yearly aid and tens of thousands of jobs. Number fever
Speaker 1: also became linked in the public imagination with the country's
Speaker 1: chaotic national elections, which had taken place a few weeks earlier.
Speaker 1: But we're still unresolved thanks to counting delays and procedural
Speaker 1: and legal challenges. The presidential test in particular, had had
Speaker 1: colonial overtones, pitting Fidel Ramos, a cigar chomping, right leaning
Speaker 1: West point graduate with Pentagon connections, against Miriam defense Or Santiago,
Speaker 1: a US educated lawyer who had worked overseas for the
Speaker 1: United Nations, and Edward Kawango, chairman of San miguel a
Speaker 1: Coca Cola partner. Other candidates included mL de Marco's widow
Speaker 1: of Ferdinand. One must wonder how many voters were drawn
Speaker 1: from the voting booth to PEPSI protests, a columnist wrote.
Speaker 1: In the end, Ramos narrowly defeated Santiago, a result marred
Speaker 1: by evidence of fraud. In January, PEPSI had to pay
Speaker 1: a fine of one fifty thousand pesos to the Department
Speaker 1: of Trade and Industry for deviating from the promotional campaign
Speaker 1: the government had approved. We have done everything that we
Speaker 1: think is reasonable to amically conclude this issue. Ross told
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Times at this point, we do not
Speaker 1: intend to lay out additional money. Del Fierro mean while
Speaker 1: had hired five employees to process new lawsuit claimants, he
Speaker 1: eventually signed up about eight hundred in all, and was
Speaker 1: looking for US lawyers to bring the fight to New York.
Speaker 1: His daughter, sim Belle had taken over his advertising business.
Speaker 1: One morning in February, a schoolteacher named Anisetta Rosario made
Speaker 1: her way to a Sari Sari store in Manila to
Speaker 1: buy rice. As she reached the market, a Pepsi delivery
Speaker 1: truck arrived. Someone through a homemade bomb that bounced off
Speaker 1: the truck and detonated. The blast killed Rosario and a
Speaker 1: five year old girls standing nearby. Five others were injured.
Speaker 1: Rosario's eldest daughter, Cindy, still recalls the shock of seeing
Speaker 1: her mother's lower half covered. At the funeral, they told
Speaker 1: me her legs were shattered, she says. Rosario's widower, Raoul,
Speaker 1: didn't speak for days after his wife's death. A slight
Speaker 1: man who never remarried, he tells me in a whisper
Speaker 1: that Pepsi invited him to an office where a group
Speaker 1: of men in polo shirts with corporate logos offered him
Speaker 1: fifty thousand pesos about thirty four hundred dollars today, not
Speaker 1: to sue. My wife wouldn't have died, he says. He
Speaker 1: shouted in reply, it's because of the three forty nine incident,
Speaker 1: because you cheated the people. He stormed out, but not
Speaker 1: long afterward, on the advice of friends, he changed his
Speaker 1: mind and took the money. In early April, Sinclair, the
Speaker 1: Pepsi International CEO, flew to Manila for an emergency meeting
Speaker 1: with President Ramos. A Ramos aide told the Los Angeles
Speaker 1: Times that Sinclair pleaded for help, warning that the incident
Speaker 1: could scare away much needed foreign investment. Ramos disagreed. It's
Speaker 1: a special kind of case, Ramos told the Times. The
Speaker 1: following month, a grenade tossed into a Pepsi plant in
Speaker 1: Devou City killed three employees. The company urged the NBI
Speaker 1: to open an investigation into the attacks. A witness to
Speaker 1: several riots, no Mere Palacios, came forward with a list
Speaker 1: of six leaders of anti Pepsi coalition who he claimed
Speaker 1: were masterminding the violence. To force the company to pay.
Speaker 1: In late July, del Fierro and his wife boarded a
Speaker 1: flight to New York, armed with the findings of a
Speaker 1: Philippine Senate report whose legitimacy Pepsi contested. It called the
Speaker 1: company guilty of gross negligence and misleading or deceptive advertising.
Speaker 1: As del fierro strode through Manhattan. He later wrote, sinatras
Speaker 1: New York, New York played in his head a kind
Speaker 1: of personal battle him. He hired two American consumer lawyers
Speaker 1: to sue Pepsi for four million dollars in actual damages
Speaker 1: and one million dollars in moral and exemplary damages. This
Speaker 1: problem will become a serious threat to the very existence
Speaker 1: of PepsiCo, he told reporters. Massive negative public reaction will
Speaker 1: create a very deep wound which may be very difficult
Speaker 1: to heal. Pepsi was in the midst of an annus
Speaker 1: horribilist in the US. Dozens of people were claiming they'd
Speaker 1: found syringes inside it's cans, a tempering crisis the FBI
Speaker 1: would later expose as a hoax. Crystal Pepsi, a colorless
Speaker 1: version of the soda, was selling miserably, soon to become
Speaker 1: one of history's great product failures, and a world tour
Speaker 1: by long time spokesman Michael Jackson was about to be
Speaker 1: derailed by accusations of child molestation, with Jackson canceling dates
Speaker 1: and saying that he'd become addicted to painkillers first prescribed
Speaker 1: after his hair caught fire during a Pepsi commercial shoot.
Speaker 1: Del Fierro showed up at a Pepsi building in upstate
Speaker 1: New York, where Ross met with him. He warned the
Speaker 1: spokesman that he'd stay in New York until they reached
Speaker 1: a settlement. Ross said the violence had to end first.
Speaker 1: We don't have any control over the violence. Del Fierro replied.
Speaker 1: He returned to Manila empty handed. Later that year, the
Speaker 1: NBI alleged that a trio of thugs dubbed the Three
Speaker 1: Kings was behind the anti Pepsi bombings. Initially, one of
Speaker 1: the men, a garment factory worker named RhoD Elio Formento,
Speaker 1: said he'd volunteered for a three forty nine group and
Speaker 1: been recruited by the other two during a clandestine lunch.
Speaker 1: According to documents obtained by Bloomberg Business Week from the NBI,
Speaker 1: he told investigators that a PEPSI security officer was present
Speaker 1: at the meeting and that the company had paid the
Speaker 1: three Kings to cause violence at rallies in an effort
Speaker 1: to frame protest organizers. Fomento also said they'd been hired
Speaker 1: to cause a rift among the various movements leaders. If
Speaker 1: we were successful in our mission, PEPSI would give us
Speaker 1: a huge amount, he claimed, but Fermento's conscience nagged at him.
Speaker 1: Many got hurt and died. He told investigators, I was
Speaker 1: so guilty and I could not take it anymore, so
Speaker 1: I decided to reveal the truth. Fermento couldn't be located
Speaker 1: for comment. A lawyer for PEPSI dismissed the police report,
Speaker 1: but the head of the NBA's Anti Organized Crime division
Speaker 1: told the media, we've been had. The People's Journal soon
Speaker 1: ran a story headlined PEPSI goons ombed own trucks. In February,
Speaker 1: the company lost a three court case. A twenty one
Speaker 1: year old medical student named Joel roquet one a lower
Speaker 1: court verdict in Bulah Khan, north of Manila, ordering PEPSI
Speaker 1: to pay him more than one million pasos. The company appealed,
Speaker 1: but it's unclear whether it succeeded. That spring, Delphierro suffered
Speaker 1: a serious stroke. He recovered well enough that in the fall,
Speaker 1: when the Philippine Supreme Court issued a rest warrants for
Speaker 1: nine local Pepsi executives, he posed for a celebratory photograph
Speaker 1: holding a newspaper with the headline arrest of nine Pepsi executives. Okayed.
Speaker 1: There's no record that the warrants were executed. The company
Speaker 1: sued him for libel, saying he'd been circulating pamphlets calling
Speaker 1: number fever a scam and had falsely claimed Pepsi had
Speaker 1: him illegally detained. Soon afterward, another stroke almost killed him.
Speaker 1: From his hospital bed, he labored over paperwork, dragging himself
Speaker 1: into court when necessary. Pepsi, they killing me softly. Sim
Speaker 1: Bell recalls him telling her he made her promise to
Speaker 1: keep fighting the company even after he was gone. That November,
Speaker 1: hundreds of torch wielding three forty nine winners demonstrated near
Speaker 1: Manila's Malakanjang Palace during a state visit by U. S
Speaker 1: President Bill Clinton, yelling for his help and igniting a
Speaker 1: Pepsi bottle effigy stuffed with fireworks. Their hopes of American
Speaker 1: intervention were further dashed the following summer when a new
Speaker 1: York court dismissed del Fiero's lawsuit, saying it should be
Speaker 1: heard in the Philippines. Sinclair was made c e O
Speaker 1: and chairman of Pepsi's combined international and North American operations
Speaker 1: in March nineteen ninety six, but he resigned four months
Speaker 1: later citing personal reasons. Sinclair departed voluntarily but ungracefully, Fortune wrote,
Speaker 1: leaving the overseas beverage mess for someone else to mop up.
Speaker 1: PEPSI had by then fallen back to also ranst at
Speaker 1: Us Abroad, out sold by Coke three to one. In
Speaker 1: the Philippines, it was even overtaken by Cosmos, a local
Speaker 1: Coke owned brew marketing There had become all but impossible
Speaker 1: anytime anyone mentions anything to do with Pepsi. Frederick Dale,
Speaker 1: a local vice president with the company, told Deutsche Press
Speaker 1: agenteur somebody always digs up three forty nine to be
Speaker 1: three forty nine was slang for being duped. The protests
Speaker 1: eventually died out, but the lawsuits plotted along for years.
Speaker 1: It wasn't until two thousand six that a Philippine court
Speaker 1: finally ruled PEPSI hadn't been negligent and wasn't liable for damages.
Speaker 1: At long last, the company's nightmare was over. This was
Speaker 1: not some little incident in a far off land that
Speaker 1: we didn't care about, says Ross, who left Pepsi in
Speaker 1: We cared deeply about what happened. We cared deeply about
Speaker 1: amicably resolving the matter to everyone's satisfaction. We certainly regretted
Speaker 1: the violence that surrounded this. In Nilah, marrily So had
Speaker 1: by then moved on. Her husband died of a heart
Speaker 1: attack two years after the draw, sending her into emotional
Speaker 1: and financial despair. Storms flooded her shack, tarnishing her winning crown,
Speaker 1: and with four growing children to feed, she had no
Speaker 1: time to attend rallies. So one day she tossed the
Speaker 1: cap away. It was perseverance, she says, not luck, that
Speaker 1: led her to find a better home and start her
Speaker 1: Sorry Sary store. Today. Framed photographs of her children in
Speaker 1: graduation caps and gowns hang on one wall. She tears
Speaker 1: up as she shows them off. Although del Fierro never
Speaker 1: won the settlement from Pepsi, he did squash the libel
Speaker 1: case against him, and he could claim some credit for
Speaker 1: helping pressure the government to strengthen its provisions on misleading
Speaker 1: and deceptive advertisements. After the three forty nine controversy, it
Speaker 1: started more closely monitoring promotional schemes and doubled its fines
Speaker 1: against companies that violate consumer rights. Del Fierro died in January,
Speaker 1: following another stroke. Each night for months afterward, Simbel would
Speaker 1: boot up her father's computer to fulfill her promise to
Speaker 1: keep up the fight. She built a Coalition three forty
Speaker 1: nine website, uploading legal documents and press clippings. Inside a
Speaker 1: filing cabinet, she maintains an archive of thousands of winning crowns,
Speaker 1: the rusting dreams of a generation. He guided me to
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