In a 2022 publication by Task & Purpose, one can read about an extraordinary episode in advertising history — when PepsiCo, during a promotional campaign in 1995, appeared to offer an actual AV-8B Harrier II vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighter jet as the ultimate prize for collecting Pepsi Points, with an estimated "value" of $700.000 at the time.
The highlight of the campaign was a humorous commercial featuring a regular teenager landing a Harrier in front of his school. But the real story was less about post-Cold War military surplus, and how cheap it costed back then, but more about corporate responsibility — or the lack of it.
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Here's the brief of key details from the article. The commercial jokingly stated that a Harrier jet could be claimed for just 7 million Pepsi Points. To put that in perspective, one would need to purchase and consume approximately 1.4 million twelve-packs of Pepsi to reach the required amount — making the prize clearly unachievable through normal consumption.
However, John Leonard, a 21-year-old business student from Seattle, took the ad quite literally and became obsessed with actually getting the jet. He discovered a loophole: the fine print of the campaign allowed people to purchase additional Pepsi Points at a rate of 10 cents per point. That meant 7 million points could be "bought" for $700,000. Leonard convinced three investors to provide the capital, submitted the check along with an official order form, and requested the AV-8B Harrier as advertised.
Pepsi's response was predictable — the company stated that the ad was clearly a joke, apologized for any confusion, and offered Leonard a few free coupons for Pepsi products instead.
Unsatisfied, Leonard sued. The lawsuit, lasted from 1996 to 1999, attracting considerable media attention. While public sympathy largely sided with Leonard, the court ultimately ruled in Pepsi's favor. In the court files, you can find the judge's conclusion that "no objective person could reasonably have concluded that the commercial actually offered a Harrier jet."
Interestingly, Pepsis response to the legal consequences was not to eliminate the fictitious prize, but to raise the bar: they reran the commercial, this time requiring 700 million Pepsi Points (or $70 million in equivalent) to win the jet. Unsurprisingly, no one took the offer seriously after that.
As Task & Purpose noted, "The moral of the story was simple: don’t believe everything you see on TV."
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