As a kid, I used to collect ring-pulls from Pepsi cans to exchange for prizes like a pocket radio. Then harass customers in the shop for their silver foils from cigarette packets, which bought me silver-played wine goblets im my decadent days of youth. So it was easy to sympathise with go-getter John Leonard, the key protagonist of Netflix docuseries Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?
In the mid-Nineties, Leonard was a 21-year-old business student from Washington State who watched a TV ad for Pepsi Stuff (a major new campaign to challenge market leaders Coke featuring anyone from Cindy Crawford to John Lee Hooker) and saw a massive opportunity.
He took the image of a $23m Harrier jet with 7,000,000 points beneath it as a legitimate offer, which he duly accepted and devised a clever strategy to collect on with the help of successful investor and climbing buddy Todd Hoffman.
Leonard realised he could buy Pepsi points instead of having to drink to earn them (precisely 190 a day for 100 years, to save you the maths). PepsiCo saw it differently, pleading the defence of common sense. C’mon, it was clearly a joke, they said. But they forgot to add a disclaimer. (On the first version, anyway. Second time around, they were “just kidding”.)
The drinks behemoth refused to comply, eventually taking legal action to enforce their right to refuse. At the time, it wasn’t illegal to own a jet as long as it had been decommissioned (stripped of its armaments) so that was 1-0 to the young dreamer.
Leonard and Hoffman were tenacious and refused to give up, emboldened by the bully throwing their weight around, setting in motion this goofy David and Goliath contest that I won’t spoil for you here. But it features a hilarious cast of characters.
There’s scrappy attorney Michael Avenatti (famous for representing Stormy Daniels and being convicted of attempting to extort Nike). Former creative director Michael Patti (who looks quite traumatised by the whole affair) and Leonard’s initial counsel Larry Schantz who’s a bit more by the book than his impish successor.
Check out this brilliant piece of print advertising to stoke public anger towards the company that’s throwing its weight around and “deceiving a generation”. Straight out of the Avenatti playbook. “We're gonna kick Pepsi's ass,” he said, “and all of their lawyers and all of their media types. We're gonna outplay them at their own game.'"
A print ad to drum up support for John Leonard’s case against Pepsi. Part of scrappy lawyer Michael Avenatti’s plan to use bold marketing to play them at their own game – and kick their ass
Even former Senator Manny Pacquiao makes an appearance – unnecessarily so but, hey, it’s Manny – in connection with Pepsi’s previous promotion controversy in the Philippines. There, the company ran a lottery to drive sales, where those who found the winning number under their bottle cap would be eligible for a cash prize.
However, Pepsi manufactured hundreds of thousands of extra ‘golden’ caps, opening themselves up to around $32 billion of claims. They tried to limit the number of winners and individual payouts, which caused uproar and lead to major riots, even deaths. Bloomberg did a good video piece on this in 2020.
Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? also features some pretty wild reconstructions. I am not a fan of this style but the actors are having such a good time in those scenes, so why not join in? Like Neil Stephens, who plays shrimp-chomping Victor Miller, the man with the evidence that the jet was a legitimate prize). I hope he got paid well.
By the way, Is this the same Victor Miller? They can’t all be in the military aircraft business.
Neil Stephens as the mysterious and increasingly unhinged Victor Miller in Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?
Michael Davis going ballistic as John Leonard in Pepsi, Where’s My Jet?
Copywriter Vikki Ross brought the show to my attention, on account of the critical role of words in ads, no doubt. But there’s also lots to chew on for the eternal students of contract law. I couldn’t believe I had never heard of this case, either in lectures or in the UK press while growing up.
Anyway, watch and argue among yourselves. At the very least, PepsiCo was careless in the making of the ad and I admired the resolve of Leonard & co in the face of the drinks giant’s arrogance. They were asking for it. Some might argue that Leonard represented the “best and brightest” of this generation” that PepsiCo was trying to appeal to and represent. Instead, they tried to squeeze him.
Final thought: props to Scott Cosso who spotted this crucial piece of evidence in the first ad.
Does this piece of YouTube detective work posted under the original ad prove Pepsi wasn’t kidding about the jet after all?