Another Apple Pepsi Music Promotion is possibly coming soon as we reported based upon an Adweek article back on July 28, 2004. The promotion would give away 200 million free songs from the iTunes Music Store and 1,700 iPod minis. Earlier today, Apple had a webpage online (http://www.apple.com/itunes/pepsi/) that has since been removed (screenshot mirrored by MacRumors.com here) stating, “Pepsi iTunes Music Promotion is coming soon. When the promotion begins, we’ll notify you by email.
Drink Win. Play. 1 in 3 wins a free song on iTunes. Plus a chance to win an iPod mini. One winner every hour. Look for code under specially marked 20oz. and 1-liter bottles of Pepsi, Diest Pepsi, Pepsi Wild Cherry, Mountain Dew, Diet Mountain Dew, Mountain Dew Code Red and Sierra Mist.
Last year, 100 million winning codes were randomly seeded in 20-ounce and 1-liter bottles of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Sierra Mist only, so the addition of the popular Mountain Dew and Diet Mountain Dew brands and the doubling of free iTunes downloads to 200 million possible are welcome signs that this promotion could be different than the last go ’round.
“Free iTunes downloads must be redeemed by May 23, while the iPod mini sweepstakes period ends on April 30. Apple said the odds of winning a free song are 1 in 3 and that code entry limits are 10 per day or 200 total. The company said the odds of winning the daily iPod mini drawing depends on the total number of eligible entries received that hour/day. According to the official rules, all non-winning entries will be eligible for the next day’s drawing and all subsequent drawings,” iPodlounge reports.
There has been no official word, yet, from either Apple Computer or Pepsi. Also, no word, yet, from Bill Palmer if iPod Garage will be reviving the iTunes Pepsi Bottlecap Map.
Presumably, the “25º Pepsi Bottle Tip Method” will work again!
[Attribution: MacRumors]
MacDailyNews Take: If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again! Let’s hope the second try, if it really materializes, is markedly better than the first. First order of business seems to be taken care of (see July 28, 2004 article below): creation of a better ad with Apple’s ad agency at the helm and with Apple final approval. Now let’s see if Pepsi can deliver actual bottles with yellow caps into the stores in time; this would help. At least expectations will be nil (instead of sky high) going into this one.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple to give Pepsi iTunes promo another try at upcoming Super Bowl? – July 28, 2004
Pepsi’s Apple iTunes promo nightmare, 5 million songs redeemed total; included in 70 million songs total – April 28, 2004
USC student trashes 2,500 iTunes-Pepsi bottles, redeems winning caps, enjoys a Diet Coke – April 16, 2004
Pepsi iTunes bottle caps take longer to get into stores than expected – March 04, 2004
Are Pepsi iTunes caps available in your area? – February 09, 2004
A Coke drinker’s forced migration to Pepsi in quest of free Apple iTunes– February 04, 2004
The Register: Pepsi iTunes ad ‘likely to go down in history as one of the greatest public relations disasters in history’ – February 02, 2004
Pepsi’s iTunes ad places near bottom of Super Bowl Ad Meter list – February 02, 2004
Pepsi’s iTunes Super Bowl commercial available here via QuickTime – January 30, 2004
Analyst: Pepsi iTunes campaign will generate sales of ‘5-10 million songs per week by summer, or 200 million for the year’ – January 29, 2004
Somebody’s selling a whole lot of sugared water on Apple.com – January 28, 2004
Hopefully it won’t suck like the last one. I didn’t not find ONE SINGLE FREE DOWNLOAD. Grrrrrr
Good luck to Apple and Pepsi. May 100 million (or whatever the number is) actually be downloaded.
I wonder how the competition will be feeling if this promo is actually successful.
I buy Pepsi by the 2 liter, fsck them for only putting the caps on the small bottles.
I’ll bet they will nix the ability to look up into unopened bottles and spot winners this time too. Too bad, I’m not sure but I think pretty much only the Mac online community was in on that one.
I hope this will be for all the countries with an itunes music store and not just the USA!
Oh and MDN, I think you forgot to give credit for the source of this. Unless you guys dug it up yourselves in which case you should label it as an exclusive.
Still don’t drink Pepsi products. Didn’t before, and won’t again.
If I want music, I’ll buy it from the iTMS directly at $.99 each and save the tax I’d have to pay by purchasing a drink I don’t want for a “chance” to get a “free” download.
Sorry, but this is a non-starter. At least for me. All you others who like Pepsi – I just improved your odds…
Mmmmm… I think the odds are less for American users… 10x the population, unfortunately than Canada.
Jack A,
Added the attribution to MacRumors in case anyone missed the “screenshot mirrored by MacRumors.com here” link.
Thanks.
Dont make the same mistake you made last time, put them in 2 liter bottles!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I don’t know how to make this any clearer!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FYI – Last time I saw my FIRST ITMS bottle AFTER the contest was over!
Long Beach/Orange County, CA.
The iPod promo in Canada was great.. i knew lots of people that were picking Pepsi stuff up so they could get the code.. and it really raised iPod awareness..
I know people that kept putting the codes in, and, though they didn’t win, they’re iPod owners now.
DaddySteve forgot to explain the 2L thing..
“DaddySteve forgot to explain the 2L thing..”
Your right I did. I know there are people who buy one liter bottles at gas stations at a higher price than the 2 liter bottles I purchase at the super market. By limiting the contest to over priced bottles you eliminate a large segment of your customers who would be looking for the promotion but would not be willing to pay more than double for a 1 in 3 chance of winning a song. I, for example, buy 2 liter bottles by the shopping cart full. If Pepsi does not consider customers like me important, I WILL retaliate and only buy Coke! I suggest other 2L customers do the same.
Again, they blew it last time by not selling the bottles till AFTER the contest was over!
I won an iPod in the Canadian Pepsi promotion last year. The one thing about the contest that I was truly impressed about was ‘distribution’.
I live on the East cosat of Canada. Specially marked iPod Pepsi products showed up in stores one week before the contest start date. At the end of the contest, the bottles were gone by the week after the contest. That’s an amazing display of supply logistics.
I have heard similar stories from across Canada. I hope things go as well for all you Americans. Good luck!
Brian D.
Fool me once…
The Canadian promo was slick.
The Canadian iPod contest rocked. I won three iPods! (A combination of luck and smart play.) It was a good Christmas for my family. I would have liked to have received a free song or two on my non-winning entries though.
I remember last year there was lots of disappointment that Mountain Dew was not part of the promo, which it sounds like it will be this year, along with Wild Cherry. At least they’ve improved that. Maybe next year we’ll get 2-liters, as well.
Cool. I liked the last promotion (except for the part where I had to drink Pepsi). At least this time, I’ll be able to buy a soft drink I like. I’m sure this time they’ll also have a way to prevent seeing if you’ve won before purchase. Near the end of that last promotion, I was getting like 4 out of 5 with free tunes.
I live in SC and the bottles were available in most stores 2 weeks after the superbowl. I won around 15 songs thanks to my wife. She drinks Sierra Mist and I hate pepsi. From what I’ve heard the guy at MacRumors who found the bottle was buying a Dr. Pepper. I think by expanding the products the caps are on can only be a good thing.
Good line effward: “except the part were I had to drink Pepsi”. Overdosing on sugar? …instead have an Apple a day (Macaday… get’it?!).
Anybody want Canadian iPod promo Pepsi bottles!
The stores around my place are still full of em!
Too bad they didn’t have any for the first month of the contest!
Dear Me13 (first poster)
The reason you didn’t find any winning bottles is that the “cheaters” (people who tip the bottles) just left losers in the store.
Read this thread. They’re hoping tipping will work again.
Pepsi really screwed up the last one. It took more than 4 weeks before a single Promo Cap showed up in this area and I live in a large Metro area. BTW- I would rather it be Coke/Diet Coke/Sprite/Diet Sprite, but as they are trying to sell music overseas against iTMS I didn’t figure it would be anybody but the Micro$oft (pale imitation of the real thing) of the cola world Pepsi.
Considering that Pepsi couldn’t get the bottles to the stores until about halfway through the promotion in some distribution districts, some people didn’t have the luxury of randomly buying bottles throughout the entire promotion period, and had to use more methodical efforts to get the most bang for their buck. I didn’t see any bottles with iTunes caps until the middle of March, six weeks after the promotion actually began (and I live in a major metropolitan area). I didn’t consider ‘tipping’ to be an issue, since Pepsi didn’t value the contest enough to get the bottles out everywhere at the same time… And since only 5% of the total eligible redemptions were actually redeemed (remember, they were supposed to make 300 million bottles for the iTunes promo, with 100 million having winning codes), I can’t believe that ‘tipping’ was a widespread problem.
Out of the 20 or so bottles I bought, I tipped about half of them and wound up with 14 songs. I’ll admit that’s better than ‘1 in 3’, but I had to catch up!