A family which entered a Pepsi promotion over 11,000 times – by using a computer programme – has succeeded in getting the prize draw banned on a technicality, sparking claims that they had tried to cheat their way into scooping at least £10,000.
The Advertising Standards Authority launched an investigation after the family claimed the promotion, offering a prize of £500 an hour and fronted by former Chelsea star Didier Drogba, was unfair. They said they had won several times but had only been awarded one cash prize.
In response, PepsiCo said over the six weeks of the promotion one entrant and his family entered more than 11,000 times by slightly varying a range of email addresses.
Pepsi believed a robot programme must have been used because it seemed impossible for an individual to submit so many entries manually; the family submitted more than 500 entries an hour in some cases.
The company would not say how many times the family had won, but decided to only pay out for the first win for each family member. It said its terms and conditions stated entries were not allowed to be “bulk, consumer group, third party or agent entries” such as by an automated computer programme.
But the ASA said that, while using multiple email addresses was “not within the spirit” of the promotion, Pepsi had not provided evidence that the complainants entries were made by any means other than individuals using multiple emails.
“We therefore considered that to withdraw the prizes subsequently, and in some cases over a month after those entrants had been notified of the wins, caused unnecessary disappointment,” the ASA said. The ASA ruled that Pepsi had run an unfair competition because it had not made “significant” conditions of the promotion sufficiently clear.
But one source at a promotional marketing agency slammed the decision. He said: “This ruling sends out completely the wrong signal, and it seems Pepsi’s only crime was not providing the right evidence to the ASA. This family was obviously cheating. People will always try to enter a competition a few times, but 11,000 separate entries? How can that possibly be right?”
