iTunes/Pepsi Free Music Giveaway a Flop?

[Kent Pribbernow]

<div class='os_post_top_link'><a href='http://www.thinksecret.com/news/pepsipromotion.html' target='_blank'>http://www.thinksecret.com/news/pepsipromotion.html</a><br /><br /></div><a href="http://www.thinksecret.com/news/pepsipromotion.html">ThinkSecret</a> has posted an interesting story detailing some inside information on the success (or failure) of the Pepsi promotion offering more than 100 Million free music downloads via iTunes. If this information is true, then it looks like the promotion was a disaster. Of the projected 25 million expected downloads, to date less than 5 Million have occured.<br /><br />"I think you can call this promotion a flop," said one industry analyst who asked not to be identified. "They can call 5 million good, but realistically, it stinks."<br /><br />I wonder if the ad campaign is to blame? Perhaps Apple and Pepsi didn't promote this effectively. Your thoughts?

[entropy1980]

I live in LA. The LA area didn't get any iTunes caps until about 3 weeks ago or so. I think that some of the major markets were delayed in getting them and that advertising had ran out by the time they arrived in some larger markets thus killing any likelihood of them being used. heck i gave up looking at the end of March because every single Pepsi product had Lakers giveaways here in LA until about 3 weeks ago.

[Timothy Huber]

The only people I know that were interested in the promotion or that have actually downloaded from iTunes are people who own an iPod. My daughter got a couple of winning caps and a week later won a $20 WalMart music download gift card at school. She asked me to help her download the music and we installed iTunes to get the free songs, and then downloaded the rest of the songs from WalMart.com.

She's played the iTunes songs exactly once, when she downloaded them. She burned them to CD and has never played them because, as she says, "who wants to play a CD that only has two songs on it?" Meanwhile she's transferred the WalMart.com songs onto the Zen, burned two CDs that mix the WalMart.com songs with some others she's ripped.

Now the situation might be completely flipped if we had iPods. But we don't, so it was hard to get excited about this promotion.

timothy

[Mojo Jojo]

Have to agree with entropy. The idea may have been good but Pepsi failed. It was maybe the middle of April before you would see the bottles with any consistency.

It seemed as if business were continuing pushing old stock before bringing out the new stuff. While we didn't have the Lakers promotion we had NFL hat promotion (which had expired already).

As for the promtion being Apple only, thus only those with iPods and iTunes benefited, probably also true. If iTunes wasn't your default player and you didn't want to mess around with re-encoding AAC to play in another player then it is probably more hassle then it is worth if your already invested in another format.

However is the true value of the promotion in the number of songs downloaded or in the number of consumers who heard about iTunes and iPods for the first time?

My opinion is that while the numbers may not have been staggering, it achieved its goal in getting noticed and possible capturing first time user with no investment into looking at what Apple had to offer.

[phillypocket]

I can only speak for myself, but I wouldn't bother downloading songs in a format I don't want for a player I don't use, even if they are free. My time is just worth too much. I'm not sure what they expected, as this was a promtion that, at it's core, appealed to two intersecting markets. Those who drink pepsi products and those who have ipods and (to a lesser extent itunes). Did apple expect to get tons of new itunes users? I'm sure pepsi didn't expect to have people permanently switch from coke because the got a couple of free songs. Also is this any less of a response that any of the other bottle top promotions?

I only know two people who have used itunes (although one has recently moved to windows media player) and neither of them cared a lick. Now they're both adults, ( in the 40's) so that may have not been the demographic the were looking for, but it wasn't worth their time or effort for something of such little utility. (To be fair their existing music collection already is greater than 40 gigs each, so I don't know why they would care about a few free songs.)

These are just some thoughts, it seem like much ado over nothing to me. Both the give-away and the lack of response.

[Tim Williamson]

Never even heard about this promotion, and I do drink Pepsi, but usually not bottled Pepsi...not that I would download from iTunes anyways...

[James Fee]

I have an iPod, use iTunes, but would never drink a pepsi.

Guess I'm part of the problem.

[Kent Pribbernow]

I have an iPod, use iTunes, but would never drink a pepsi.

Guess I'm part of the problem.

Amen! Personally I think Pepsi tastes like liquid Drano. Coke is much more pleasant. But I generally try to stay far away from sodas and just drink bottled water.

If Apple ever partners with Aberfoyle, I'll buy all 100 million songs! :lol:

[Suhit Gupta]

Amen! Personally I think Pepsi tastes like liquid Drano. Coke is much more pleasant. But I generally try to stay far away from sodas and just drink bottled water.
I completely agree with the Pepsi assessment. Though I used to be a huge Sprite person, until I switched to water almost exclusively.

Suhit

[entropy1980]

As the seemingly only Pepsi-lover here I hate Pepsi out of plastic bottles ...fountains are fine and cans are great but something about the bottles... it's like I can taste the plastic... :lol:

[Felix Torres]

ThinkSecret (http://www.thinksecret.com/news/pepsipromotion.html) has posted an interesting story detailing some inside information on the success (or failure) of the Pepsi promotion offering more than 100 Million free music downloads via iTunes. If this information is true, then it looks like the promotion was a disaster. Of the projected 25 million expected downloads, to date less than 5 Million have occured.

"I think you can call this promotion a flop," said one industry analyst who asked not to be identified. "They can call 5 million good, but realistically, it stinks."

I wonder if the ad campaign is to blame? Perhaps Apple and Pepsi didn't promote this effectively. Your thoughts?

Nope.
It wasn't the promotion.
It was *what* they were giving away.

Think on it: if you give a Manhattan apartment dweller a free lawnmower he's gonna thank you politely (if you're lucky) and then go look for a suburbanite to sell it to.

But, of course music downloads can't be resold... :-D

What the promotion tell us is that at least 95% of Pepsi dwellers have no use for music in AAC format.

Now contrast this with the feeding-frenzy a couple years back when Pepsi gave away actual CDs...

Pepsi, welcome to the Jobs reality distortion zone.
Things look a bit different when you step out of it, no? :-)

The truth is, hype aside, the digital music business is its infancy and we really don't know very much about what the finished market will be like.
At best, we can make some educated guesses based on human nature and market realities.
Before we *know* for sure, there will likely be a few more misteps like this one.
Or, maybe not.

95% non-redemption is pretty pathetic, actually... :twisted:

[Timothy Huber]

Amen! Personally I think Pepsi tastes like liquid Drano. Coke is much more pleasant. But I generally try to stay far away from sodas and just drink bottled water.
I completely agree with the Pepsi assessment. Though I used to be a huge Sprite person, until I switched to water almost exclusively.

Suhit

Well, there is that whole Pepsi tastes lousy thing, too. :wink:

[fgarcia10]

As the seemingly only Pepsi-lover here I hate Pepsi out of plastic bottles ...fountains are fine and cans are great but something about the bottles... it's like I can taste the plastic... :lol:

I prefer Pepsi too. I downloaded a total of seven songs. I liked the promotion. I like free things :wink:

[Mojo Jojo]

Was the winning 100 millions songs actually ever put into circulation though? If bottles came late does that not scew the numbers?

Either way 5% is five million songs (if we go by their numbers).

Apple sold 1.5 million songs its first week. Napsters own records show they sold 300,000 in its first week. These are the most buzz worthy times for the online stores. Looking at it from that perspective the Apple / Pepsi promotion gave away 16.6 times more songs then Napster sold.

...

For debate sake lets say that 95 million songs were not redeemed. Does that mean Pepsi SOLD 100 million bottles of Pepsi? If so did everyone of those that did win but not redeem really care about downloading music? Some people buy pepsi because they like it... not for the cap, the prize or what ever.

So, for friendly debate purposes, I say that in the limited market of those who are interested in buying or downloading music (numbers that can be extrapolated from known sales to people) that the Apple / Pepsi promotion was a greater success then Napsters first week efforts.

What does that mean? Not a darn thing =) Enjoy your music and pepsi if you like it.

[that_kid]

Though I used to be a huge Sprite person, until I switched to water almost exclusively.
Suhit

Same here, i even own an ipod and i have 2 winning caps that my girlfriend gave me but i haven't used them yet. Why? well first of all i don't want to use a proprietary format that doesn't work on everything that i listen to music on. Second they didn't have anything that I wanted. I searched and searched for songs I wanted but they were no where to be found. I'll stick to buying the cd and ripping it myself. I try to get cd's the week they're released cause you can get them for $9.99, cheaper than $0.99/song and at a higher bitrate.

[Cameron K]

Out of 700,000 songs you couldn't find any that you wanted? Please. Unless you listen to nothing but the most obscure music, there's no way you couldn't find anything to use your free caps on.

[Janak Parekh]

I live in LA. The LA area didn't get any iTunes caps until about 3 weeks ago or so.
Indeed - New York had the same problem, and even worse, some of the vending machines here still give the non-yellow caps. As I really dislike Pepsi too, it's simply not worth the risk for 99c.

--janak, who's on his second can of Vanilla Coke today ;)

[that_kid]

I do listen to poplular music but I'm not interested in Popular music, If I want to listen to the latest overy dynamic compress mess i'll turn on the radio. Most of the things that I want I'd rather have on cd not all drm'd up in my computer. I have over 8000 mp3's of cd's that I OWN and I still have thousand of vinyl to convert. Sure iTunes has alot of songs but it doesn't matter when most of the songs ithey have listed don't interest me.
Also like I said cd's cost $9.99 the first release week so I can get the cd cheaper than if I downloaded the whole thing from iTunes and it's not drm'd.

[CTSLICK]

I guess I am the target market. Love Pepsi, love free stuff and live in an area where the promotion started early enough to take advantage of. I just counted, 29 free songs. Granted I got some of those caps from people who didn't want them but...hey...that works for me. Plus I have purchased another 7 songs.

[dean_shan]

I thought it was a good idea. Problem was it's the wrong kind of soda. In fact I think I'm the worst person for this type of promotion, I rarly drink soda.

[wesk]

I drink Mt. Dew and I've yet to see a cap for iTunes. Hope they didn't just put them on Pepsi.
I don't have an ipod either, I use a Pocket PC for my music.


Wes

[Kacey Green]

i won 34 songs from them, it was a pain in the @** to burn them to cd > rip them back > send to PPC the only reason I will ever use this program again is the weekly free song giveaway and if i get the HP hPod (iPod whatever they call it)

the probelem is you need to use cd-rw because if you only want one song, apple locks the disk, I'm not made of money so I can't waste disks on 1 or two tracks, give me WMA!!!

[ryaninc]

I like Coke products myself...I love Sprite Remix.

But I started drinking Pepsi when this promotion began. I won five or six songs. But I couldn't do anything with them. I had to paly them in iTunes. I burned a couple to a CD, then ripped them back, then moved them to my PPC...way too much work. It wasn't worth the free song. I'll just download from Walmart at 88 cents.

(Off topic, but I've been forced to drink Pepsi products lately...there's a Coke shortage in the Philadelphia area due to a strike.) :evil:

[blade_of_narsil]

the real problem is that its pepsi. it's not that complicated

[teckels]

I don't have an iPod but I would like one if they weren't so expensive. I'm disabled and spend most of my time at home so I really don't have much use for one anyway.
I do use iTunes a lot though. I think that when you can pay $10 for an album, you're getting a pretty good deal and I don't mind paying $.99 for my favorite songs either. So far I've got about 180 songs in my iTunes library.
I use a Wireless-G media tranciever to connect my PC to my entertainment center. That way I can access my iTunes, pictures and all other kinds of media from my living room.
The funny thing is that I live in a very small town about a three hour drive North of Los Angeles and I NEVER saw an iTunes Pepsi anything!
Of course, I use a PC and I drink Coke. I guess if I had an Apple I might have noticed the difference. :wink: