(7 minute read)
Would You Like A Pepsi With That Syringe?
On June 14, 1993, a small four paragraph article appears deep inside The New York Times. The article describes how hypodermic needles were found in two newly opened cans of Diet Pepsi. Both occurrences in the Tacoma and Seattle, Washington areas.
The incident causes the Food and Drug Administration to launch a federal investigation.
The local media asked the president of the local Pepsi bottling company about the incident. He urged customers to “rattle the cans a little bit” before opening them.
Two days later, another report appears in The Times. It mentions more consumers finding syringes and needles in newly opened cans and bottles of Pepsi. By then, 16 people in 11 states reported finding syringes and needles in Pepsi products causing a nationwide panic.
In the middle of the article something rarely ever seen is noted. The editors inserted a banner headline in a place usually reserved for a pull quote or photo. It read, “Pepsi officials are facing a public-relations nightmare.” No one in the article suggested such a thing. The editors made sure not to put quotation marks around the phrase.
The inserted phrase is clearly an editorialization of the events. Pull quote aside no one involved in the events would dare deny it. In fact, the Pepsi corporation was in crisis mode. In the days that followed, five representatives, including the president of Pepsi, gave hundreds of interviews across the nation. They frankly answered questions about the manufacturing process and safety of the product.
Along with those interviews, the commissioner of the FDA availed himself to national news organizations to defend the Pepsi corporation. “Calm is what is in order in this case,” he told one national news program.
As part of the evidence, the company provided unprecedented video footage of the canning and bottling process. The president of Pepsi-Cola North America, Craig Weatherup, used it to effectively show the difficulty of tampering with the product.
The video and explanation were highly convincing and very effective.
Shortly after the media blitz, a surveillance camera in a convenience store in Aurora, Colorado captured a woman shopper. She was caught inserting a syringe into a can of Pepsi while the cashier’s back was turned. The woman was arrested and a copy of the tape was provided to all media outlets. The woman in question had a long history of fraud and larceny. Additionally, she had 16 aliases.
While it was only one of several incidents it helped to cement Pepsi’s declaration from the beginning. The objects found in their product did not result from the fault of the corporation or bottlers. Their product was safe to use.
By the end of June, government officials had finished their investigations and made an announcement. They reported that needles and syringes found in Pepsi beverages, including the original incidents, were not genuine. Instead, the ensuing incidents were a rash of copy-cat hoaxes and consumers had inserted the syringes themselves.
“The notion that there has been a nationwide tampering of Pepsi is unfounded,” said David Kessler, commissioner of the FDA.
There were no harmful substances found in the products. Of course there were no deaths or injuries. According to the Associated Press, there were “more than 50 tampering claims.” There were also “more than a dozen arrests for allegedly filing false reports,” a federal offense.
The actual crisis was short-lived compared to other product tampering allegations (see the Tylenol crises). Yet, the astronomical effects on the company were still mounting. The company lost millions in sales. It spent $25 million early on to defend the integrity of their product. Then, it spent another $10 million on promotions to gain customers confidence in buying their product.
By PR standards the campaign to restore PepsiCo’s reputation was a huge success. PR professionals use it as a testament to their industry. But the problem with PR standards is they are not always unbiased. For an industry with a reputation of hyping everything it is easy to stay skeptical. The industry is hardly a bulwark of trust.
The second problem is that more than 30 years later from the event memories start to fade. The fact is the hoaxes were proven relatively quickly. The fact is the product was always safe for consumers. Yet, it took 18 months for the public to regain trust in the product. It also took that long for the sales numbers to return to their earlier levels before the crises.
No one really knows what the real bottom line in losses were to the company. As a corporation they are not obligated to report such numbers. One thing is for certain, the company lost more than the $35 million noted above.
Don’t Cry Over Spilled Pepsi
It is impossible to predict when situations will worsen. The fact is that, from time to time, bad things will happen. When they do we will often have little control over them. Yet, in public relations courses we teach students that we have to be prepared for them. Meaning we often think of the worse things that can happen and work our way backwards in preparation. We often get accused of being pessimistic. But if we didn’t think of these things we wouldn’t be doing our job.
But this is not a tale to tell about feeling sorry for PR professionals or mega corporation like PepsiCo. No one wishes anything like this happening to a company let alone an individual. While this is a story that PR professionals love to use I am not here to hype up an industry. Instead, I use it is a tale about the American public and their perception. What is true and what is not is often difficult to figure out. We also often get it wrong.
To be succinct it is a tale about individual perceptions, your perception and mine. To further my point, let us consider two questions about the June 1993 Pepsi crises. What was different or wrong with Pepsi products in May of 1993 before the crises occurred? What was different or wrong with Pepsi products in July of 1993 after the crises occurred?
The answer is obviously …nothing. In fact, not only was the product OK before and after the crises, but during the crises as well.
So what was different?
The public’s perception.
The public’s perception about the product changed because of the various media reports about the crises. It shifted from a “safe” product to one that was “unsafe.” Over time it was proven that the perception was wrong. But for 18 months you couldn’t convince the general public of that.
The Snake and the Stick
In Ryan Holiday’s book, The Obstacle Is The Way, Holiday outlines the two ways perception is used. The first is the larger picture we have of the world, i.e., our worldview. The second is based on the first; using that worldview or “lens” we interpret the events that are happening.
I’ve told this story before about how perceptions and judgments work and it is fitting to include it here again.
Imagine you are about eight or nine years old walking alone in a field. It’s a beautiful day. The sky is clear. There is a soft wind and the tops of the trees are moving like waves in the ocean. The smell of spring flowers are the air. It has been a really long winter and it feels especially good to be outside again.
Just as those thoughts come to mind, you happen to look down. You see a long, black, shiny, slender object in the sun. You know exactly what it is and your body reacts quicker than you can say the word.
SNAKE!
Sources
- NYT, Monday, June 14, 1993 (retrieved online 1/23/2024)
- NYT, Wednesday, June 16, 1993 (retrieved online 1/23/2024)
- NYT, Friday, June 18, 1993 (retrieved online 1/23/2024)
- ABC News, January 15, 2019 (retrieved online 1/23/2024)
- Man’s Search For Meaning, Victor Frankl, Touchstone, 1970
- The Obstacle Is The Way, Ryan Holiday, Portfolio, 2014
