Pepsi, Where's My Jet? (2022) s01e01 Episode Script
The Kid from Seattle
1
[soda can opens]
[liquid pours]
[woman] Wow.
[man] We're gonna make you
do the Pepsi-Coke challenge.
[woman] Okay. Do I have something
to cleanse my palate in between
[man] Yeah. Every person
No, I'm joke I'm j
I'm not I'm not like a serious
soda taster here. I think I can do this.
[man] Okay, Phyllis.
Here's all you need to do.
- You're gonna try both of these.
- Okay.
[man] Take a sip of each one.
And then pull the one you like better out.
Oh no, this is terrible.
Okay, wait.
[chuckles]
Let's just smell them a little bit.
This might bring back
some bad memories. [laughs]
I prefer this one.
- I like this one.
- I choose this one.
I pick that one.
Oh, man!
[laughter]
- They both taste like shit. Horrible.
- [man laughs] You're not gonna do it?
Can't stand that stuff.
[man] You're gonna be the outlier.
You wanna know which one tastes better?
Which shit tastes better,
this shit or that shit?
I don't know. It's shit to me.
They both taste like shit.
All right. Now what?
[dance music plays]
[radio host] KISW, Seattle's best rock.
I'm Joe Bryant. And I've got a very
special guest in the studio today.
His story has not been told
for many years,
but in the mid '90s,
everyone was talking about it.
If he's right,
he has a real jet fighter in the can.
[Joe] I guess it is time
to hear the story
of John Leonard versus PepsiCo.
Everybody dance now ♪
[man 1] Oh, yeah!
- [man 2] What's up?
- What's up?
The '90s had some of the greatest
commercials in the history of advertising.
Proper.
I got it like that ♪
The style of advertising in the '90s was
building brands in the most intense way.
Everybody dance now ♪
Yo quiero Taco Bell.
[Jeff] It was crazy.
[dance music continues]
Everybody dance now ♪
No, no.
[Jeff] But Pepsi was famous
in its own right.
Coke was the market leader,
because it was the original cola.
So Pepsi was the underdog
since its inception.
But its strongest weapon
was the advertising.
[man] Pepsi. Pepsi.
Pepsi ♪
[man] Take the Pepsi challenge.
- Tell me which one you chose.
- Pepsi!
[Michael] Madonna, Michael Jackson,
Marlon Brando, Britney Spears.
I'm not trying to name-drop,
but I am absolutely name-dropping.
These were the people I worked with.
You felt like,
"Yeah, this is a cool club to be in."
[Oprah] You have to have
a different kind of brain
to come up with the bears
dancing to the Village People.
[Jeff] People would have cut off a limb
to work on the Pepsi business.
We were launching the most famous work
in the history of advertising.
All because we needed
to win the Cola Wars.
Put a Pepsi in the motion ♪
But that choice is up to you
Hey, hey, hey ♪
You're the Pepsi Generation ♪
[Michael] And then,
I remember Brian calling me
and saying, "Hey, we have this crazy idea
to put Coke on the defensive."
[upbeat music plays]
[Brian] And the idea was, you know,
by its nature, pretty simple.
Drink Pepsi, get stuff.
[upbeat music continues]
[Michael] The more Pepsi you bought,
you'd get Pepsi Points,
and you could cash those points in
for Pepsi paraphernalia.
All these things that kids like.
T-shirts, hats.
[Brian] Leather jacket,
jean jacket, cool sunglasses.
But the launch of the campaign
was the commercial.
It was not the sexiest assignment
in the world.
Buy our stuff
and then advertise it for us.
[Brian] The commercial
had to make people laugh.
Get them interested, get them talking.
We needed to make people remember the ad
and remember the program.
So we took every penny
that we had for that summer
and put it behind this commercial
and this idea.
And then the shit hit the fan.
[dramatic music plays]
[man] Introducing
the new Pepsi Stuff catalog.
[dramatic music continues]
[man] Now, the more Pepsi you drink,
the more great stuff you're going to get.
Sure beats the bus.
[dramatic music continues]
[man] Play that again.
Sure beats the bus.
[dramatic music plays]
I looked at it,
and I was completely dumbstruck.
[John] No fine print.
That is a legit offer.
I don't care what anybody else says.
I'm gonna get that jet.
I was like, "Oh, fuck."
Sure beats the bus.
[Brian] It just went out
and nobody flagged it.
[man] The bottom of that video
was very clear.
Here it is, the Harrier jet.
Seven million points.
It's clearly a joke.
People don't offer
military hardware as prizes.
[dramatic music plays]
They put this shit up there on the air?
Live by your word.
You say it, you do it.
[dramatic music continues]
[Jeff] Hundreds of millions of people
saw the ad,
and there's one guy
who says this was a serious offer?
That was ridiculous.
["Praise You" by Fatboy Slim playing]
We've come a long, long way together ♪
Through the hard times and the good ♪
I have to celebrate you, baby ♪
I have to praise you like I should ♪
Whoo!
You know, it's in my head now. [laughs]
[laughs]
["Praise You" continues to play]
[John] I think some would say
Pepsi was my 15 minutes,
and those 15 minutes are up.
That was 25 years ago.
Different world then.
Different John.
["Praise You" continues]
We've come a long, long way together ♪
Through the hard times and the good ♪
I have to celebrate you, baby ♪
I have to praise you like I should ♪
I have to praise you ♪
[John] I was 20 years old,
going to a small community college
outside Seattle.
Definitely not Harvard.
I have to praise you ♪
[John] I had big dreams, big aspirations.
But the things I liked to do most,
were be out in the mountains.
I have to praise you ♪
[John] I had been up climbing in Alaska,
climbing in South America.
I was trying to figure out my way to climb
the highest mountains in the world.
See different places,
experience different cultures.
But trying to match it up with my reality
of no checkbook.
To me, money was freedom.
It allowed for more adventures, more fun.
We've come a long, long way together ♪
[John] I'd worked in small businesses.
My parents had a small business.
Oh, no!
Who would have thought?
Um, hi and Pepsi.
We're here to talk about Pepsi, right?
[laughs and pretends to retch]
[man] Tell us about John at 20 years old.
What was John like?
He was a go-getter.
I mean, he always had a job.
He [groans]
[John] Just ad lib in your own words.
Why can't you say these things?
- It's It's good for you.
- Okay, all right.
His first job was a paperboy.
- [John] Bike shop.
- Oh yeah, you worked at the bike shop.
[John] Then he delivered teriyaki.
And delivered teriyaki to the locals.
- [John] He washed windows.
- Oh, he was a window washer.
You cut glass at that glass company.
He sold magazines.
- [chuckles]
- [John] Then he was a climbing guide.
Climbing guide.
Climbing guide.
Now, if he was only Harry Styles,
I'd like it even better.
Can you No, I'm sorry. [laughs]
I'm a Harry Styles fan.
[John] Mom, you're perfect.
- I'm trying to ad lib and I can't.
- You're doing great. Sit down.
[tense music plays]
[John] Pepsi was a big deal.
Pepsi, Coke, the Cola Wars.
That was all front and center at the time.
[tense music continues]
They were trying to come
towards the Pepsi generation.
That was their whole thing.
That was where I was at.
[tense music continues]
[John] Their association with, like, MTV.
Cool athletes.
I mean, they had Shaq.
Don't even think about it.
[John] They had Cindy Crawford.
Coke had the polar bear.
My grandparents
thought that was real cool.
If it was cool, Pepsi had it.
[Cindy] If you're young and cool
at any age, really,
then Pepsi's the one for you.
It was your generation.
I prefer this one.
- [man] Someone's gonna be very happy.
- Yeah, see? There you go.
- ["Let My Love Open the Door" playing]
- In '92, I was 24.
I got asked by my agent to do
a Pepsi commercial for the Super Bowl.
The casting, the music, the writing,
like, everything worked.
I mean, that commercial is so iconic.
Every Halloween, on Instagram,
I see at least 30 people that go
as me from that Pepsi commercial.
Pepsi is like
this international, iconic brand,
but then, the advertising
made it relatable for everybody.
To your heart ♪
Notice anything kind of different
about the girls this semester?
Yeah, now that you mention it.
They're all wearing that Pepsi stuff.
[John] It worked for me,
and, frankly, their great advertising
not only got me to drink their product,
it got me
to take a swing at the fences, right?
[indistinct shouting]
[dramatic music plays]
[John] I was coaching Little League
football just outside Seattle.
One of my assistant coaches,
a guy named Rob Lion,
we were walking away
from the end of practice one night.
He pulled a pocket knife
and cut this label off a bottle of Pepsi.
I'm like, "Rob what are you doing?"
He told me that him and the guys at work
were trying to pool their points
to win this jet.
And I took mental note of it,
but I didn't think too much of it.
Frankly, I felt like
it was some kind of, like, lark.
Weeks later, I was at my folks' house,
and all of a sudden
[man] Now, the more Pepsi you drink
the more great stuff you're going to get.
[man] Sure beats the bus.
[dramatic music plays]
[John] Harrier Jet comes down.
I was like, "Holy mackerel, this is
the commercial Rob's talking about."
[exciting music plays]
[John] I think we've all had dreams,
and you thought of hitting it big,
these sorts of things.
I was at a point in my life where I was
trying to start connecting the dots.
Trying to figure out how I wanted
to get where I wanted to get.
[exciting music continues]
[John] Seven million Pepsi Points.
And no fine print came up.
And I go, "Wow, that's something."
Through my math and my research,
I'm trying to figure out
how much a Harrier Jet costs.
I was able to put the price
in the $30,000,000-$32,000,000 range.
My immediate thought was,
you could probably get seven million
Pepsi Points for a whole lot less.
I really saw this as an opportunity.
A legitimate opportunity
to change my world.
My mind couldn't stop racing
to try to figure out
how to make this happen.
I was continually trying
to crunch numbers,
come up with cost estimations.
How much Pepsi it would take.
How many bottles you'd have to buy.
At night, I'd lay in bed
thinking about it.
Like, I think you could do this.
I think there is a legitimate path
to get the seven million points.
[hopeful music plays]
[John] I had no idea how many people
were out trying to do this.
In the back of my mind,
I was up against the clock.
I had this sense of urgency
that I was trying to make it happen
and be the first one.
I was doing everything I could
to make it as cheap as I could.
Coupons and the whole deal.
[Linda] We were drinking an awful lot
of Pepsi. Hauling it in by the truckload.
[man] You guys actually were gonna try
to drink that much Pepsi?
- Was there
- Yeah. Yeah, we tried.
[exciting music plays]
[Linda] But it didn't take long
It took a week, probably,
before we realized, no,
we just couldn't drink that much Pepsi.
[exciting music continues]
[John] At the end of the day,
I needed a pretty big amount of money.
So I tried to put that on paper.
And as I was working through all this,
I knew there was one person that
I could potentially get to bite on this.
[rock music plays]
One person that was adventurous enough.
[rock music continues]
[John] Was willing to take risks.
Also had the wherewithal to come up
with a pretty big amount of money.
And he was the one guy
that would take my calls.
[rock music continues]
[man] I live in the moment.
I enjoy the moment.
There's so many beautiful things
you can appreciate.
All you have to do is open your eyes.
I've got a little pond out here
stocked with trout.
But I won't tell you the address
so you don't steal all my fucking trout.
You have to be spontaneous in life.
If you're wrong five out of 100 times,
so what?
You had 95 great adventures.
Five times you fell on your head,
you got stitches, had a broken leg and
You would've missed the whole thing
if you didn't take that opportunity.
[upbeat music playing]
[woman clears throat]
I like this one better.
[man] She likes Coca-Cola.
Is that bad?
I'm Phyllis Hoffman,
and I'm Todd's mother.
He was a very active baby
[coughs]in the crib.
[upbeat music playing]
He started shaking the slats in the crib,
and he broke out.
And that was a picture
of what was to come.
He was going to bust out, and he did.
[Todd] By the time I was 16,
I remember studying things
in a classroom and going, like,
"I don't wanna learn French
in a class. I'd rather be in France."
[upbeat music continues]
[Todd] And I wanted to see everything.
So I get a map, and there's Switzerland,
Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece,
Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, India, Nepal.
I was like, "Oh, okay,"
and started my journey.
[music fades]
[Todd] Finally, I made it to Nepal.
And the Khumbu,
the region where Mount Everest is.
I was like, "This is where I belong."
And it sculpted a large part of my life.
I was climbing all over the world.
And didn't stop
until something happened to me.
[serious music plays]
[Todd] I got sick in 1992,
and it was a, you know,
pretty big size brain tumor.
I think they said one in 200,000 people
got this kind of tumor.
That'd be like if God went down the line
and said, "No. Jeff, no."
He gets to 100,647 people, and I'm
standing there, and he goes, "You."
So I'm like, "What the hell?"
And it was removed in '92.
When I got out of the hospital
and finally was able to go home,
I was walking a little bit crooked
with a cane,
and a little drool coming out there,
and deaf on one side.
It wasn't comfortable for me
to walk to the end of my driveway.
But I did it every day,
and I got a little bit further.
Eventually, you know,
I was getting stronger,
and my goal was to get up
on a mountain again.
And, uh, I spoke with my doctors
and I said to 'em, "What about climbing?
What about doing this or that?"
And they were like, "Well, it might be
good to choose something different."
I was just like, "I don't think so."
"I don't think so at all."
It really rubbed me the wrong way.
So, I chose the highest mountain
in North America.
Mount Denali in Alaska.
[dramatic music plays]
[Todd] I went there
with a lot of trepidation.
I still had headaches and pounding
and all this other kind of shit going on.
But I was excited.
I was looking at the positive side of it.
[dramatic music fades]
[Todd] On that climbing trip,
John was a junior climbing guide.
[John] Our first trip together,
we sat through a number of storms.
If you stay in a tent,
shoulder to shoulder,
for seven straight days,
you talk about a lot of stuff.
So I'm 20. Todd's early forties.
He had been successful
in the car business, other ventures.
[Todd] I grew up
in the automobile business,
and then I went into publishing,
restaurants, real estate.
And I was doing well in all of them.
John was much younger than everybody,
and he was just the nicest kid.
[John] One guy that was
used to the finer things in life,
and this naive kid
that was trying to understand
what the finer things in life was.
John was always a compassionate,
really good guy, you know,
and we became friends on that climb.
[John] We were brought together
by this mutual desire
to go to climb
the highest mountain in each continent.
[exciting music plays]
Over the years, Todd and John
developed a wonderful friendship,
and I did kind of turn over my son
to Todd, and he did a great job.
He did a good job of raising him.
[Todd] Having some experience
in the business world,
John felt he could pitch different ideas,
and I would give him my best advice.
And then he pitched this idea,
which was so out of left field.
[John] It may have been
the craziest one he'd ever heard.
I can only imagine,
in Todd's professional life,
he'd had a lot of ideas come at him,
but there was a reason
why he listened to mine.
Of course, I thought it was interesting,
but I also thought he was crazy.
I said, "Well, can I see the commercial?"
He goes, "Well, it's on TV.
You can see it on TV."
I said, "Just get me a copy
of the commercial so I can see it."
And I was like,
"Uh, could you play that again?"
[man] Sure beats the bus.
[Todd] Play it again.
[man] Sure beats the bus.
[Todd] Play it again.
I just want to make sure,
for the 90th time,
that what I think I saw
is actually what I saw.
I can't believe it. I couldn't believe it.
I was like, "Holy shit. This guy's
actually gonna think about this."
He could see I was really interested.
They put disclaimers on ads all the time.
They didn't have a disclaimer on this ad.
But then I had to go to the next step.
Okay, now I like what the commercial
shows, which is false advertising.
I think it's false advertising.
Now let's go to step two.
Write your business plan down.
This is your deal, John.
[upbeat music plays]
I'd never done a business plan. I didn't
know what a business plan looked like.
But I had what I thought
was this viable thing that could be done.
[upbeat music continues]
[John] I don't even know
if Windows was in yet.
This is maybe even MS-DOS.
I think it's WordPerfect
I was using at the time.
So, I'm in WordPerfect
typing up a business plan.
You know that sound
on the dot matrix printers
- [imitates a printer clicking]
- [printer whirs]
[imitates a printer]
[John] Eventually, I had
a formal business plan.
Todd's like, "All right, if you
really want to make a go at this,
put your big boy pants on,
fly down, and make a pitch to me."
- [John] So now let's tell the truth.
- [both laugh]
- Hey, Johnny.
- [John] I presented the business plan.
[printer whirs]
It was a multimillion-dollar business deal
to go out and acquire all of the points.
And to acquire the points,
it spelled out labor costs,
transportation costs, storage costs.
And at the time,
it would cost $4.3 million.
And I go, "What?"
[John] So each 12-pack
was worth five points.
I'd need to buy 1.4 million 12-packs
to get to 7 million points.
That's over 16 million cans of Pepsi.
[Todd] Where are we putting
millions of cans?
"Well, you know, we'll rent warehouses,
like, all over the place."
[John] 1.4 million 12-packs of Pepsi
would take up almost 600,000 cubic feet
of storage space.
So, I'd come up with a plan.
Six major metropolitan areas,
six warehouses,
and the associated amount of people
in each of those warehouses.
People to go out and buy the points,
people to drive the trucks,
people to cut the points off.
So I'm thinking probably somewhere
in the neighborhood of 45 people.
I estimated that we could do it
in three months.
[upbeat music plays]
Back then, there was a company
called Labor Ready.
If somebody needed temporary labor,
you'd call Labor Ready.
So I remember calling Labor Ready up,
and getting the number from them.
That's what I put in this business plan.
[bell dings]
[cheering and applause]
And I was like, "Okay, you
You've really lost it now, John."
"Still love you, but you've lost it."
[John] I was convinced
that we could make it work,
but Todd was able to point out
a lot of the a lot of the pitfalls.
And he poked a lot of holes in it.
He had hard questions.
[printer whirs]
[John] A legitimate question.
If somebody could not buy a Harrier Jet,
then on the face of the offer,
it was not legitimate.
1995, no Wikipedia, right?
It was still going into encyclopedias
and looking some of this stuff up.
And that's when I started trying
to reach out to folks in the Pentagon.
My approach was,
"I'm working on a school project."
Which I think, at some level,
it was a, quote, school project.
I remember, somehow,
getting in touch
with a spokesperson for the Pentagon.
It was, like, Kevin Bacon or Ken Bacon.
- Kevin Bacon was from Footloose
- He's an actor.
Let's dance!
[dramatic music playing]
[John] I can only imagine
what he was thinking.
Somebody calling him to see whether or not
you could buy a Harrier Jet.
Essentially, what I got
was that, yes, you could,
but it couldn't have
all the armaments on it.
That was something
that would make it illegal.
But if you could somehow
acquire a Harrier Jet
and it didn't have the missiles,
the radar jamming stuff,
that there was
not a prohibition against it.
For one, it was $32,000,000,
but you couldn't just buy one.
You had to buy a minimum of six
or something like that.
- That wasn't our problem.
- Yeah.
But I got to that answer and I was
able to get over that hurdle with
- [Todd] Yeah.
- With regard to was it legal or not.
- [Todd] Right.
- And could you get them.
He's like, "All right,
so you get a Harrier Jet,
what are you gonna do with it?"
Are we selling it right away?
That certainly would look
like we were just trying to get Pepsi.
Let's talk about
What do you want to do with this?
[John] I had to put forward
a number of ways
that we were not only gonna be able
to recoup the original investment,
but also turn it into something
that was viable.
And you know, they're, cra
"Oh, we're gonna do rides."
You know, like it's a Ferris wheel ride.
[John] Todd was like,
"Best I know, there's only one seat
in that thing." [laughs]
He said, "Well, I want to take it
to air shows."
[John] He signed off on the fact there
could be a viable business opportunity
with air shows and advertisements
and movies and whatnot.
"Then we're gonna do this,
we're gonna do that."
I was like,
"Okay, that's your business plan."
[John] Solved that one.
But ultimately, he did put something
forward that was insurmountable,
that I couldn't have an answer for.
A legitimate question.
So, what if you get going
and they end the contest?
What happens when we get 6,995,000 points,
and you can't get them anymore?
Um, then what do we do?
Right, with all these cans of Pepsi?
"John, you're a great guy.
This ain't happening."
"I'm just gonna tell you that.
This is not happening."
"It makes no sense.
It's cra It's insane."
[laughing] Todd didn't see much
of a secondary market for used Pepsi cans.
And so,
that was kind of the eventual
end of that road.
- [buzzer honks]
- [groaning]
[John] I hit a wall
that I could not get past.
[somber music plays]
I had been fully invested in this, right?
And I really saw this as, like,
my first opportunity
to really do something.
[somber music continues]
[Todd] He felt a little bit shattered
by it. A little bit deflated.
[John] Though I'm sure Todd thought
it was a done deal,
it still didn't leave my mind.
It was still just spinning, right?
As a 20-year-old, this felt like
a once-in-a-lifetime chance.
Back in Seattle,
so I'm back going to school.
Back washing windows.
And I go into a convenience store,
and there's this whole
point-of-purchase display
of the Pepsi Points campaign.
[intriguing music plays]
[John] And then boom!
There are these little catalogs.
I started thumbing through the catalog,
kind of with this
what-could-have-been mindset.
Like, "Oh man,
I was this close." You know?
I thought I was that close, right?
Or maybe that close.
I get to the end of it, I just
I'm reading the fine print.
And at, like,
the very bottom of the fine print,
it says something about
being able to buy Pepsi Points
for 10 cents apiece.
And so long as you submitted
a minimum of 15 points,
you could buy the balance
of the Pepsi Points.
And then I did the quick math.
And I was like, "Holy mackerel."
I just went from $4.3 million to 700k.
[hopeful music plays]
And I couldn't get to a phone fast enough.
[John] One of those
little rotary dial phones.
And I'm calling Todd. I'm so excited.
[telephone rings]
Voicemail. [laughs]
Everything's gonna be all right ♪
[John] All these hurdles,
and all these holes that were punched
in the business plan
Be all right ♪
just went right out the window.
Todd had a cell phone,
and then he had two phone numbers.
I called all those numbers,
and I called them all a bunch of times,
until finally, he picked me up.
I think, at the time, I benefited
from the fact that there was no caller ID.
[laughs]
I'm like, "Todd, I got it. We're there."
And I walked him through.
I read it to him.
Everything's gonna be all right
Everything's gonna be ♪
[Todd] We found a loophole.
There's some meat and potatoes in there.
And I was just like,
"I need to think
about this seriously now."
[John] I'm a badger, right?
I'm alive again.
[screeches]
The dream is back alive.
I'm gonna get the freaking jet.
[dramatic music plays]
When I write this check,
somebody's gonna see that check.
And somebody's gonna go,
"Who wrote that check?"
They're gonna go, "Oh, it was this guy
named Todd Hoffman."
And I'm, like, that made me nervous,
- because I always flew under the radar.
- [motorcycle revs]
This is taking your thumb, and this
is sticking it right in the eye of Pepsi.
And then I said, "You know what?"
"The hell with them, man."
I'd use different language
if I weren't on camera.
[man] This is Netflix.
You can use whatever language.
Fuck them.
I'm writing the check,
and I'm sending it in.
And here we go. We're on our adventure.
They never figured
there ever would be a John Leonard.
And secondly, if there was a John Leonard,
they never figured
there'd be a Todd Hoffman.
[dramatic music continues]
Bring on Pepsi.
[music stops]
[dramatic music playing]
[Brian] When something comes up like this,
legal, you know, will kill anything.
[dramatic music plays]
Pepsi has that power.
[dramatic music continues]
And uses that power.
And nobody can fight it.
You gotta treat it pretty seriously,
but there wasn't a person
that didn't think this was pure insanity.
[energetic music playing]
[Jeff] And it was about to get
a lot crazier.
- Ready for a flight?
- Let's go.
[yells]
[music stops]
[closing theme music playing]
[soda can opens]
[liquid pours]
[woman] Wow.
[man] We're gonna make you
do the Pepsi-Coke challenge.
[woman] Okay. Do I have something
to cleanse my palate in between
[man] Yeah. Every person
No, I'm joke I'm j
I'm not I'm not like a serious
soda taster here. I think I can do this.
[man] Okay, Phyllis.
Here's all you need to do.
- You're gonna try both of these.
- Okay.
[man] Take a sip of each one.
And then pull the one you like better out.
Oh no, this is terrible.
Okay, wait.
[chuckles]
Let's just smell them a little bit.
This might bring back
some bad memories. [laughs]
I prefer this one.
- I like this one.
- I choose this one.
I pick that one.
Oh, man!
[laughter]
- They both taste like shit. Horrible.
- [man laughs] You're not gonna do it?
Can't stand that stuff.
[man] You're gonna be the outlier.
You wanna know which one tastes better?
Which shit tastes better,
this shit or that shit?
I don't know. It's shit to me.
They both taste like shit.
All right. Now what?
[dance music plays]
[radio host] KISW, Seattle's best rock.
I'm Joe Bryant. And I've got a very
special guest in the studio today.
His story has not been told
for many years,
but in the mid '90s,
everyone was talking about it.
If he's right,
he has a real jet fighter in the can.
[Joe] I guess it is time
to hear the story
of John Leonard versus PepsiCo.
Everybody dance now ♪
[man 1] Oh, yeah!
- [man 2] What's up?
- What's up?
The '90s had some of the greatest
commercials in the history of advertising.
Proper.
I got it like that ♪
The style of advertising in the '90s was
building brands in the most intense way.
Everybody dance now ♪
Yo quiero Taco Bell.
[Jeff] It was crazy.
[dance music continues]
Everybody dance now ♪
No, no.
[Jeff] But Pepsi was famous
in its own right.
Coke was the market leader,
because it was the original cola.
So Pepsi was the underdog
since its inception.
But its strongest weapon
was the advertising.
[man] Pepsi. Pepsi.
Pepsi ♪
[man] Take the Pepsi challenge.
- Tell me which one you chose.
- Pepsi!
[Michael] Madonna, Michael Jackson,
Marlon Brando, Britney Spears.
I'm not trying to name-drop,
but I am absolutely name-dropping.
These were the people I worked with.
You felt like,
"Yeah, this is a cool club to be in."
[Oprah] You have to have
a different kind of brain
to come up with the bears
dancing to the Village People.
[Jeff] People would have cut off a limb
to work on the Pepsi business.
We were launching the most famous work
in the history of advertising.
All because we needed
to win the Cola Wars.
Put a Pepsi in the motion ♪
But that choice is up to you
Hey, hey, hey ♪
You're the Pepsi Generation ♪
[Michael] And then,
I remember Brian calling me
and saying, "Hey, we have this crazy idea
to put Coke on the defensive."
[upbeat music plays]
[Brian] And the idea was, you know,
by its nature, pretty simple.
Drink Pepsi, get stuff.
[upbeat music continues]
[Michael] The more Pepsi you bought,
you'd get Pepsi Points,
and you could cash those points in
for Pepsi paraphernalia.
All these things that kids like.
T-shirts, hats.
[Brian] Leather jacket,
jean jacket, cool sunglasses.
But the launch of the campaign
was the commercial.
It was not the sexiest assignment
in the world.
Buy our stuff
and then advertise it for us.
[Brian] The commercial
had to make people laugh.
Get them interested, get them talking.
We needed to make people remember the ad
and remember the program.
So we took every penny
that we had for that summer
and put it behind this commercial
and this idea.
And then the shit hit the fan.
[dramatic music plays]
[man] Introducing
the new Pepsi Stuff catalog.
[dramatic music continues]
[man] Now, the more Pepsi you drink,
the more great stuff you're going to get.
Sure beats the bus.
[dramatic music continues]
[man] Play that again.
Sure beats the bus.
[dramatic music plays]
I looked at it,
and I was completely dumbstruck.
[John] No fine print.
That is a legit offer.
I don't care what anybody else says.
I'm gonna get that jet.
I was like, "Oh, fuck."
Sure beats the bus.
[Brian] It just went out
and nobody flagged it.
[man] The bottom of that video
was very clear.
Here it is, the Harrier jet.
Seven million points.
It's clearly a joke.
People don't offer
military hardware as prizes.
[dramatic music plays]
They put this shit up there on the air?
Live by your word.
You say it, you do it.
[dramatic music continues]
[Jeff] Hundreds of millions of people
saw the ad,
and there's one guy
who says this was a serious offer?
That was ridiculous.
["Praise You" by Fatboy Slim playing]
We've come a long, long way together ♪
Through the hard times and the good ♪
I have to celebrate you, baby ♪
I have to praise you like I should ♪
Whoo!
You know, it's in my head now. [laughs]
[laughs]
["Praise You" continues to play]
[John] I think some would say
Pepsi was my 15 minutes,
and those 15 minutes are up.
That was 25 years ago.
Different world then.
Different John.
["Praise You" continues]
We've come a long, long way together ♪
Through the hard times and the good ♪
I have to celebrate you, baby ♪
I have to praise you like I should ♪
I have to praise you ♪
[John] I was 20 years old,
going to a small community college
outside Seattle.
Definitely not Harvard.
I have to praise you ♪
[John] I had big dreams, big aspirations.
But the things I liked to do most,
were be out in the mountains.
I have to praise you ♪
[John] I had been up climbing in Alaska,
climbing in South America.
I was trying to figure out my way to climb
the highest mountains in the world.
See different places,
experience different cultures.
But trying to match it up with my reality
of no checkbook.
To me, money was freedom.
It allowed for more adventures, more fun.
We've come a long, long way together ♪
[John] I'd worked in small businesses.
My parents had a small business.
Oh, no!
Who would have thought?
Um, hi and Pepsi.
We're here to talk about Pepsi, right?
[laughs and pretends to retch]
[man] Tell us about John at 20 years old.
What was John like?
He was a go-getter.
I mean, he always had a job.
He [groans]
[John] Just ad lib in your own words.
Why can't you say these things?
- It's It's good for you.
- Okay, all right.
His first job was a paperboy.
- [John] Bike shop.
- Oh yeah, you worked at the bike shop.
[John] Then he delivered teriyaki.
And delivered teriyaki to the locals.
- [John] He washed windows.
- Oh, he was a window washer.
You cut glass at that glass company.
He sold magazines.
- [chuckles]
- [John] Then he was a climbing guide.
Climbing guide.
Climbing guide.
Now, if he was only Harry Styles,
I'd like it even better.
Can you No, I'm sorry. [laughs]
I'm a Harry Styles fan.
[John] Mom, you're perfect.
- I'm trying to ad lib and I can't.
- You're doing great. Sit down.
[tense music plays]
[John] Pepsi was a big deal.
Pepsi, Coke, the Cola Wars.
That was all front and center at the time.
[tense music continues]
They were trying to come
towards the Pepsi generation.
That was their whole thing.
That was where I was at.
[tense music continues]
[John] Their association with, like, MTV.
Cool athletes.
I mean, they had Shaq.
Don't even think about it.
[John] They had Cindy Crawford.
Coke had the polar bear.
My grandparents
thought that was real cool.
If it was cool, Pepsi had it.
[Cindy] If you're young and cool
at any age, really,
then Pepsi's the one for you.
It was your generation.
I prefer this one.
- [man] Someone's gonna be very happy.
- Yeah, see? There you go.
- ["Let My Love Open the Door" playing]
- In '92, I was 24.
I got asked by my agent to do
a Pepsi commercial for the Super Bowl.
The casting, the music, the writing,
like, everything worked.
I mean, that commercial is so iconic.
Every Halloween, on Instagram,
I see at least 30 people that go
as me from that Pepsi commercial.
Pepsi is like
this international, iconic brand,
but then, the advertising
made it relatable for everybody.
To your heart ♪
Notice anything kind of different
about the girls this semester?
Yeah, now that you mention it.
They're all wearing that Pepsi stuff.
[John] It worked for me,
and, frankly, their great advertising
not only got me to drink their product,
it got me
to take a swing at the fences, right?
[indistinct shouting]
[dramatic music plays]
[John] I was coaching Little League
football just outside Seattle.
One of my assistant coaches,
a guy named Rob Lion,
we were walking away
from the end of practice one night.
He pulled a pocket knife
and cut this label off a bottle of Pepsi.
I'm like, "Rob what are you doing?"
He told me that him and the guys at work
were trying to pool their points
to win this jet.
And I took mental note of it,
but I didn't think too much of it.
Frankly, I felt like
it was some kind of, like, lark.
Weeks later, I was at my folks' house,
and all of a sudden
[man] Now, the more Pepsi you drink
the more great stuff you're going to get.
[man] Sure beats the bus.
[dramatic music plays]
[John] Harrier Jet comes down.
I was like, "Holy mackerel, this is
the commercial Rob's talking about."
[exciting music plays]
[John] I think we've all had dreams,
and you thought of hitting it big,
these sorts of things.
I was at a point in my life where I was
trying to start connecting the dots.
Trying to figure out how I wanted
to get where I wanted to get.
[exciting music continues]
[John] Seven million Pepsi Points.
And no fine print came up.
And I go, "Wow, that's something."
Through my math and my research,
I'm trying to figure out
how much a Harrier Jet costs.
I was able to put the price
in the $30,000,000-$32,000,000 range.
My immediate thought was,
you could probably get seven million
Pepsi Points for a whole lot less.
I really saw this as an opportunity.
A legitimate opportunity
to change my world.
My mind couldn't stop racing
to try to figure out
how to make this happen.
I was continually trying
to crunch numbers,
come up with cost estimations.
How much Pepsi it would take.
How many bottles you'd have to buy.
At night, I'd lay in bed
thinking about it.
Like, I think you could do this.
I think there is a legitimate path
to get the seven million points.
[hopeful music plays]
[John] I had no idea how many people
were out trying to do this.
In the back of my mind,
I was up against the clock.
I had this sense of urgency
that I was trying to make it happen
and be the first one.
I was doing everything I could
to make it as cheap as I could.
Coupons and the whole deal.
[Linda] We were drinking an awful lot
of Pepsi. Hauling it in by the truckload.
[man] You guys actually were gonna try
to drink that much Pepsi?
- Was there
- Yeah. Yeah, we tried.
[exciting music plays]
[Linda] But it didn't take long
It took a week, probably,
before we realized, no,
we just couldn't drink that much Pepsi.
[exciting music continues]
[John] At the end of the day,
I needed a pretty big amount of money.
So I tried to put that on paper.
And as I was working through all this,
I knew there was one person that
I could potentially get to bite on this.
[rock music plays]
One person that was adventurous enough.
[rock music continues]
[John] Was willing to take risks.
Also had the wherewithal to come up
with a pretty big amount of money.
And he was the one guy
that would take my calls.
[rock music continues]
[man] I live in the moment.
I enjoy the moment.
There's so many beautiful things
you can appreciate.
All you have to do is open your eyes.
I've got a little pond out here
stocked with trout.
But I won't tell you the address
so you don't steal all my fucking trout.
You have to be spontaneous in life.
If you're wrong five out of 100 times,
so what?
You had 95 great adventures.
Five times you fell on your head,
you got stitches, had a broken leg and
You would've missed the whole thing
if you didn't take that opportunity.
[upbeat music playing]
[woman clears throat]
I like this one better.
[man] She likes Coca-Cola.
Is that bad?
I'm Phyllis Hoffman,
and I'm Todd's mother.
He was a very active baby
[coughs]in the crib.
[upbeat music playing]
He started shaking the slats in the crib,
and he broke out.
And that was a picture
of what was to come.
He was going to bust out, and he did.
[Todd] By the time I was 16,
I remember studying things
in a classroom and going, like,
"I don't wanna learn French
in a class. I'd rather be in France."
[upbeat music continues]
[Todd] And I wanted to see everything.
So I get a map, and there's Switzerland,
Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece,
Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan,
Pakistan, India, Nepal.
I was like, "Oh, okay,"
and started my journey.
[music fades]
[Todd] Finally, I made it to Nepal.
And the Khumbu,
the region where Mount Everest is.
I was like, "This is where I belong."
And it sculpted a large part of my life.
I was climbing all over the world.
And didn't stop
until something happened to me.
[serious music plays]
[Todd] I got sick in 1992,
and it was a, you know,
pretty big size brain tumor.
I think they said one in 200,000 people
got this kind of tumor.
That'd be like if God went down the line
and said, "No. Jeff, no."
He gets to 100,647 people, and I'm
standing there, and he goes, "You."
So I'm like, "What the hell?"
And it was removed in '92.
When I got out of the hospital
and finally was able to go home,
I was walking a little bit crooked
with a cane,
and a little drool coming out there,
and deaf on one side.
It wasn't comfortable for me
to walk to the end of my driveway.
But I did it every day,
and I got a little bit further.
Eventually, you know,
I was getting stronger,
and my goal was to get up
on a mountain again.
And, uh, I spoke with my doctors
and I said to 'em, "What about climbing?
What about doing this or that?"
And they were like, "Well, it might be
good to choose something different."
I was just like, "I don't think so."
"I don't think so at all."
It really rubbed me the wrong way.
So, I chose the highest mountain
in North America.
Mount Denali in Alaska.
[dramatic music plays]
[Todd] I went there
with a lot of trepidation.
I still had headaches and pounding
and all this other kind of shit going on.
But I was excited.
I was looking at the positive side of it.
[dramatic music fades]
[Todd] On that climbing trip,
John was a junior climbing guide.
[John] Our first trip together,
we sat through a number of storms.
If you stay in a tent,
shoulder to shoulder,
for seven straight days,
you talk about a lot of stuff.
So I'm 20. Todd's early forties.
He had been successful
in the car business, other ventures.
[Todd] I grew up
in the automobile business,
and then I went into publishing,
restaurants, real estate.
And I was doing well in all of them.
John was much younger than everybody,
and he was just the nicest kid.
[John] One guy that was
used to the finer things in life,
and this naive kid
that was trying to understand
what the finer things in life was.
John was always a compassionate,
really good guy, you know,
and we became friends on that climb.
[John] We were brought together
by this mutual desire
to go to climb
the highest mountain in each continent.
[exciting music plays]
Over the years, Todd and John
developed a wonderful friendship,
and I did kind of turn over my son
to Todd, and he did a great job.
He did a good job of raising him.
[Todd] Having some experience
in the business world,
John felt he could pitch different ideas,
and I would give him my best advice.
And then he pitched this idea,
which was so out of left field.
[John] It may have been
the craziest one he'd ever heard.
I can only imagine,
in Todd's professional life,
he'd had a lot of ideas come at him,
but there was a reason
why he listened to mine.
Of course, I thought it was interesting,
but I also thought he was crazy.
I said, "Well, can I see the commercial?"
He goes, "Well, it's on TV.
You can see it on TV."
I said, "Just get me a copy
of the commercial so I can see it."
And I was like,
"Uh, could you play that again?"
[man] Sure beats the bus.
[Todd] Play it again.
[man] Sure beats the bus.
[Todd] Play it again.
I just want to make sure,
for the 90th time,
that what I think I saw
is actually what I saw.
I can't believe it. I couldn't believe it.
I was like, "Holy shit. This guy's
actually gonna think about this."
He could see I was really interested.
They put disclaimers on ads all the time.
They didn't have a disclaimer on this ad.
But then I had to go to the next step.
Okay, now I like what the commercial
shows, which is false advertising.
I think it's false advertising.
Now let's go to step two.
Write your business plan down.
This is your deal, John.
[upbeat music plays]
I'd never done a business plan. I didn't
know what a business plan looked like.
But I had what I thought
was this viable thing that could be done.
[upbeat music continues]
[John] I don't even know
if Windows was in yet.
This is maybe even MS-DOS.
I think it's WordPerfect
I was using at the time.
So, I'm in WordPerfect
typing up a business plan.
You know that sound
on the dot matrix printers
- [imitates a printer clicking]
- [printer whirs]
[imitates a printer]
[John] Eventually, I had
a formal business plan.
Todd's like, "All right, if you
really want to make a go at this,
put your big boy pants on,
fly down, and make a pitch to me."
- [John] So now let's tell the truth.
- [both laugh]
- Hey, Johnny.
- [John] I presented the business plan.
[printer whirs]
It was a multimillion-dollar business deal
to go out and acquire all of the points.
And to acquire the points,
it spelled out labor costs,
transportation costs, storage costs.
And at the time,
it would cost $4.3 million.
And I go, "What?"
[John] So each 12-pack
was worth five points.
I'd need to buy 1.4 million 12-packs
to get to 7 million points.
That's over 16 million cans of Pepsi.
[Todd] Where are we putting
millions of cans?
"Well, you know, we'll rent warehouses,
like, all over the place."
[John] 1.4 million 12-packs of Pepsi
would take up almost 600,000 cubic feet
of storage space.
So, I'd come up with a plan.
Six major metropolitan areas,
six warehouses,
and the associated amount of people
in each of those warehouses.
People to go out and buy the points,
people to drive the trucks,
people to cut the points off.
So I'm thinking probably somewhere
in the neighborhood of 45 people.
I estimated that we could do it
in three months.
[upbeat music plays]
Back then, there was a company
called Labor Ready.
If somebody needed temporary labor,
you'd call Labor Ready.
So I remember calling Labor Ready up,
and getting the number from them.
That's what I put in this business plan.
[bell dings]
[cheering and applause]
And I was like, "Okay, you
You've really lost it now, John."
"Still love you, but you've lost it."
[John] I was convinced
that we could make it work,
but Todd was able to point out
a lot of the a lot of the pitfalls.
And he poked a lot of holes in it.
He had hard questions.
[printer whirs]
[John] A legitimate question.
If somebody could not buy a Harrier Jet,
then on the face of the offer,
it was not legitimate.
1995, no Wikipedia, right?
It was still going into encyclopedias
and looking some of this stuff up.
And that's when I started trying
to reach out to folks in the Pentagon.
My approach was,
"I'm working on a school project."
Which I think, at some level,
it was a, quote, school project.
I remember, somehow,
getting in touch
with a spokesperson for the Pentagon.
It was, like, Kevin Bacon or Ken Bacon.
- Kevin Bacon was from Footloose
- He's an actor.
Let's dance!
[dramatic music playing]
[John] I can only imagine
what he was thinking.
Somebody calling him to see whether or not
you could buy a Harrier Jet.
Essentially, what I got
was that, yes, you could,
but it couldn't have
all the armaments on it.
That was something
that would make it illegal.
But if you could somehow
acquire a Harrier Jet
and it didn't have the missiles,
the radar jamming stuff,
that there was
not a prohibition against it.
For one, it was $32,000,000,
but you couldn't just buy one.
You had to buy a minimum of six
or something like that.
- That wasn't our problem.
- Yeah.
But I got to that answer and I was
able to get over that hurdle with
- [Todd] Yeah.
- With regard to was it legal or not.
- [Todd] Right.
- And could you get them.
He's like, "All right,
so you get a Harrier Jet,
what are you gonna do with it?"
Are we selling it right away?
That certainly would look
like we were just trying to get Pepsi.
Let's talk about
What do you want to do with this?
[John] I had to put forward
a number of ways
that we were not only gonna be able
to recoup the original investment,
but also turn it into something
that was viable.
And you know, they're, cra
"Oh, we're gonna do rides."
You know, like it's a Ferris wheel ride.
[John] Todd was like,
"Best I know, there's only one seat
in that thing." [laughs]
He said, "Well, I want to take it
to air shows."
[John] He signed off on the fact there
could be a viable business opportunity
with air shows and advertisements
and movies and whatnot.
"Then we're gonna do this,
we're gonna do that."
I was like,
"Okay, that's your business plan."
[John] Solved that one.
But ultimately, he did put something
forward that was insurmountable,
that I couldn't have an answer for.
A legitimate question.
So, what if you get going
and they end the contest?
What happens when we get 6,995,000 points,
and you can't get them anymore?
Um, then what do we do?
Right, with all these cans of Pepsi?
"John, you're a great guy.
This ain't happening."
"I'm just gonna tell you that.
This is not happening."
"It makes no sense.
It's cra It's insane."
[laughing] Todd didn't see much
of a secondary market for used Pepsi cans.
And so,
that was kind of the eventual
end of that road.
- [buzzer honks]
- [groaning]
[John] I hit a wall
that I could not get past.
[somber music plays]
I had been fully invested in this, right?
And I really saw this as, like,
my first opportunity
to really do something.
[somber music continues]
[Todd] He felt a little bit shattered
by it. A little bit deflated.
[John] Though I'm sure Todd thought
it was a done deal,
it still didn't leave my mind.
It was still just spinning, right?
As a 20-year-old, this felt like
a once-in-a-lifetime chance.
Back in Seattle,
so I'm back going to school.
Back washing windows.
And I go into a convenience store,
and there's this whole
point-of-purchase display
of the Pepsi Points campaign.
[intriguing music plays]
[John] And then boom!
There are these little catalogs.
I started thumbing through the catalog,
kind of with this
what-could-have-been mindset.
Like, "Oh man,
I was this close." You know?
I thought I was that close, right?
Or maybe that close.
I get to the end of it, I just
I'm reading the fine print.
And at, like,
the very bottom of the fine print,
it says something about
being able to buy Pepsi Points
for 10 cents apiece.
And so long as you submitted
a minimum of 15 points,
you could buy the balance
of the Pepsi Points.
And then I did the quick math.
And I was like, "Holy mackerel."
I just went from $4.3 million to 700k.
[hopeful music plays]
And I couldn't get to a phone fast enough.
[John] One of those
little rotary dial phones.
And I'm calling Todd. I'm so excited.
[telephone rings]
Voicemail. [laughs]
Everything's gonna be all right ♪
[John] All these hurdles,
and all these holes that were punched
in the business plan
Be all right ♪
just went right out the window.
Todd had a cell phone,
and then he had two phone numbers.
I called all those numbers,
and I called them all a bunch of times,
until finally, he picked me up.
I think, at the time, I benefited
from the fact that there was no caller ID.
[laughs]
I'm like, "Todd, I got it. We're there."
And I walked him through.
I read it to him.
Everything's gonna be all right
Everything's gonna be ♪
[Todd] We found a loophole.
There's some meat and potatoes in there.
And I was just like,
"I need to think
about this seriously now."
[John] I'm a badger, right?
I'm alive again.
[screeches]
The dream is back alive.
I'm gonna get the freaking jet.
[dramatic music plays]
When I write this check,
somebody's gonna see that check.
And somebody's gonna go,
"Who wrote that check?"
They're gonna go, "Oh, it was this guy
named Todd Hoffman."
And I'm, like, that made me nervous,
- because I always flew under the radar.
- [motorcycle revs]
This is taking your thumb, and this
is sticking it right in the eye of Pepsi.
And then I said, "You know what?"
"The hell with them, man."
I'd use different language
if I weren't on camera.
[man] This is Netflix.
You can use whatever language.
Fuck them.
I'm writing the check,
and I'm sending it in.
And here we go. We're on our adventure.
They never figured
there ever would be a John Leonard.
And secondly, if there was a John Leonard,
they never figured
there'd be a Todd Hoffman.
[dramatic music continues]
Bring on Pepsi.
[music stops]
[dramatic music playing]
[Brian] When something comes up like this,
legal, you know, will kill anything.
[dramatic music plays]
Pepsi has that power.
[dramatic music continues]
And uses that power.
And nobody can fight it.
You gotta treat it pretty seriously,
but there wasn't a person
that didn't think this was pure insanity.
[energetic music playing]
[Jeff] And it was about to get
a lot crazier.
- Ready for a flight?
- Let's go.
[yells]
[music stops]
[closing theme music playing]