Karl Puschmann: Dogfight with Pepsi has plenty of fizz

Michael Davis as John Leonard in the Netflix documentary series Pepsi, Where's My Jet?

Pepsi has always been the underdog. Second best. The drink you begrudgingly take from the fridge if the takeaways don’t have Coke. Throughout the 80s and 90s, it championed itself as “the choice of a new generation”. Sure, they had big stars like Michael Jackson, Shaq and Cindy Crawford shilling for them but, still, I never saw anyone from my generation ever willingly choose to drink Pepsi.

Maybe that would have been different if down here in Aotearoa we’d played a significant part in the famed Cola Wars. This was when Pepsi was shooting for the cola crown with everything it had. And what it had most of was money. It just didn’t choose to spend much of it here. Not that I can recall anyway.

In America, however, Pepsi spent an insane amount of cash year after year building its brand. Its edgy and humorously irreverent, star-studded ad campaigns won hearts, minds and awards. It didn’t win them the Cola Wars but it certainly got them close.

Pepsi was the David to Coca-Cola’s Goliath. But as Netflix’s fizzing new doco-series Pepsi, Where’s My Jet? makes clear, Pepsi wasn’t above being the Goliath to the David that is all of us.

Over four fun and frothy episodes, the doco charts a wild and improbable tale that includes a broken promise, an idealistic student, millions of dollars, a disgraced lawyer, supermodels, seven warehouses of Pepsi and a Harrier jet.

It all starts harmlessly enough. One summer in the mid-90s, Pepsi ran a campaign that allowed you to collect points for each can you drank. You could then cash in those points to buy Pepsi swag like tees, leather jackets and sunglasses. They made a big-budget ad to promote it. This showed a kid getting ready for school and showed the number of points needed for each item he put on before he left for the day. 15 points for the T-shirt, 35 for the shades, etc etc. The hook of the ad was when he arrived at school in a Harrier jet aeroplane. “7,000,000 Pepsi Points” the ad read underneath the kid doing a thumbs up.

Depending on who you believe this was either a) a joke by Pepsi to sign off their ad or b) an offer as legitimate as tees and jackets. Throughout the doco, various Pepsico execs and management from the ad company swear black and blue it was option a. The jet was nothing more than a joke to cap off their fancy ad and anyone of reasonable mind would view it that way.

However, a 21-year-old business student named John Leonard saw the ad and went for option b. With no disclaimer or small print on the ad, Leonard took them at their word. He began scheming and plotting a way to acquire the required amount of points to get that jet.

After a few failed attempts he found a loophole. In the supplemental product catalogue, buried in the fine print, Pepsi offered to sell points for 10c each. Leonard did the math. For $700,000 he’d have enough Pepsi points to buy the Harrier jet which, at the time, was worth a cool $32 million. He was quids in.

At his summer job as a climbing guide, he’d met a wild card of an investor named Todd Hoffmann. He loved adventure and sticking it to the man. He bankrolled the money to buy the points and, as he tell it in the doco, gleefully waited for Pepsi’s return volley.

Hoffmann is a great character. He’s full of life and clearly holds his young friend in high respect. He guides him but never pushes him, the case stays Leonards. Even when pitbull attorney Michael Avenatti gets in on the action. Avenatti is most famous for representing porn star Stormy Daniels in her case against Donald Trump and for being found guilty of attempting to extort Nike. As Hoffmann says here, those methods are the same he uses against Pepsi.

Avenatti appears in the doco from his home detention. He’s also a great character who sees his dirt-digging methods as a virtuous way for the little guy to fight back against the big faceless corps and their teams of highly paid lawyers. Hoffman, on the other hand, sees these same methods simply as “blackmail”. Their antagonistic relationship is very humourous and very real.

Pepsi, Where’s My Jet is a fascinating and snappy story and one that’s told with just the right amount of levity. It’s a delicious cup of nostalgia that you’ll want to guzzle down. It’s full of banging 90s tunes and fashions. It’s an enjoyable easy watch. And unlike true crime, no one here died or was hurt. It’s merely the tale of a young guy who took on a giant corporation to get them to cough up the jet they promised.