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stories about: "pepsi"
Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
bottled water, ideas, trade secrets

Companies:
pepsi



Pepsi Told To Pay Over A Billion Dollars For 'Stealing' The Idea For Bottled Water

from the the-world-has-gone-mad dept

Ben was the first of a few folks who sent in the story that Pepsi has been told to pay $1.26 billion (with a b) for supposedly "stealing" the idea for filtered bottled water. Seriously. Two men claim they came up with the idea in 1981 to bottle water this way and approached Pepsi distributors with the idea. They say that Pepsi "stole" their trade secrets when it launched a bottled water line, Aquafina. Of course, Aquafina was launched in the mid-nineties, a decade and a half after this conversation supposedly took place. The $1.26 billion is something of a joke as well. It's a default judgment because a Pepsi secretary apparently forgot to pass on the letter alerting them to the lawsuit, so they didn't respond. Even so... there's so much wrong with this. First, $1.26 billion? For the "idea" of filtered bottled water? And for a lawsuit filed nearly thirty years after the alleged conversation? Nearly fifteen years after the product came to market? Yeah, that makes sense...

87 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Culture

Culture

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
advertising, commercials, content, content is advertising, saturday night live

Companies:
nbc, pepsi



Content Is Advertising; Advertising Is Content... On SNL

from the blurring-boundaries dept

If you're in any business that relies on "advertising" for revenue, you need to stop thinking of it as advertising -- and start realizing that advertising and content are the same thing. All traditional "advertising" is content -- and if you want anyone to pay attention to it, it had better be good content. At the same time, all traditional "content" is advertising -- it's just a question of what it's advertising. But as more companies recognize this, we're going to see an increasingly blurry line between advertising and content. While some purists decry this situation, they shouldn't worry so much. It will improve both the overall quality of the "content" that you see all the time in two ways: it will allow for better financing of that content and it makes sure that the formerly "bad" advertising content isn't sustainable and goes away.

Reader James Thomas sends in an example of this blurring of the lines that occurred recently with Saturday Night Live. Apparently, on the SNL the night before the Superbowl, there were three skits "MacGruber" skits (a parody of the popular classic TV show MacGyver) each of which had a totally over-the-top promotion of Pepsi. That part may seem like traditional product placement (though, oddly over the top), but the interesting part was that the next night, during the Superbowl, NBC actually showed one of those sketches during a commercial break. In other words, the sketch itself was then repurposed as "commercial" content -- thus blurring the lines completely. I'm not sure how effective this was (personally, I don't find the MacGruber skits funny at all), but it does demonstrate some of how things are changing. If you did the same thing with content that actually was enjoyable, I could see it getting a much better reaction.

37 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Culture

Culture

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
free music

Companies:
amazon, pepsi



Amazon/Pepsi DRM-Free Music Give Away Shows Yet Another Business Model For Free Music

from the for-everyone-but-Doug-Morris-of-course dept

Pepsi did a big promotion with Apple a few years back to give away iTunes songs, and the latest news is that Pepsi has crossed over to the other side and will be doing a similar promotion with Amazon.com offering free DRM-free downloads from all the big labels... except Universal Music. This story actually demonstrates two important points. First, the fact that the labels themselves apparently are pushing this as an alternative to doing the iTunes promotion, shows how some of the bizarre industry logic has twisted things around. The major labels were originally the ones who were totally adamant that iTunes needed to carry DRM, which actually is part of what made Apple so powerful in the first place -- creating tons of lock-in among customers who wouldn't switch to another provider. However, that is coming back to haunt Apple, as the labels are more reluctant to allow it to also offer DRM-free tracks. No doubt, Steve Jobs recognized this fact a year ago when he called for the labels to drop DRM.

A second, perhaps more important point, is that this once again shows that there clearly are business models surrounding "free" music. One of the points that we've tried to make when people claim that there's simply no incentive for anyone to create music if the customer is getting it free is that there's always going to be incentive for someone to pay for the music in some form or another. In this case, it's Amazon and Pepsi who are paying for the music itself ($0.40/track) recognizing that giving away that music for free helps both of them promote their own businesses. In other words, the music is acting as a resource to make their own business models more valuable. I think I've heard that idea mentioned before somewhere. Of course, that doesn't mean the record labels have figured this out. And, it's especially not surprising that Doug Morris has refused to let Universal Music go along with this, as he's already made clear that he doesn't believe in the concept of promotional goods, no matter how much damage it might actually be doing to musicians under the Universal Music umbrella.

18 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
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