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Japanese netizens dismayed at abysmal win rate of Pepsi Japan’s rock-paper-scissors promotion

Koh Ruide Apr 22, 2019
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Not surprising considering the chances of winning is less than one percent.

Although there are strategies out there teaching people how to win at the age-old game of rock-paper-scissors, most agree that there’s quite a bit of chance involved.

Yet a recent promotion carried out by Pepsi Japan has turned that notion upside down. Featuring Japanese soccer icon Keisuke Honda, the campaign allowed people to win a coupon to be exchanged for a free 600 milliliter Japan Cola at convenience chain Family Mart or Lawson.

Up to 160,000 coupons were up for grabs, and all people had to do was to win a rock-paper-scissors game against Honda by following Pepsi Japan’s Twitter account and retweeting what move they would use in the post below.

▼ Here was the post detailing the promotion.
How difficult could it be?

／
あと2日!
4/19まで #毎日挑戦 #毎日11時start #本田とじゃんけん
＼@pepsi_jpn をフォロー#本田圭佑とじゃんけん勝負✌
勝てばその場で #ペプシ #ジャパンコーラ
計16万名様にコンビニ無料引換えクーポンがあたる!
あなたは何を出す？
※混みあうと返信が遅くなりますhttps://t.co/HyiM9rLiCt

— Pepsi（ペプシ） (@pepsi_jpn) April 18, 2019

After entering their choice of rock, paper or scissors, individual Twitter users were then presented, after a period of time, with an automated response of Honda’s move to theirs. Although the premise was simple, winning the match was an entirely different matter as multiple users ended up seeing outcomes like the one below.

▼ “Keisuke Honda wins! What a shame! Let’s try again tomorrow!”

残念、本田圭佑の勝利！
勝負は1日1回！
明日も勝負を挑みましょう！https://t.co/qOMd0iwZsU pic.twitter.com/MRwOYqU41M

— Pepsi（ペプシ） (@pepsi_jpn) April 18, 2019

Now it would not be such a big deal if roughly one-third of users won the game, but Honda appeared to be beating everyone so much that the chances of winning appeared to be non-existent, as if the entire thing was rigged. Suspecting something was afoot, Twitter user @OK_im_fine_now used a third-party website to run a search through Pepsi Japan’s responses and concluded that it was nearly impossible to win.

▼ You cannot beat an automated Keisuke Honda. (Translation below)

https://twitter.com/OK_im_fine_now/status/1117822329579376640

“This is by no means accurate as I couldn’t extract all the tweets. In any case, out of 3143 tweets…
Win rate of humans : 0.41%
Win rate of Keisuke Honda : 99.59%”

What that meant was that out of 3143 moves made by players, only roughly 13 managed to beat Honda, a fact that irked many netizens but made winners feel extremely lucky:

“This guy really pisses me off.”
“This is terrible.”
“There’s no way we can win. This is not even fair.”
“I won at my first try!”
“I beat him today!”

The campaign has already closed, but if the 0.41-percent win rate is anything to go by, we doubt Pepsi Japan has handed out even half of the 160,000 coupons offered.

Although the company’s ultimate goal was advertisement, perhaps the campaign would have garnered better responses from the public if they had bumped up the chances of winning to about 10 or 20 percent. After all, no one likes to play against a rock-paper-scissors robot that always wins.

Source: Twitter/@pepsi_jpn, Twitter/@OK_im_fine_now
Featured image: Twitter/@pepsi_jpn
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