PepsiCo to Beep Teens in Pop Promo

PepsiCo Inc. has come up with an expensive plan to tap into the burgeoning pager market: It will outfit 500,000 teenagers with beepers in a campaign to promote Mountain Dew soft drinks.

PepsiCo plans to link teens in a network, beeping them weekly with discount offers and prize drawings. Those who call back on a toll-free number will hear recordings from sports and entertainment celebrities, including Ken Griffey Jr., Richard Petty and Evel Knievel.

Shoppers will find entry forms on drink packages. Those who send in 10 proof-of-purchase labels and $29 get the beepers and six months of free service.

After that, they can keep the pagers, but they’ll have to pay MobileComm Inc., the company providing the beeper service, for continued use.

The offer will cost PepsiCo, Sony Corp., Motorola Inc., MobileComm, MTV and other partners between $40 million and $50 million, according to sources close to Purchase, N.Y.-based PepsiCo, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

PepsiCo executives hope to take advantage of youths’ desire to take part in the growing pager market. There are more than 30 million U.S. pager subscribers, and MobileComm predicts there will be 50 million by 2000.

The proposal may run into opposition from school districts that forbid students from bringing beepers to school.

“The reason that some schools ban them, especially high schools, is that they believe that students use them for drug dealing. But there are parents who actually equip their young children with beepers,” said Susan Amlung, spokeswoman for the United Federation of Teachers in New York.

PepsiCo said it will cooperate with school officials if conflicts arise.