Pepsi Aired SuperBowl Promo Before Caps Reached Stores

The Pepsi/iTunes promotion has hit another snag. The specially marked bottles featured in the campaign arrived on shelf in New York weeks after the first ad appeared during the Super Bowl, watched by 90 millions viewers. And they still haven't arrived in Los Angeles.

The bottles, out on time in other markets across the country, began appearing last week in New York, and are expected to hit the Los Angeles market by mid-March, the country's two largest markets.

"We recognized the power of iTunes early on and moved quickly to turn it into a Pepsi promotion," said Dave DeCecco, a Pepsi spokesperson. "We wanted to be first to market with the promotion but some of our bottlers already had plans in place for the February time period."

Another problem for the promotion surfaced last month when instructions on how to rip off the campaign began appearing on the Internet. Hackers discovered they could simply tip the unopened soda bottles to see if the underside of the lid was marked "try again" or if a winning 10-digit redemption code appeared.

In response to the scam, Pepsi said it would restrict the number of free songs a consumer could redeem per day. The promotion ends March 31 however, redemption runs through April.

The iTunes promotion began in February with codes on bottles of Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Sierra Mist, to let consumers sample Apple's pay-for-play iTunes system.

In addition to the Super Bowl ad, which kicked off the promotion, TV, online, print and outdoor support. Dallas-based Tracy Locke Partnership handles.