Cadburys apologises over treasure stunt in cemetery

Few carbonated drinks have quite such a sense of their own history as Dr Pepper's. Much of it, including the identity of the eponymous doctor himself, is to be found in the stately Dr Pepper Museum at Waco, the Texan town where a German pharmacist concocted the fizzy stuff in 1865.

But an ill-judged decision by the drink's British manufacturers to further its commercial ends at the expense of other US historical legends has prompted red faces and public apologies, after forcing the closure of a burial ground containing the remains of some of the founding fathers of American independence.

The problems started for Cadbury Schweppes, based in Birmingham, when it launched a treasure hunt across 23 American cities in a promotion campaign for its so-called "brand of 23 flavours".

The firm promised up to £760,000 to anyone who found one of its hidden gold coins. The agency it hired to bury a coin in Boston, Massachusetts, chose the 347-year-old Granary Burying Ground, final resting place of John Hancock, Paul Revere, Samuel Adams and other much-revered historic figures.

The first the city's parks department knew of its part in the hunt was when contestants, guided there by 30 clues, started complaining last Tuesday that the graveyard was closed because of icy paths.

Anxious officials closed the park indefinitely and tried to avert a stampede by finding the coin themselves. It eventually took an official of the marketing firm which had placed it there to find it behind a stone slab covering the entrance to a 200-year-old crypt.

The Boston parks commissioner, Toni Pollak, was withering about the British firm's choice of location. "It absolutely is disrespectful," he told the The Boston Globe: "It's an affront to the people who are buried there, our nation's ancestors."

Boston was already a little touchy about publicity stunts. Less than a month ago, highways and bridges were closed in the city and bomb-squad officers sent to investigate after blinking signs for a guerrilla-marketing campaign were set up, promoting a Cartoon Network programme. The network's parent, Turner Broadcasting System, and a marketing firm apologised for the scare and paid $2m in compensation. The two men who installed the signs face criminal charges.

Cadbury Schweppes moved quickly to avert a diplomatic incident yesterday. Its communications director, Andrea Dawson-Shepherd, said: "It was not an appropriate place to bury a coin. It was poor judgement and we have apologised to the authorities. No damage was done to any of the graves." Greg Artkop, a spokesman for the company in the US, added: "We wouldn't do anything to desecrate this cemetery.''

The company has said it will instead award $10,000, the value of the Boston coin, in a random draw for area residents who had registered for that contest. Parks officials say Boston may seek compensation for the police used to protect the site, and Cadbury Schweppes has indicated it will pay up.

The promotion's most valuable coin, redeemable for $1m, was found by a Houston woman near the Spirit of Confederacy statue in Sam Houston Park in the Texan city, Cadbury Schweppes has said.

But there is no hint of a coin at the hallowed Dr Pepper museum, where the eponymous doctor is revealed to be one Dr Charles T Pepper, to whose daughter one of the soft drink's first major promoters lost his heart.