back by popular demand (or rather the constant request of one person)
DISCLAIMER: The below event is entirely ficitatious and is a product of the author's imagination.
At a board meeting for McDonalds 3 weeks ago... 2 weeks after the Hello Kitty HP board meeting..
Chairman : Ok, we've been hitting a slump lately. Our online campaign seems quite a hit, Mcdelivery sales has gone up 40%! Seems like everyone wants the Hello Kitty phone ??
Marketing Director 1: Yea man! one of my friend's sister's friend's brother actually won the 1st week's Hello Kitty Sony Ericsson phone and he was so happy about it!
MD 2: Are you kidding? You mean he used it?
MD 1: er no.. he was just happy that he won it. singaporeans are like that what, you offer a prize, they'll do anything to win it. even if it means doing stupid things like ordering countless numbers of meals online. He's putting the phone on Ebay.
Chairman: okok back on topic. as i was saying, online sales has gone up 40%.. but our dine-in sales has dropped 40%!!!
MD1: oh dear, must be that bulk of customers deciding to stop dining in and order online to win the useless Hello Kitty phone.
Chairman: yea. we need an idea to attract them to dine in!
MD2: how about offering something useless again? Like.. a bugs bunny t shirt? or maybe we can start selling Hello kittys again to attract people?
MD1: nah having 2 hello kitty things seems counterproductive. people may start questioning why we support hello kitty so much too. i mean, he (she?) doesnt even have a mouth to eat mcdonalds! are we promoting non-eating?how about scratch and win coupons again?
Chairman: hmm ok we shall have the scratch and win coupons again.. but it seems so repetitive! we had it several years back. is there any way to innovate and come up with a different type of scratch and win thing?
MD2: how about stickers instead of scratch and win? they peel off the cover of the coupon to see their prize.
MD1: yea but that'll mean they need something to stick to? we gonna provide like a... game sheet?
MD2: How about a game board! We could make a MCdonalds edition of Monopoly! There's been star wars, singapore, lord of the rings, i dont see why not Mcdonalds!
Chairman: ah yes, that's quite brilliant! and we're gonna have to tack on a grand prize that's wildly attractive so that people will want to work towards it!
MD1: eh, let's do marketing cheat #129 ?
MD2: which one is that?
MD1: Marketting cheat #129 : "The creation of a huge grand prize with very low odds to win, hence attracting strong participation, but subsequently removing those very odds completely such that the management wins."
MD2: you're suggesting we make the grand prize .. unwinnable?
MD1: yes. let's say for monopoly, the winning ticket will be the dark blue one. we just print alot of the other dark blue set so that people get all hyped up when they get one half of it. what they don't know is that we didn't even print the other half! so they'll never win!
Chairman : that's positively brilliant. ok we'll make the prize money something amazing.. $50k! let's see how many people get suckered into it =D
Thursday 5 November 2009
Wednesday 4 November 2009
the o r d post
Just in case you didn't know, ORD stands for Operationally Ready Date, which means i'm officially ready/available for any sudden activations that may occur if Singapore was to go to war. :o
So i'm not exactly free from NS, i still have my 10 cycle liability.. but other than that
I'M FREE ZOMG
Well technically my ORD is on 10th November, but after booking out this morning I don't have to go back to camp anymore till 10th Nov to collect my pink IC =) so.. cheers :D
Ok this post is gonna be like a... reflections post or something. I don't really have a very definite picture of what i'm going to write, but i'll just.. type as the things come to my mind.
Let's start with a 'no more' section:
No more waking up at 6am in the morning and having to fall in for first parade by 715. SLEEP.
No more cringing when hearing the word 'book-in'
No more eating cat-food-standard SFI food. I mean, everyone feeds the food to the cats. And i dont know how many times i've opened a packet of rations from SFI and spent a good 30 seconds trying to process what on earth is edible in the box, then decide that nothing is and hence closing the box.
No more facing the horrible 'birdman'. no elaboration as i can't be bothered wasted words on him.
No more missing WoW raids. :o
No more having difficulty sleeping because the other people in the room sleep later and hence don't switch the light off and carry on talking
No more thinking when i next have to book-in
Some of my worst moments were in army. In fact, i think the worst day/night of my life is definitely in army and i can remember it very clearly -
it was during my Sispec overseas training, during one of the days of field camp. It had rained every single day of the outfield training, leading to a very miserable mood among everybody.
So imagine us - wet, soaked, drenched (ok all 3 words have the same meaning i don't know why i just used them in sequence) and cold, and night fell upon us. The rain had softened abit - softened, not stopped.
We knew we had to build some form of shelter, since it was probably gonna rain again (dark clouds, lightning/thunder were a dead giveaway) So we built some shelter with our groundsheets, etc, then all hid under it. I recall there were 4 of us under one groundsheet.
The worst part wasnt my body being wet - i had no problems with that, besides being very chilly. The worst was the wet socks. They clung to your feet and made you feel extremely uncomfortable. and there's virtually no way of drying them (besides changing them, which is pretty pointless considering they'll get wet before you can even put them on, and even after they're on they'll just get even wetter)
So us with the wet socks and shivering bodies, we were huddled together under shelter. Guess what? Of course, it rained again. it poured. The entire night.
I had never felt so cold before in my life. Maybe it was the rain, or the cold, or the outfield.. or a combination of all three. But i really felt like i was gonna get hypothermia or something. The 4 of us huddled together and were practically hugging each other, to no avail. It was FREEZING.
And that was how we 'slept' through the night. WORST NIGHT EVER.
And of course, my worst sickness (besides the fits i had when i was small which i have no recollection of so they're not counted) was also during army.. this time when i was in my unit, during our overseas training.
I was healthy as a fiddle all the way till the morning of R&R.. when we were scheduled to go visit theme parks and shop and enjoy ourselves.. when i woke up that morning, i knew i was screwed.
My stomach felt twisted in a million ways. I had a bad diarrhoea and couldn't stay out of the toilet. I constantly felt like vomiting.
The doctor at the camp there gave me a jab and some medicine, but it didn't help much. I still constantly felt nauseous and had diarrhoea nonstop. When we stopped for lunch at some restaurant, i took a nibble out of literally 3 grains of rice.. but when the scent of food settled on my tongue i immediately wanted to vomit and my stomach churned. so i couldn't eat.
This carried on till i returned to Singapore.. how sad eh. Even on the plane, i visited the toilet 6 times. I think i'm totally familiar with the small lavatory on the Silkair plane now.
~~~~~~~~~~~
So now, on to the next chapter of my life. Which is.. well, before uni even starts, is having a part-time job. I've never worked in a part-time job before in my life. So.. lol.
I'm trying to apply for a relief teaching job in my old school.. probably my primary school. Hope i get it!
Till then.. i'll be extremely free, except for mon/wed/fri nights when i have WoW raids. otherwise, ASK ME OUT!. yes yes. free as a bird.
-flaps wings-
So i'm not exactly free from NS, i still have my 10 cycle liability.. but other than that
I'M FREE ZOMG
Well technically my ORD is on 10th November, but after booking out this morning I don't have to go back to camp anymore till 10th Nov to collect my pink IC =) so.. cheers :D
Ok this post is gonna be like a... reflections post or something. I don't really have a very definite picture of what i'm going to write, but i'll just.. type as the things come to my mind.
Let's start with a 'no more' section:
No more waking up at 6am in the morning and having to fall in for first parade by 715. SLEEP.
No more cringing when hearing the word 'book-in'
No more eating cat-food-standard SFI food. I mean, everyone feeds the food to the cats. And i dont know how many times i've opened a packet of rations from SFI and spent a good 30 seconds trying to process what on earth is edible in the box, then decide that nothing is and hence closing the box.
No more facing the horrible 'birdman'. no elaboration as i can't be bothered wasted words on him.
No more missing WoW raids. :o
No more having difficulty sleeping because the other people in the room sleep later and hence don't switch the light off and carry on talking
No more thinking when i next have to book-in
Some of my worst moments were in army. In fact, i think the worst day/night of my life is definitely in army and i can remember it very clearly -
it was during my Sispec overseas training, during one of the days of field camp. It had rained every single day of the outfield training, leading to a very miserable mood among everybody.
So imagine us - wet, soaked, drenched (ok all 3 words have the same meaning i don't know why i just used them in sequence) and cold, and night fell upon us. The rain had softened abit - softened, not stopped.
We knew we had to build some form of shelter, since it was probably gonna rain again (dark clouds, lightning/thunder were a dead giveaway) So we built some shelter with our groundsheets, etc, then all hid under it. I recall there were 4 of us under one groundsheet.
The worst part wasnt my body being wet - i had no problems with that, besides being very chilly. The worst was the wet socks. They clung to your feet and made you feel extremely uncomfortable. and there's virtually no way of drying them (besides changing them, which is pretty pointless considering they'll get wet before you can even put them on, and even after they're on they'll just get even wetter)
So us with the wet socks and shivering bodies, we were huddled together under shelter. Guess what? Of course, it rained again. it poured. The entire night.
I had never felt so cold before in my life. Maybe it was the rain, or the cold, or the outfield.. or a combination of all three. But i really felt like i was gonna get hypothermia or something. The 4 of us huddled together and were practically hugging each other, to no avail. It was FREEZING.
And that was how we 'slept' through the night. WORST NIGHT EVER.
And of course, my worst sickness (besides the fits i had when i was small which i have no recollection of so they're not counted) was also during army.. this time when i was in my unit, during our overseas training.
I was healthy as a fiddle all the way till the morning of R&R.. when we were scheduled to go visit theme parks and shop and enjoy ourselves.. when i woke up that morning, i knew i was screwed.
My stomach felt twisted in a million ways. I had a bad diarrhoea and couldn't stay out of the toilet. I constantly felt like vomiting.
The doctor at the camp there gave me a jab and some medicine, but it didn't help much. I still constantly felt nauseous and had diarrhoea nonstop. When we stopped for lunch at some restaurant, i took a nibble out of literally 3 grains of rice.. but when the scent of food settled on my tongue i immediately wanted to vomit and my stomach churned. so i couldn't eat.
This carried on till i returned to Singapore.. how sad eh. Even on the plane, i visited the toilet 6 times. I think i'm totally familiar with the small lavatory on the Silkair plane now.
~~~~~~~~~~~
So now, on to the next chapter of my life. Which is.. well, before uni even starts, is having a part-time job. I've never worked in a part-time job before in my life. So.. lol.
I'm trying to apply for a relief teaching job in my old school.. probably my primary school. Hope i get it!
Till then.. i'll be extremely free, except for mon/wed/fri nights when i have WoW raids. otherwise, ASK ME OUT!. yes yes. free as a bird.
-flaps wings-
Sunday 1 November 2009
clever mcdonalds
I must say, Mcdonalds has excellent marketing ploys.
If you haven't heard of their latest marketing gimmick, they offer 2-4 coupons per EVM that you purchase (4 for upsize). These coupons can be peeled open to reveal the potential prize that they may grant you.
There are some instant win prizes, but most are color coded to a Monopoly game board. To win, you need to collect all 3 of the same colour to form a set , as in Monopoly when you want to build houses/hotels.
The biggest catch is the dark blue set, which consists of coupons 'Sentosa Cove' and 'Marina Bay'. If you collect them both... YOU WIN $50 000!!!!!
OMG! like that's alot of money right? sounds too good to be true? well, it probably is. From what i know, there are many 'Marina Bay's (i have one myself), but only ONE 'Sentosa Cove' coupon in the whole of Singapore.
What's the odds of winning that?
And so throngs of people flock to McDonalds to pursue this elusive Sentosa Cove, in the hopes that they win the smooth $50k. Of course, there are other rather attractive prices, such as $3000 courts vouchers, etc. But i'm sure these are the same , with many of 2 of the colours, but the 3rd coupon that you need to make a complete set is extremely limited.
Has anyone ever wondered - What if there is no 'Sentosa Cove'?
It would be a terribly evil scheme wouldn't it? I can offer $192837123 as the prize money, but simply make it impossible to win the contest. In this way, I attract a countless number of people (completely random note - is 'countless number' a paradox? If something is countless, it cannot be defined in any numerical way can it? ) to buy my stuff as they're all greedy and want to win that $192837123 but actually there's no way of winning at all.
Seriously, McDonalds' marketing team is simply brilliant. At the moment there's another offer for those who order Mcdonalds via Mcdelivery: 'Win a Hello Kitty Sony Ericsson W395 mobile phone! Every $10 food purchase gives you 1 automated chance to win!"
I can imagine how that marketing board meeting went:
Chairman, McDonalds : Hmm, not enough people order via our Mcdelivery service! is there any way to boost the sales in that aspect?
Marketing Director 1 : We could remove our delivery charge? That's what some other fast food chains do?
Chairman: Are you insane? We are not 'some other fast food chain'. We are McDonalds! King of the fries! We do not have to conform to others. Anyway, if we remove delivery charge, what are we going to pay our already-underpaid deliverymen with? We provide them with cool Mcdonalds bikes and free meals already, but I don't think they'll work for us if we don't give them a basic salary at least.
-Marketing Director 1 slumps in shame-
Marketing Director 2 : How about we tag some attractive but useless prize for Mcdelivery?
MD 1 : Yea! We can call up some of our corporate allies and see if they have any redundant stock that they need to get rid of.
Chairman: Sounds good. Do it.
-several moments later-
MD 2 : Sir, I've contacted Sony and they told me they have a huge stock of redundant Sony Ericsson handphones they can't sell! Apparently, it is a Hello Kitty themed handphone, and it looks too ridiculous for people to actually want to buy it and so they have difficulty selling it!
Chairman: Excellent, take their whole stock, we'll use them as prizes for an automated lucky draw for our Mcdelivery service!
MD 1 : But Sir, who would actually want these stupid looking pink phones? Only girls? From our data survey last year, 80% of our customers* are male!
*totally made up statistic
Chairman: Sigh. It doesnt matter, Singaporeans are so kiasu, if they see anything free, they'll want it. This has been perennially proven by the sales of our 'Happy Meal'. The kids use the toys for maybe a few weeks and throw it away! Yet they still keep buying it! We even tagged on prices to some of these toys remember? And still, people buy them.
MD 2 : Ok sir, i'll make the necessary arrangements.
Chairman: Good. Now next on the agenda.. How to make the display photographs of our Mcdonald's menu even more misleading?
MD 1 : Increase the size of the pictures?
Chairman: We've already done that in 2007, we probably have to wait 2 more years or so for people to not notice the subtle change. any other ideas?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-the above scenario is entirely fictitious and is a product of the author's imagination-
Ok, time to finish up my Mcdonald's lunch. Anyone has Sentosa Cove? I'll split 20:80 with you!
If you haven't heard of their latest marketing gimmick, they offer 2-4 coupons per EVM that you purchase (4 for upsize). These coupons can be peeled open to reveal the potential prize that they may grant you.
There are some instant win prizes, but most are color coded to a Monopoly game board. To win, you need to collect all 3 of the same colour to form a set , as in Monopoly when you want to build houses/hotels.
The biggest catch is the dark blue set, which consists of coupons 'Sentosa Cove' and 'Marina Bay'. If you collect them both... YOU WIN $50 000!!!!!
OMG! like that's alot of money right? sounds too good to be true? well, it probably is. From what i know, there are many 'Marina Bay's (i have one myself), but only ONE 'Sentosa Cove' coupon in the whole of Singapore.
What's the odds of winning that?
And so throngs of people flock to McDonalds to pursue this elusive Sentosa Cove, in the hopes that they win the smooth $50k. Of course, there are other rather attractive prices, such as $3000 courts vouchers, etc. But i'm sure these are the same , with many of 2 of the colours, but the 3rd coupon that you need to make a complete set is extremely limited.
Has anyone ever wondered - What if there is no 'Sentosa Cove'?
It would be a terribly evil scheme wouldn't it? I can offer $192837123 as the prize money, but simply make it impossible to win the contest. In this way, I attract a countless number of people (completely random note - is 'countless number' a paradox? If something is countless, it cannot be defined in any numerical way can it? ) to buy my stuff as they're all greedy and want to win that $192837123 but actually there's no way of winning at all.
Seriously, McDonalds' marketing team is simply brilliant. At the moment there's another offer for those who order Mcdonalds via Mcdelivery: 'Win a Hello Kitty Sony Ericsson W395 mobile phone! Every $10 food purchase gives you 1 automated chance to win!"
I can imagine how that marketing board meeting went:
Chairman, McDonalds : Hmm, not enough people order via our Mcdelivery service! is there any way to boost the sales in that aspect?
Marketing Director 1 : We could remove our delivery charge? That's what some other fast food chains do?
Chairman: Are you insane? We are not 'some other fast food chain'. We are McDonalds! King of the fries! We do not have to conform to others. Anyway, if we remove delivery charge, what are we going to pay our already-underpaid deliverymen with? We provide them with cool Mcdonalds bikes and free meals already, but I don't think they'll work for us if we don't give them a basic salary at least.
-Marketing Director 1 slumps in shame-
Marketing Director 2 : How about we tag some attractive but useless prize for Mcdelivery?
MD 1 : Yea! We can call up some of our corporate allies and see if they have any redundant stock that they need to get rid of.
Chairman: Sounds good. Do it.
-several moments later-
MD 2 : Sir, I've contacted Sony and they told me they have a huge stock of redundant Sony Ericsson handphones they can't sell! Apparently, it is a Hello Kitty themed handphone, and it looks too ridiculous for people to actually want to buy it and so they have difficulty selling it!
Chairman: Excellent, take their whole stock, we'll use them as prizes for an automated lucky draw for our Mcdelivery service!
MD 1 : But Sir, who would actually want these stupid looking pink phones? Only girls? From our data survey last year, 80% of our customers* are male!
*totally made up statistic
Chairman: Sigh. It doesnt matter, Singaporeans are so kiasu, if they see anything free, they'll want it. This has been perennially proven by the sales of our 'Happy Meal'. The kids use the toys for maybe a few weeks and throw it away! Yet they still keep buying it! We even tagged on prices to some of these toys remember? And still, people buy them.
MD 2 : Ok sir, i'll make the necessary arrangements.
Chairman: Good. Now next on the agenda.. How to make the display photographs of our Mcdonald's menu even more misleading?
MD 1 : Increase the size of the pictures?
Chairman: We've already done that in 2007, we probably have to wait 2 more years or so for people to not notice the subtle change. any other ideas?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-the above scenario is entirely fictitious and is a product of the author's imagination-
Ok, time to finish up my Mcdonald's lunch. Anyone has Sentosa Cove? I'll split 20:80 with you!
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