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?

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-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!