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!

america's got talent?

ok i know i'm a little slow to talk about America's got Talent since it ended quite some weeks ago.. but hey it's not like i get alot of free time outside to watch shows.. so. yea.

anyway, dunno how many of you actually follow America's got Talent.. I think Singapore is actually slow a few weeks? i'm not sure. has the finale shown yet? if it has, then read on, if it hasn't and you don't wanna be spoilt, stop reading.





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Ok the winner of the contest was this fella called Kevin Skinner. I didn't follow the show so i had no idea who he was, so i just youtubed his Finals performance video:

Kevin Skinner cover of Don't want to miss a thing



what the hell?? He isn't good at all?
Aerosmith sang this song with great soul and emotion - this song was probably used by countless 'emo' videos , like those used at high school graduations or whatever.
and i think it basically ruined the song with his weak voice and pitchy singing. He didn't even stay in tune for half the song?!?

(in case you want to hear the original song, here it is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo_0UXRY_rY )

I can see how he got famous (kevin skinner) from his audition video, which is really not bad, where he sang 'Tomorrow never comes'. But i think the nicest part is his guitar playing? lol. and he had a little sense of humor and likeability cos of his humble comings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X29t9gfU5p4
i can't find a decent video of it on youtube it's all bad quality. this is the best sound quality one. The guitar playing is really nice! i wanna learn =X lol.


But his finals performance was really bad?

I mean, you wanna see a zhai finals performance, check out britain's got talent's finals performance of the winner. It's a dance group so it's a little different.. but it's quite breathtaking!
here:
Diversity


BANG! their ending is just superb isn't it!
If you liked it, you should check out their other performances, each one of them is highly entertaining and damn good
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5pg3fvanDDc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPcGy77Gru8 (<-- their audition, SUPER NICE)


Their rival, Flawless, are also extremely talented, but i just find their performances not as entertaining. and their finals performance wasn't very entertaining. But they're definitely good.

sigh ok i'm so free to post all this nonsense cos wow is having maintenance. think i'll sleep early today and wake up early tomorrow to play =) nite!

numbers

how weird.

just today, 2 guys gave me their number without me even asking or anything.

The 2nd one was some guy in WoW who wanted to go offline for awhile but wanted me to SMS him when something was about to start.

The 1st one was more interesting..

i went to Simlim today to get a new graphics card.. got the Gigabyte 4890 radeon. cost me 350 bucks!!! damn ex can. when i was pressing the buttons on the ATM i just close my eyes and press. too heart pain already.

anyway, the point is, i took a cab home from Simlim, and within 1 minute the cab was asking me if i was schooling, etc.. then he asked me to teach him basic computer! he said he was trying to learn some basic stuff and wanted me to teach him.
cos i lived very near him, and.. i guess he saw me with my CPU so he assumed i knew about computer. and he was like quite insistent about having lessons and said he can pay me, blabla.
Then when i alighted, he passed me his number to contact him if i was interested after ORD.

so weird can! my mind immediately went to those pervertic men who get young boys to perform oral sex or something for them that's always reported in the papers. then he still kept saying 'exchange numbers' but i managed to convince him to just leave me his number and if i was interested, i'll call him.

weirdness.

anyway,26 more days ^^