It’s amazing to me how easily people can circumvent the rules and how blindly obvious companies make it for us to do it.
Take for example the Pepsi-iTunes giveaway. The two companies got together for a promotion that allows Pepsi buyers to pick up a free music download (100 million being given away) on Apple’s popular music download site. It ain’t quite a giveaway if you buy a soda, but some enterprising folks have found a way to make it a freebie. (Pepsi estimates that it will only pay for about a third of the downloads because there won’t be a hundred million iTunes users buying Pepsi).
If you tilt the Pepsi bottle at a certain angle, you can see if you’re a winner and if you are a winner, you sometimes can actually read the 10-digit, random letter code and download your tune – without buying a soda. One post I read said that people may look at you oddly for holding a bottle tilted above your head but suggested just telling people you’re checking for bugs.
I drink Diet Pepsi, so I bought one today. I looked and I could see the code, but had trouble reading it without opening the bottle. The trouble had to do with either the flourescent lighting or a dirty bottle. I had to make a snap decision – about drinking out of a dirty bottle.
I don’t do iTunes. Which means Pepsi’s probably right. Sixty-seven million caps down the drain.
So I’m proposing a new promotion: Pepsi should link up with the major lottery games (Mega Millions, Powerball) for a free ticket. Both give you a dollar back (99 cents per song vs. one buck for the ticket).
I’d buy that.