This post has little insight into the latest marketing and advertising trends but is rather my feelings on the summer soda promotions being put on by both Coke and Pepsi…
Begin rant
I actively play the ridiculous coke bottle cap game www.mycokerewards.com. (I started playing and now multiple co-workers provide caps almost daily) It has been setup so that when you drink coke, in just about any container, it will come with a game code located in the cap to enter into the website to enter to win contests, or trade in actual points for prizes. This is a tried and true method of getting people to interact with, use, shop for, and influence for your product. The possibilities are endless for the success of such a promotion - and I have participated in my fair share of them. I am sad to report that MyCokeRewards.com is an awful experience.
Aside from being a flash site (this is tolerable as you will see below) the rules and regulations for playing the “game” are extremely annoying. The site does not operate fast and the interface is awful to deal with. The site only lets you enter up to 10 codes per day - this means that if you want to play by their rules you have to wait until the following day. In addition, the following day actually means 24 hours after the 10th code was entered - so you cannot even play the following morning.
Another major problem is that your points expire. I actually received an email stating that my Coke Reward points were going to expire due to non-use. What?!? Great way to lose out on someone that is actually participating in your game Coca-Cola! This did not deter my participation as the caps kept coming from others…
Compare this to the experience found at www.Transformyoursummer.com. Sponsored by Pepsi this promotion works in the same way but the code entering and sweepstakes system is much more streamlined. I know that Pepsi has been doing this promotion co-branded with Yahoo for a few years and this might be why it works so well. For full disclosures sake I should admit that I won via the XBOX 360 giveaway a few years back and received an XBOX 360 2 weeks before it went on retail sale…but I digress.
My point is that shouldn’t these services have this whole thing down pat? I mean we are in 2007 and the multi-billion dollar soda companies are still leaving much to be desired with promotions that I know are persuading people to buy more of their respective products.
/End Rant
Technorati Tags: Coke, pepsi, transformyoursummer, transformers, Coca-Cola, MyCokeRewards, Soda, promotions
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