People have probably been giving things away to win favor, attract new business, or show appreciation for loyalty since the days of cavemen. Offer something small and interesting to many or something meaningful to a few, and it can have more or less the same effect. The key is to understand what people want. You can’t just give anything away. Or at least you shouldn’t.
10. McDonald's gave away razors for breakfast
McDonald's has been running promotions and giveaways for decades, including everything from the famous Monopoly game to an endless supply of Happy Meal toys. But the ones they have today have been refined over the years and are based on learning from ideas like when they gave away razors.
In the '70s and '80s, McDonald's thought customers would be happy with pancakes, sausage, and a Gillette disposable razor for breakfast. You can almost see where they're going: you eat breakfast in the morning, and you need to shave in the morning. But then again, it's not exactly something that's going to strike a chord with women, the idea of shaving stubble above your balls is a bit gross, and giving people a small, incredibly sharp tool just because they bought a McMuffin seems weird. too.
There's no evidence that anyone abused the McDonald's razor, but they did give it to kids if they were accompanied by an adult for some reason. And since then, razor in balls has allegedly happened more than once at McDonald's.
9. Oprah gave away cars that cost a huge amount of tax
One of the most famous failures in history shows why an idea looks good on paper far more often than it does in real life. Oprah Winfrey once gave all her viewers the most expensive free car in history.
This is a uniquely American problem, and it probably wouldn't happen, or at least wouldn't be as severe, in any other country. The U.S. government loves to tax people for just about everything, including luck. An American who wins the lottery can be taxed in literally three different ways, including nearly $25% levied right off the top, and then state and federal taxes. Win the lottery in Canada, for example, and you're just getting paid.
When Oprah gave everyone a car, those people were taxed on the value of the car. So that free car was worth up to $7,000 a pop to everyone if they wanted to keep it. Imagine just showing up to a free talk show taping, getting a car, and then getting a $7,000 bill.
The not-quite-free car was given to 276 people. The total cost was almost $30,000, so no one is saying it was a bad deal: $7,000 for a brand-new car is great. But the audience was specifically chosen from people who needed the car. That meant they couldn’t afford it. That means they didn’t have $7,000 to spare. It’s unclear how many viewers kept the car, but they were advised to sell it to cover the taxes and make a profit, or give up the car altogether to avoid tax issues.
8. A Missouri car dealership gave out vouchers for an AK-47 when you purchased a truck.
Speaking of cars, what's a good way to get people to come to the lot and spend their hard-earned money? Good prices are one way, but let's be honest, the prices on most new cars have little wiggle room, and a dealer on one side of town will charge about the same as a dealer on the other. So some come up with promotions to entice you. Like a free gun!
In Kansas City, Missouri, Max Motors ran a summer sales promotion for its pickup trucks back in 2009. Anyone who came in to buy one got a voucher for an AK-47. You know, the incredibly famous Soviet-era assault rifle? This is the one.
Make no mistake, the dealership owner knew exactly what he was doing. He said the promotion was a big success and also angered liberals, which was apparently the goal. On the other hand, they were only handing out vouchers, so no one was leaving shooting up the sky. They were so responsible that any potential owner had to go to a gun store, fill out paperwork, and legally obtain a gun.
7. Cap'n Crunch once gave away a whistle that could hack phone lines.
The implications of the Cap'n Crunch whistle are something that no one in the world could have predicted, because it's really quite weird. The promotion started in the 1960s and was incredibly innocuous. Cap'n Crunch has a vaguely nautical theme with the Captain, so as a prize they included a boatswain's whistle in the boxes. It was a toy replica of a whistle that a boatswain might use, and, you know, it was just a whistle.
In that movie-like moment of inspiration, a former Air Force electronics technician named John Draper received one of the whistles and became a pioneer of early hacking.
In the early days, different tones could unlock functions over telephone lines. The whistle sounded at the perfect 2600 Hz, which when played into a pay phone gave free long-distance access. Draper later invented devices called "blue boxes" that played multiple tones to create a variety of effects, and they became some of the first products created by Apple after Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs met Draper while Wozniak was still in college.
6. Throwing live turkeys into the crowd was once a Thanksgiving promotion.
If you're not a fan of classic television, you've probably never seen a sitcom.WKRP in Cincinnati The show focused on the crew of an AM radio station, and one of its most famous episodes featured an extended Thanksgiving turkey joke. The event in the show only exists as reported by an employee, and it involves a helicopter dropping turkeys into a parking lot, which becomes a scene of utter horror and chaos.
It turns out the turkey was inspired by a real promotion from the 1950s, in which a radio executive handed out a live turkey from the back of a pickup truck in a parking lot. Apparently, a crowd of people gathered and fought over the turkeys in such a chaotic manner that the event never happened again.
Show creator Hugh Wilson said that when he heard the story from a manager, it was a real helicopter and the event was taking place in Texas. Regardless of the vehicle, someone who thought turkeys could fly was throwing them into a crowd, and the results were horrific.
5. Coca-Cola's MagiCan promotion included giving away money and foul-smelling water.
One day, Coca-Cola had an idea. What if they could hide a prize right inside a can of Coke? You opened it and got money? To do this, they had to make it look convincing. The can had to look like a regular can, which meant it had to contain liquid. But it also had to be something no one would drink.
Coca-Cola filled their cans with chlorinated, rancid-smelling water to prevent anyone from accidentally drinking it, except for the kid who did. The MagiCan promotion quickly fizzled out. Some cans failed, so winners received prizes soaked in rotten egg water. Others failed to show up, so the prize was never claimed. And people who didn't know about the promotion, since Coca-Cola literally never mentioned it on the can, drank what they thought was the worst-tasting Coke of their lives.
4. Healthy Choice Pudding Has Brought One Man Over 1 Million Air Miles
Offering something of real value to customers who send labels or UPCs is always a potential danger because while most people may buy one or two products, there will always be someone trying to squeeze thousands out of you.
David Phillips earned over a million air miles on Healthy Choice pudding by playing their promotion. For every 10 barcodes a customer sent to Healthy Choice, he earned 500 air miles. But if you did it in the first month, that number doubled to 1,000.
Healthy Choice is mostly known for its frozen meals, which probably cost around $5. But Phillips discovered that Healthy Choice pudding was sold at a discount store for 25 cents a cup. He ended up visiting every store he could find and spending $3,000 on the pudding. But it earned him $150,000 in Air Miles.
Phillips asked the Salvation Army to volunteer to scan bar codes in exchange for a ton of free pudding. It also earned him an $815 tax write-off as a charitable donation. Healthy Choice then sent him 1,280,000 airline miles.
3. Acclaim Offers to Pay Speeding Fines for Burnout 2 Customers
How to Promote a Driving Video Game Very fast cars? If you're Acclaim, you encourage people to drive Very fast on their real cars. To celebrate the release of their game Burnout 2 In the UK, Acclaim offered to pay the fines of anyone caught speeding on the game's release day. As you can imagine, the government wasn't amused.
The promotion was called irresponsible and dangerous, with Acclaim saying they were simply encouraging people to get home faster and drive less dangerously by playing the game in a safe environment.
2. Cleveland gave away 10-cent beer and started a riot
Baseball and promotions go hand in hand, and there have been many a night where patrons have gotten free hats, shirts, hot dogs, balls, whatever. In 1974, Cleveland offered fans something a little different – 10-cent beer. What could go wrong?
Beer usually cost 65 cents, and although you could only buy six at a time, there was no limit to how many times you could return. Soon the crowd was filled with very drunk people. Like, super drunk. The game was interrupted several times by half-naked fans before it ended, and things got worse from there.
Metal chairs were thrown. People threw fireworks at the dugout, threw hot dogs at the Texas players, or spat at them. As the game drew to a close, things got worse. Someone tried to steal a Texas outfielder's hat, and thinking he was being attacked, the manager and other team members, armed with bats, rushed to his aid. Fans rushed the field, and Texas was ready with bats in hand. A melee broke out, with thousands of drunken Cleveland fans rioting and fighting. The police had to be called in because the stadium's 50-man security detail could do nothing. Tear gas was eventually used, and the game was lost.
1. Hoover destroyed his own company with free flights
It’s hard to imagine a worse advertising campaign failure than Hoover’s free-flight idea in the 1990s. With sales in the UK sagging, a travel agency approached the nearly century-old vacuum company with an idea. Customers who spent £100 on Hoover would get two return tickets to anywhere in Europe.
To make the deal profitable, Hoover introduced a series of bureaucratic hurdles to discourage people from accepting their offer. Customers had to send in a receipt within 14 days. They then received a form to register and sent it back within another 14 days. They then received a form to select potential departure dates, locations, and destinations. And Then Hoover would be able to reject these proposals and offer others. In the end, the client had to agree or get nothing.
But the promotion worked and sales soared. Then, for no good reason, they decided to add flights to America. Flights to the US would have cost Hoover £600, so a £100 purchase would not cover anything. Risk managers told them it was a terrible idea and not to do it. They did it anyway.
Hoover thought that few people would take him up on the offer, but many would buy more Hoover than the £100, but neither turned out to be true. There was a frenzy of demand for cheap Hoover products, and the company had to put production into overtime to keep up. But then people started demanding free flights.
They were facing potential losses of £100 million, so the company went out of its way to fail to deliver on its promise. It rejected applications, offered flights from airports hundreds of miles away and tried to get people to miss deadlines. News broke that not a single free flight had been provided, and the reaction was brutal.
One customer was locked in a Hoover truck and held captive for 13 days. Hoover started a fight, fired the President of Great Britain, blamed everyone and his uncle, and put some of his debt into a "free flight fund." It was too little, too late.
The parent company paid $72 million, and the European division was so broke that it was sold to a competitor.
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