"This is where you can get stuff just for drinking Coke!"
This has been around for a while but I think it needed a bit more investigation and clarification for all those who don't know what it's really about--cause I wasn't too sure myself.
So I get a coke, I drink the coke, and then look under the cap to find a pin number. Unlike the old ways of getting stuff for free when you simply had to present the winning cap to the store, in this case you have to log onto a website (iCoke.ca). At first it seems alright, I mean, we are in the age of technology, the internet and all that virtual garbage. Once I get to this website, I find out that it has nothing to do with winning stuff but instead about collecting coke "coins". You have to sign up before you even find out how many coins you've received. For experimental purposes, I signed up with a fake e-mail and fake name (asdfasdf).
"Sign up now. It's easy and totally worth it. Remember to say you wanna be a VIP! Only VIPs get e-mails telling them about contests, FREE stuff and new content before anyone else! Be in the know."
In other words, Coke's talk of VIP and FREE is just a way to trick you into allowing them to bombard your e-mail account with advertisements and spam (possibly even by mail and telephone).
After signing up, I was given 500 coins. It would cost me 7500 coins (15 cokes) for a cellphone skin sticker. In other words, you're spending all this time registering, getting spammed by coke, and drinking coke just to get a sticker that is useless and wasteful. After doing the math, I'd be better off drinking something cheap and buying the actual items myself. It's all too ridiculous. For those who do sign up to these things, I hope you realize you're losing your soul. I just don't know what else to say. Last point--something that took seconds in the day of looking under the cap for a winner now takes weeks and months of drinking and collecting coins. If progress is about making things more effecient and easier for us, Coke is laughing in our faces (well at least those who are signing up in belief of this garbage).
iCoke.ca
2 comments:
I feel your rage.
Although I don't share it.
I am not a major Coke drinker, I prefer water myself but for those whom I know whose families drink Coke products on a regular basis this is a great "give back" to the consumer. They have gone to concerts and won all sorts of things.
You can't expect to get things for free for buying one bottle of Coke. Sad to say but that is simply not the consumeristic (if thats not a word it is now) world we live in.
It would not be cost-effective for Coke to be giving away things because you buy one product.
It's a smart business with interactive consumer-brand involvement.
Hardly 'losing your soul.'
I think an issue i personally have is how decieving the whole Coke give-away scenario can be. Like Arnaud said, back in the day when you found a pin number under your cap you could easily retrieve your "prize." Now, however, it's mostly a scheme to get you onto their website, to inturn get you to sign up and send you advertisements to promote their product (as if they need more promotion.) It has nothing to do with give-aways. Not to say that Coke doesn't do give-aways at all, because I'm no expert on Coke, but so many of us get caught up in free stuff and end up getting brainwashed -if you will- by big corporations. It's kind of sad, you have to admit.
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