Thursday 8 April 2010

Of course the prize is free

When some promotion turns up saying "Win a free Wii" or something similar, I wonder why the word "free" was included. Did someone in the marketing department say "Well, I like the 'Win a Wii' promotion idea, but do you think people will know they don't have to pay for it once they win? They might get confused."? Besides wanting to show up in search results for "free Wii", I can't think of any other motivation.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I forget now where I saw this competition.
PPS - Obviously the brand didn't make an impression.

4 comments:

Erin Marie said...

It's way better than 'win the opportunity to win a Wii for less than the regular retail price!'

John said...

The "win a free Wii" version is definitely punchier than that, I agree.

Anasarka said...

The whole thing is gaff anyway. I get so tires of seeing all of these banners, but I must admit, I love the success that I have at "smashing the fly" or "shooting the target" or every other guaranteed success they give me for 1 second. It's those times that I truly feel like an internet winner. Speaking of, I just received an email and apparently a complete stranger who found my email address is critically ill and wants to gift me a huge sum of money to do good works with. I must be the luckiest person on earth. I will write back to them and encourage them to provide the opportunity to "win a free wii" to those needy folks all over the planet and maybe this could be the start of a revolution of giving.

John said...

I guess forwarding internet competitions in response to 419 scams is a lot like returning pizza coupons in pre-approved credit card reply-paid envelopes.