Sunday, April 20, 2008

Win* a Free** iPod***!

*This is not actually a contest
**If you want an iPod® from me you will actually have to pay me money for it.
***I can't even promise it will be an iPod®.

Ah the contests that give away free iPods, tragedies of Internet advertising. These obviously too good to be true advertisements that are found everywhere from MySpace to almost every other website on the Internet are annoying. Let's face it, most of us have been, for some time, to the point (hopefully) where we just ignore these ads.

I got a little brochure in the mail from my Health Insurance company with a picture of a mother and daughter either doing yoga or meditating and next to it "Get in tune with your health and you could win an iPod®"

My first response to this is to just toss it away, but its legitimate, right? I mean its from my Health Insurance provider. But they're probably only giving away one iPod® for the thousands of customers they have. Or maybe I have to sign up about 30 of my friends with this insurance to qualify to get it. Nah, forget it, I'll just ignore it.

My point is that if you are going to give away a prize follow these two rules. (Not just one or the other).
  1. Have as your prize something that is popular and/or that people want.
  2. Don't have as your prize something that is already widely misused as a prize because people will likely either ignore it or not believe it.

No comments: