Tag Archives: sales promotion

The gift of divorce

Posted on by
Reply

To support the opinion that you can get vouchers for anything…it appears you can now get a divorce voucher. Lloyd Platt & Company, a London law firm, are offering gift vouchers so that you can ‘gift divorce’ to a friend.

The firm’s founder, Vanessa Lloyd Platt, said she had been amazed at the response (just over 60 sales so far) to the vouchers. “They seem to appeal to an enormously widespread spectrum of people looking for that ‘must have’ gift for Christmas,” she said.

In essence of course this is little more than a sales promotion. One half hour at £125 will hardly address the needs of most prospective divorcees. A good effort by Lloyd Platt & Company as they do have people talking about them.

Read more about this on MSNBC.msn.com.

Incoming search terms:

  • kevin harrington divorce
  • gift voucher sent by boden
  • kevin harrington divorced

Buy your Levi jeans on credit

Posted on by
1

Levi Strauss & Co has decided to offer credit to people wanting to buy a pair of its famous blue jeans in India.

“Levi’s is an extremely aspirational life-style brand in India. A large portion of our consumers would love to access Levi’s more frequently than they currently do,” said Shumone Chatterjee, managing director of Levi Strauss India.

This sounds a bit shocking to me:

  • Is this the right thing for a fashion brand to do?
  • Given the problems debt has given the world in the last year, why would Levi want to land in the middle of this?
  • Surely it would make more sense for consumer retail brands to deliver the credit offer? I’m assuming here that the offer is being made direct from Levi outlets.

Read the full news article  on FT.com.

How to increase your profits

Posted on by
Reply

Ignore sales promotions, put your prices up and most customers probably don’t care…assuming they notice.

The “big four” of supermarkets, Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsbury’s, have increased the number of £1 promotional price tags 150% over the past year. This compared with a 6% increase in their general promotions, according to a report compiled on behalf of industry magazine the Grocer.

Source: BBC Magazine

The above article is an extract from an article about the rounding up of prices from 99p to £1. Do the maths: what might that equate to in increased annual profits? Simple and effective; this is a great example of pricing being used correctly in the marketing mix.

God, guns, guts and American pick-up trucks

Posted on by
Reply

A sign of the times, and more than a little scary: Max Muller, an American motor dealer is giving away (voucher redemption) a Kalashnikov AK-47 to incentivise people to buy vehicle from his business Max Motors near Kansas City. Read the full story at Brand Republic.

Incoming search terms:

  • god guns got an american pick up trucks

Clarity in laser eye surgery promotions

Posted on by
4

If you saw a prize draw competition for laser eye care you may consider entering it. If it’s with Optical Express let me tell you what happens: they don’t enter you into the draw unless you are suitable as determined at a free consultation at an Optical Express laser eye surgery clinic. So actually this is a sales promotion not a prize draw I guess.

I entered my details on their site and got a phone call inside five minutes to book my appointment. I explained that an appointment was not needed if I had not won the prize draw. The Optical Express caller disagreed. So I ended the call there and then.

Personally I felt conned.

So you can make your own mind up, here is the competition. And here are the terms:

Terms & Conditions

This offer is open to UK and Republic of Ireland residents who visit our websites at http://uk.opticalexpress.com or http://ie.opticalexpress.com and complete a laser eye surgery enquiry form by entering their contact information and ticking the checkbox labelled “Win free treatment!”.

  1. The Optical Express prize draw takes place on the last day of each calendar month.
  2. One winner each month is entitled to free laser eye surgery.
  3. Treatment is subject to patient suitability as determined at a free consultation at an Optical Express laser eye surgery clinic.
  4. This prize is not transferable under any circumstances, even if the prize winner is deemed unsuitable for laser eye surgery following their consultation.
  5. The surgeon’s decision whether to proceed with treatment is final.
  6. There is no cash alternative available.
  7. Open only to UK and Republic of Ireland residents.
  8. One entry per person.
  9. Entrants must be over 18 years of age.
  10. Winners will be contacted each month by Optical Express after the competition has been drawn.
  11. Acceptance of the prize constitutes consent to use the winner’s name, written testimonial and photography for editorial and publicity purposes.
Clarity in laser eye surgery promotions

Incoming search terms:

  • kevin harrington optical express
  • kevin Harrington optician
  • optical express kevin harrington

Give us a break Kit Kat

Posted on by
1

I just sat down for a coffee and a Kit Kat and noticed the promotion “Win your own Perfect Break”. So I thought I’d enter it.

The mechanic was simple: find the code inside the wrapper and enter it on a website to see if you’ve won. Executing the mechanic is not quite as simple:

1. You can barely read the code inside the wrapper.
2. You have to register with your email address before you can see if you have a winning code. This requires a compulsory age field as well.
3. During a single session a captcha code entry was required twice.

The good news: I was a winner. My prize: another four bar Kit Kat.

The bad news:

4. I then had to download and install special software on my PC to get a voucher.
5. There were multiple requests to accept secure and insecure content via the browser.
6. ActivX had to be installed.
7. Then I had to print the voucher out.
8. And then I discovered the voucher is only valid from today, 6 February, to 13 February 2009. Outrageous!

If the Kit Kat team would like to drop me a line I will explain to them how they could make their promotions completely inaccessible rather than just a pain in the derriere.