People like to collect stuff, let them do that – 2

People are addictive collectors. Sometime the promotions that make people collect stuff work as planned. Sometime however they result in mass hysteria that makes some happy, makes some laugh, makes quite a few sick and many just shake heads in disbelief.

It was back in 1998 when McDonald’s in Hong Kong came up with a brilliant idea. They took the popular Snoopy character and dressed the poor little dog in costumes representing 30 different countries. The promotional campaign that was to last for 30 consecutive days could begin. Every day for 30 days in a row people could get with each Happy Meal or set meal and extra 50 cents (in US money) one Snoopy. Different Snoopy every day for 30 days. The goal of this promotion was obvious – to make people come back to McDonald’s.

That was the plan. Reality was very different. People went totally mad and collecting frenzy followed. People queued every day for hours to make sure they not miss out on any Snoopy. Failure to get Snoopy was worse than loosing money on a stock market (this was 1998, days of the Asian financial crisis). For few days people would actually also eat the McDonald’s meals. But those who have seen the Supersize Me movie would know, that eating McDonald’s food for 30 days non stop is a very difficult task. It only took few days before meals started to get thrown away. Get to the line, wait for 2-3 hours, get the Snoopy, throw away the meal and back to office or back to school or back to the line for another Snoopy.

Those days the meals were around USD2.00 – 2.50, to get Snoopy people had to part with extra 50 cents. Even with the cost of the throw away meal added to the price of the Snoopy, people still found it to be good deal. No surprise when people who missed out on Snoopies from McDonald’s were willing to pay even 50 US dollars for them …

If increased sales were the goal of this promotion than it was definitely success. It however also resulted in lots of food wasted and thrown into garbage bins. It also did promote not exactly the healthiest eating habits while targeting the young. I would not be surprised if many who diligently went to McDonald’s every day for a month would not set their feet to the place again for a long time. At the same time many McDonald’s regulars had to change their diet for a month or line up with the Snoopy mad crowd.

There however were at least two winners – the company producing all the Snoopies and the homeless camping around the McDonald’s outlets getting free food from those who had no intention eating the meals.

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