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FREE MONEY! ENTER NOW!
Apples for Students Children and their families, friends, neighbors, and pets are encouraged to spend as much money as possible at a given locally sponsored store and give the receipts to their schools, who earn credit toward Apple computer equipment. A Wisconsin elementary school that proudly trumpeted raising $500,000 worth of receipts was rewarded with two computers worth "more than $3,000." In other words, for every dollar's worth of receipts collected, the school received a credit of about seven tenths of one cent toward the purchase of a computer. Politicians support this program whole hog.
Laura F. Cavasos, secretary of education during the Bush administration: "The Apples for the Students program is a creative, free-enterprise solution for acquiring very valuable learning tools at no cost to schools and parents." Sybil Downing, Colorado Board of Education: "The project is particularly appropriate as schools and businesses reach out to each other as partners for the improvement of public education." Werner Roger, Georgia superintendent of schools: "This activity is an excellent partnership between our schools and the business community." (Giving Kids the Business, Alex Molnar, 1996) Labels for Education For 5,125 Campbell's soup labels, schools get the filmstrip Boyhood of Abraham Lincoln; for 20,000 more, a remote-control projector with which to show it; and for another 6,750, a screen to show it on.
Other collect-and-win promotionsOrville Redenbacher sends schools money in exchange for labels; in a customer recruitment program, Wal-Mart will provide IBM lessons; Piggly Wiggly offers to donate 1 percent of all eligible cash register receipts that students collect; Hershey pays five cents per candy wrapper. Book-It! A variation on the do-gooder incentive program, Pizza Hut's decade-old Book-It! rewards students for reading. In so doing, it has become a popular program in elementary schools, with 22 million children enrolled annually. How it works: children who reach monthly reading goals set by their teacher are awarded "pizza award certificates." When they visit the local Pizza Hut to turn in their awards, students are congratulated by the manager, given "outer space buttons" and stars to put on them, and personal pan pizzas. On subsequent monthly visits to Pizza Hut, they get more pizza and more buttons. And if they make the grade five months in a row, they qualify for the "Readers Honor Roll" (a certificate signed by their teacher and principal) and an earth sticker to wear on their Book-It! button. The students then become walking billboards for Pizza Hut and, likely, future Pizza Hut customers. Even if the kids don't grow up to be Pizza Hut customers, they're very likely to influence their families' restaurant choices. In Giving Kids the Business, Alex Molnar illustrates a related point: parents who want nothing to do with Pizza Hut are forced to either go along with the program or alienate their young one. As an example, Molnar cites the experience of one mother who tried to substitute a book for the normal reward of a Pizza Hut pizza. Even though her kid didn't really like pizza, she refused her mom's plan 'cause she wanted to fit in with the other kids. Rather than valuing reading itself, Book-It! teaches kids that they haven't succeeded until they get their pizza. MOM Comes with a "teacher training video" featuring former Baltimore Colts receiver Raymond Berry extolling the virtues of hard work and dedication; also includes a pep talk from company pres. Tom Crook (good name) explaining that the MOM program helps schools get what they really need: computers. All they have to do is get students to write six relatives and ask them to subscribe to magazines. To help teach letter-writing skills, a sample letter is enclosed. Imagine some poor 80-year old grandma holed up in a nursing home, tied to an iron lung, receiving this tear-jerker:
My school needs more computers for our classrooms. You can help us by ordering some new magazines or extending your current subscriptions at this time. You'll save money with the school prices and your magazine orders provide more "hands on" computer training for me. Order by the prize deadline and I can earn a school crew shirt. Please help if you can. From: _______ (Amy) P.S. I love you. Perhaps the most obvious type of promo contest encourages the student to show their "creativity" by using the sponsor's product. For example, Lego asks kids to build an "original futuristic space model" with Lego bricks; Pillsbury sponsors a bake-off, encouraging kids to send in their favorite recipe (so long as it uses some Pillsbury or Green Giant product); Oscar Meyer has a talent search--kids can win a trip to Sea World by singing "their favorite rendition of the classic Oscar Meyer Wiener Jingle or Balogna Song"--and Odor-Eaters has a Rotten Sneaker contest. Contest sponsors win on a number of counts: in promoting the contest, they get their name across to students and teachers while associating it with an educational, positive cause. Results of the contest provide further promotional opportunity (announcements, etc.). Runners-up, and often all contestants, are given some sort of consolation prize, a T-shirt, sticker or other nominal gift that advertises the sponsor--a gift they'd probably have trouble giving away were it not a "prize." Contests also provide companies with a wealth of personal data: a list of names, ages, addresses, and interests customized for their use. Thus, they avoid using expensive list brokers--companies such as Metromail that sell lists like "New Babies" ("compiled from 3,200 innovative sources," according to Metromail literature)--while retaining rights to the data themselves. In fact, many contests are created for the very purpose of gathering
personal information. There is a movement underway, called Kid's Off Lists,
that seeks to remove kids from marketing databases. However, the effort
is not directed against companies that use the lists but against all the
supposed child molesters/killers that rely on them. In fact, Klaaskids,
the foundation behind Kid's Off Lists, accepts cosponsorships from corporations--Wal-mart,
Toys 'R' Us, and Safeway--that use this sort of personalized database
info themselves!
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