Speaking of iPods…
Posted: February 22nd, 2006, by Simon ProffittI wasn’t going to post this here because I thought it might seem too much like spam, but things have recently taken an interesting turn, so I’m doing this for your benefit. Yes, you.
A friend of mine from the icy wastes of Canadia is running a non-profit organisation, and their latest project is to get a bunch of young immigrants (‘new Canadians’) to make their own health awareness videos (because the people that normally make health awareness videos don’t really care or know anything about young immigrants), and they’re actually not that bad considering the kids that made them had never done any film stuff before. In order to get as many people as possible to watch the videos, they’ve done a quiz about them. Easy stuff, like ‘what colour is the girl’s jumper in video number 4’. The prize in the quiz is one of 4 new iPods (2 video iPods, 2 Nanos). Then there’s a ‘tell-a-friend’ contest where you get entered into another prize draw to win a Panasonic digital video camera just by getting other people to enter the quiz too. The more people you tell, the more entries you get.
Now – this is the interesting bit – the quiz has so far backfired quite spectacularly, because people are obviously so used to seeing epilepsy-inducing spyware-packed banner ads for FREE iPODS NOW L@@K!!!!11 that they’re just not entering. And they’re even less interested in winning a video camera. Kids these days are just so spoiled. So far, after 3 weeks of the quiz being open, and I don’t think it’s too unethical of me here to pass along cold hard figures, only 70 people have successfully entered the quiz. The best (or worst) bit though is that so far only 2 people have entered the digital video camera contest. You don’t have to be a mathematical genius to work out from that information that if you enter, you have a pretty good chance of winning. You don’t even need to get the answers to the quiz right to enter the referral thingy. How hard can it be?
Here’s the quiz page
Here are the videos (one of which, iQuit, is actually quite good)
I’ll even tell you the bloody answers if you want.
Simon Proffitt
Simon was born near Clowne, Derbyshire and is now an honorary Welshman. In former guises he has created fake diamonds, developed ultra-high-capacity storage devices and been one half of slow-moving, über-pretentious record label Fourier Transform. He now spends his evenings recording silence and banging kitchen utensils.
http://www.simonproffittalloneworddotcom.co.uk