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Crack the Pepsi iTunes Promo Code
An anonymous reader writes "Someone posted a technique to find a winner in the iTunes Pepsi promo giveaway." Next step: a Pepsi/iTMS winning number generator!
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This is a crack? I mean, if you count the cap'n crunch as a crack, sure. But I don't consider tilting a bottle of soda a crack. It seems more like social engineering.
A bottle usually costs between $0.99 and $1.49, depending on where you buy it, so even if I'm a "winner" every time, I'm pretty much breaking even compared to just giving iTMS my credit card number and downloading whatever I like.
Hey, Steve... Is this what it has come to? You sell sugar water to children for a living now?
(I keed, I keed!)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
AFAIK Pepsi buys the tunes from Apple for the standard $0.99... so it's Pepsi's problem, not Apples.
Most likely, no.
The majority of Pepsi drinkers probably don't care about the promotion.
Those who do will win. Those who don't care won't win and won't care that they didn't win.
The tunes go to the people who want them, and more or less everyone is happy.
I'd say this would hold true if anywhere under 10% of Pepsi drinkers wanted the iTunes songs. Once you get past that, you wind up having massive inventories of losing bottles nobody wants and things turn ugly fast.
But if that's the case, it's Pepsi that loses, not Apple. Apple has no liability for Pepsi's inventory problems or lack of same.
D
Eventually...yes...but maybe not before the contest ends.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
It's not truly a crack in my view, since one still has to buy the bottle to obtain the complete, usable code; I bet Pepsi really doesn't care since they're still moving product.
Ron
If you're a regular Pepsi drinker, you're buying your normal beverage of choice at your normal price and getting a song to boot.
If you're a regular iTunes Music Store user, you're spending 21 on a Pepsi.
If you're an iTMS user and a Pepsi drinker, this whole thing is saving you 99 off your regular Pepsi/iTMS purchases.
If you're a cola drinker but not a Pepsi drinker, buying a Coke is really costing you $1.20 + 99 (99 for lost opportunity cost).
You really can't lose!
Never underestimate the stupidity of people in small numbers.
AFAIK Pepsi buys the tunes from Apple for the standard $0.99... so it's Pepsi's problem, not Apples.
I have no idea how the profits break down... But I seriously doubt that Pepsi is paying full price per song. I also have the feeling the record labels are getting paid all or near their usual fees. So I guess it boils down to who you want to screw over-- Pepsi and Apple by scamming the contest, or the RIAA by going back to Kazaa.
But the real question is, don't most of us have enough music yet? How many times have you listened to 99% of those 20, 40, even 100gb+ songs on your hard drive?
This promotion is probably the best I've seen in a while. Three benefits:
1. To Pepsi - increased sales
2. To Apple - more people use and know about iTunes
3. To RIAA - people consider free music downloads a prize rather than taken for granted
Also, because it is so unique it recieves much more publicity than other promotions (such as this article).
Obviously this marketing campaign is not targeted towards you. Believe it or not, not all advertising gimmicks are designed to be desirable by everybody in the whole world. Pepsi and Apple are clearly targeting people who already like Pepsi products and would find a free song a nice prize in addition to their drink of choice.
Anyone who knows anything about iTMS would know that songs are only $.99 and would realize the futility of purchasing a more expensive product just for the less expensive free gift. There's also something to be said for generating hype over a product in general, like we are all doing right this second by reading this post.
So you don't like Pepsi, then don't buy one. If you want songs from iTMS then go directly to the source. Get over yourself.
Why should it be a joke? Sometimes you really want random numbers, not some PRNG. If you can't afford to (or don't wnat to) buy a hardware-based random number generator this is a good second-best. A couple of decades ago you bought books of random numbers, now you get a CD.
Unlimited growth == Cancer.
If only it were sugar water.
In actuality, it's high fructose corn syrup water, which is much, much worse.
[Anti ADM / farm-subsidies rant ommited for the sake of staying on topic]
Oh, I can't help myself. They're spending tax dollars to subsidize giant agracorps to grow too much corn that they have to turn into sweetners and corn-fed beef to rot your teeth and give you mad cow disease!
ahem.....
grammar-lesson free since 1999. (rescinded - 2005)
Sculley is the only CEO in Apple history who both managed to both keep Apple profitable and increase Mac sales year-to-year every year. None of the other three Mac-era CEOs -- Jobs, Spindler, or Amelio -- managed the trick.
So, yeah, Sculley ruined Apple: he made it profitable and expanded the Mac user base. Such horrible crimes. Real Apple fans know the goal is to become an ever-shrinking demographic until the Mac is sitting on the same shelf as the Amiga, clung to in irrelevancy by rabid fans.
Jobs didn't say profits. He said making good products. Sculley didn't do squat, and that was Jobs's objection: from 1984 until jobs's return, Apple had one product, from all the way back in 1984: the Macintosh.
Jonathan Ive was more or less put on ice until Jobs discovered him working there. Jobs has otherwise done quite a job himself in turning the company around.
Besides - and this is the clincher - what if Sculley had been good for Apple? Just think how much better he would have been if he and his cohorts hadn't pocketed all that money Jobs speaks of? Just think how much better off Apple would have been!
You don't get mad cow disease from corn-fed beef. You get it from cow-fed beef. In particular, a cow becomes infected only by ingesting brain or nerve tissue from another infected cow.
The rest of your point is valid, however.
I think Amelio will always have a bad rap, but he performed the essential role he was hired for - hatchet man.
See, you hire someone, have them cut lots of fat out of the company, fire lots of folks, and consequently everyone hates them. Then you get rid of them and in swoops the savior to take control of a leaner, restructured company without any of the ill will because you just fired everyone's friends.