Nestle's GPS Tracking Candy Campaign

colinneagle writes "In a cool yet creepy marketing campaign, Nestle plans to stalk UK consumers. The company kicked off a unique promotion called 'We will find you' that involves GPS trackers embedded in chocolate bars. When a winning consumer opens the wrapper, it activates and notifies the prize team who promises to track them down within 24 hours to deliver a check for £10,000. A Nestle spokesman added that 'inside their wrappers, the GPS-enabled bars looked just like normal chocolate bars.'"

Comments

oblig

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia, YOU find chocolate!

Re:oblig

[Joce640k]

I know a guy who works at Nestle and he told me this is just the government trying out their new tracking devices.

Metal detector?

[thegarbz]

Wonder how long before someone stars running up and down candy store aisles with a metal detector.

Re:Metal detector?

[Immerman]

I doubt it's that big a trick - if I were asked to make the tracker I'd give it something like an RFID tag that draws power from mobile-phone or WiFi band EM radiation, from which it will be shielded so long as the foil is in place. Once opened the RFID would then power up and trip a transistor or SCR that switches on the battery-powered tracker that would then phone home at regular intervals. Until the foil is opened and RFID powered up the battery circuit would be open, preventing both charge loss and the tell-tale signal leaking through the foil.

Re:Metal detector?

[Lumpy]

"That would be highly ineffective, since chocolate bars are wrapped in tin foil."
Is it really the 1910's in the UK?

I have not seen a tinfoil wrapped candy bar for over 30 years. plastic wrapped with a Metallica plastic? yes!

Re:Metal detector?

[Joce640k]

Just before this complete trainwreck of fail goes any further:

The article says "when the winner pulls the tab".

ie. you pull a bit of plastic out of the battery contacts.

GPS Trackers

[smi.james.th]

Anyone who's ever used a GPS, especially not a dedicated device e.g. a smartphone, knows that it's a bit of a mission to get the thing to actually lock on to sattelites. If one was really paranoid one could just carry one's chocolate in a metal box until one gets home, then the GPS will never lock on anyway. So I doubt there are any real privacy implications here...

Re:GPS Trackers

[SpaghettiPattern]

If one was really paranoid one could just carry one's chocolate in a metal box until one gets home, then the GPS will never lock on anyway.

I always carry suspicious items like chocolate bars under my hat.

Note to /.newbies: When in doubt always assume tin-foil as material for any garment discussed on /.)

Re:GPS Trackers

[SleazyRidr]

I feel compelled to respond to you, but I have no idea where to start. How about we start with how you get >10,000 GBP in welfare...

I just hope that a winning bar

[Chrisq]

I hope that a winning bar is taken by a soldier to the front-line in Afghanistan. I'd love to see Nestle track them down and deliver the cheque within 24 hours!

Re:I just hope that a winning bar

[Anonymous Coward]

you're going to shit a little multicolored sphere when you learn that they have an elite fighting force of oompa loompa's and they airdrop those bastards into a village and they go all Robotron on the place.

I'll tell you what this promotion is!

[Anonymous Coward]

This post was removed due to Dice content standards violations.

Re:I'll tell you what this promotion is!

[mcgrew]

DOOOOOOD.... Big woosh. It was a joke; Dice didn't censor his comment. He wrote it exactly as it was presented on the page.

He did the same thing yesterday, only under his user name. I countered by responding to his post with a vicious diatribe against Dice which would indeed have been censored if Dice did such a thing here. They don't. Both posts were modded -1 offtopic, as they should have been, but neither was actually removed.

As to "Who gave the owner mod points?", admins and editors here have always had unlimited mod points. If Samzepus thinks your comment sucks, he can drag that +3 insightful to -1 troll any time he wants to. However, I think it's rear that they do that.

Its a con

[Chrisq]

Its that pervo Willy Wonka after kids again.

Re:Its a con

[havana9]

Did you say? Actually if you go to Wonka's site http://www.wonka.com/ Yuo'll see that actually they're Nestlè

Baby milk

[Threni]

Any chance of a promotion to track down the parents of kids who've died in the third world due to the heavy, illegal promition of powdered milk there?

Re:Baby milk

[Dogtanian]

Boy, are people still banging on about that, 35 years on?

Yes they are. And you know why? It's because Nestle are still doing that, 35 years on.

They die because the water they drink is tainted. It would still be tainted when they stop drinking breast milk.

No, it's not Nestle's fault that toddlers and older children don't have clean water to drink. It certainly *is* their fault that babies are being exposed to additional risk at a vulnerable age for no justifiable reason other than to bulk up their own profits. Particularly as babies of that relatively undeveloped age (who would normally be drinking breast milk) aren't really meant to be able to handle water-borne pathogens to the same extent as older, weaned children.

If you want to help those kids, donate to sanitation efforts.

As a suggestion in its own right, that would be laudible. As an attempt to divert attention and excuse Nestle from responsibility, it's contemptible.

Nestle were the ones that made the lack of clean water an even bigger problem than it needed to be. Improving sanitation and boycotting Nestle are not mutually incompatible, and suggesting that the water supply should be improved as an attempt to let Nestle off the hook- and indeed to bolster their business- is pretty disgusting.

Boycotting Nestle has absolutely no effect whatsoever.

That's open to question. I agree that those greedy fucks wouldn't be doing this "35 years on" if it wasn't making them more money than any boycott was costing them. Whether that means more people should be boycotting them or taking more action is open to question.

People do it because it's an easy hair shirt to wear and requires no real sacrifice.

That as may be, peoples' alleged laziness doesn't make Nestle's actions any more acceptable.

GPS in Coke can already trried

[linebackn]

A way while back there was a very similar attempt by Coke to put a GPS in a coke can, and swoop in and award the winner.

This raised a lot of security concerns, as there are many places where it would be bad for this to go off in, such as inside a military base.

Links:
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/03/09/30/189208/track-a-soda-can-with-gps
http://mobile.slashdot.org/story/04/05/06/136205/gps-cell-phone-in-soda-can-form

Re:I wonder why...

[slashrio]

...anyone would mod up what you just wrote, because it shows clearly that you didn't read the article:

When a winning consumer opens the wrapper, it activates and notifies the prize team who promises to track them down within 24 hours

Wait, let me explain to you what it means, because I'm not quite sure you got it:
Only when you open the wrapper does the GPS get activated.

Someone's going to get arrested at an airport.

[Anonymous Coward]

The electronic device disguised a chocolate bar will be picked up by the X-Rays, taken outside and blown up by the army. Meanwhile the person carrying it will be locked up without trial (it's the UK, not the free world) for months.

Re:Every once in a while someone points a study by

[Voxol]

Technically it's an active ingredient in cocoa beans.

In order for it to be good for you, it's necessary to treat the bean differently from the farm to the bar.

You can buy the active ingredient on it's own. And it really is genuinely good for your heart.

http://www.cocoavia.com/

Here's a paper in a peer reviewed journal with some evidence for you:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0098299710000774

What you'll get

[Telecommando]

"the GPS-enabled bars looked just like normal chocolate bars"

So, broken in 3 or more pieces and melted on one end?

I Swallowed a What?

[flyneye]

Murphys law says this one will end up promoting stool softener , lawsuits and corporate lessons learned.

Re:Why not just 'get our folks home'?

[Riceballsan]

Many people would love to, myself included, but until one of us gets elected to both the presidency and another few hundred of us into congress (or maybe if congress listened to it's constituents over the defense contractors that pay them), the best the common man can do is write to the congressmen, vote for the least appalling candidates, and offer what we can to the troops who are stuck over there.

Re:Not always easy delivering a prize

[todrules]

I had almost the same thing happen to me, but I had "won" $25 million from a Nigerian prince, who was in exile. I never did receive my money though.

Grouch Marx's take:

[neko the frog]

I've heard of chocolate adding on pounds before but this is ridiculous *chomps cigar*

Worse than Spring Surprise

[boristdog]

Or Crunchy Frog.

Constable Clitoris ate one of those!

Re:Not always easy delivering a prize

[ackthpt]

I won roughly $200 from a lottery, and the guy who was supposed to find me used 14 days to deliver the prize. He sent an email saying that I had won those money and just to register at a site to win the prize. I thought it was an attempt to scam me for money, so I made his job very hard. It didn't help when the company in question changed its name. I wondered what on earth was going on.

AllAboutTheBaby keeps calling my mobile phone and would like my address, birthdate, bank acount, etc, for awarding me a $100 prize. Right!

Meanwhile, I hope those chocolate bars are clearly labeled or you'll see something like this: Man Sues Candy Company Over Poisoning: "Tasted Like Resistors," Says Victim