Get your money the old-fashioned way: win it!

A friend of mine complained recently that she was feeling bloated as a result of drinking too much of a certain well-known brand of bottled green tea. To my surprise, her motive had nothing to do with any health benefits to be derived from the drink – she just wanted to win the jackpot of Bt1 million allegedly hidden under some of the bottle caps. She is but one of millions of consumers who I’m sure have been taken in by a simple and yet very clever marketing ploy: you buy the tea, look under the cap and if you’re real lucky, you win Bt1 million!

As recent sales figures show, the brand (which is offering Bt30 million in all underneath a total of 30 lucky bottle caps) sells an average of 20 million bottles a month. So the probability of winning is just about more than one in a million. Easier to bump into George Clooney and get invited on a hot date!

The craze to buy the green tea has intensified since a number of fairy-tale stories about winners have come out, most notably one where three “rag pickers” went from rags to riches.

The story of these three is very touching and reads better than most best sellers. A low-income civil servant found the lucky cap among plastic bottles she collected at Chatuchak Weekend Market to resell for Bt13 a kilogram, which is how she and her two friends regularly supplemented their low monthly salary of about Bt5,000. She said she had no idea how many decades it would have taken her to save the same amount of money. That struck a chord among all consumers who dream of snagging some instant cash just by drinking some green tea.

Marketing mavens know very well that such stories sell and that the media cannot afford to ignore such real-life fantasies. So, all of the winners have received prominent coverage in the media, especially in the Thai-language press.

It would have been a different story had the winners already been wealthy. The green-tea manufacturer would probably have received very little publicity then. But as it turns out, the manufacturer has been very fortunate – the winners have all had perfect story lines to date.

For instance, that story about the rag pickers, unofficial pillars of Thailand’s recycling industry, received massive publicity. What would a company get in return from spending Bt30 million on television commercials? Pretty limited mileage once the costs of producing the commercial were deducted. The same amount would have been spent in vain if used for advertisements in mass-circulation newspapers. When was the last time you were so impressed with a print ad that you went right out and bought a product off the shelf? So far, the bottle-cap campaign must be succeeding beyond the maker’s wildest dreams – almost as if it were being plotted and directed. In fact, cynics have already suggested it would make for the perfect Hollywood flick, a conspiracy theory involving manufacturers who go and dump the lucky caps in rubbish piles around town.

The even more cynical among us have questioned the transparency of this type of campaign. Are there really as many lucky caps as are claimed? And could they actually be distributed in such a way so that poor scavengers could be sure to win and spark a fairy-tale media frenzy?

But for those who feel moved by the campaign, nothing else matters. Earning Bt1 million by drinking green tea is infinitely more attractive than working hard to earn it. Aren’t the chances of winning it rather far-fetched? Well, many don’t think so. The gullibility of the masses is a given. We have a prime minister who vows to eliminate poverty in four years, and very few people have any doubts about that, despite spiralling prices. So what’s all the fuss about drinking some green tea? After all, if you win, you don’t have to wait four more years for prosperity to come knocking at your door. It may be wishful thinking, but there’s just no stopping some people from dreaming. Having said that, I think I’ll go and grab one and see if I’m lucky today. Sorry, George, but I feel greedy today!


Published on Mar 19, 2005