Missing The Point Award for 2013


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    First weekend of haunted house building. Lots of physical labour, so it's just fine to splurge some calories on junk food. Chips? WHY NOT!

    Hey, look. It's a well know chip brand that comes in a cylindrical tube-- let's call them Pringles, for anonymity.  OKAY!

    Hey, they're having some promotion where you get 3 MP3s with purchase. Oh, how that brings back some nostalgia. Big companies putting codes inside their products that you can only redeem on some turd-rate DRM'd-to-hell website that'd just go out of business in a few weeks anyways. Remember all those promos? Good thing it's 2013 now, and we have some rock-solid music sources like iTunes.  Don't have to worry about that, right, hahahaha-- of course not, I'm posting here.

    Take in the label. TAKE IT IN:

    If you can't read that wooden table (or imgur is being a bitch), here's the text:

    @Some out of touch marketer said:


    <font face="Comic Sans MS">3 FREE MP3s with every can!  (see pringles.ca for full details)</font>  [n.b.: not Comic Sans, but close enough]

    Free with Purchase. Mail in receipt showing proof of purchase to obtain three (3) free MP3 downloads.  Limited supply of downloads (75,000). While supplies last. Offer expires November 30, 2013

    Is there a code printed underneath the label for you obtain your "free MP3s" (that's what kids crave these days, right, the Em Pee threes?)?  Nope.  You're reading that right. MAIL IT THE FUCK IN.

    Mail in the label? Nope, go to the site and you discover you need to:

    1. save your grocery receipt...
    2. CIRCLE THE APPROPRIATE LINE ITEM!!!
    3. PRINT OUT A MOTHERFUCKING PDF AND FILL IT OUT BY HAND!!!!!!
    4. <font size="3">HOLY FUCKING SHIT MAIL IT IN WITH A GODDAMN STAMP AND EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!</font>
    5. <font size="3"><font size="3">Someone at Pringles will <font size="3">HAND <font size="3">ENTER</font><font size="3"> your <font size="3">order form and email you some codes</font></font></font></font></font>
    6. <font size="3"><font size="3"><font size="3"><font size="3"><font size="3"><font size="3">.... IN 4-6 FUCKING WEEKS!</font>
      </font></font></font></font></font>

    A stamp costs $0.63. Printing one page on a home inkjet is, conservatively, $0.15.  The envelope will be another $0.10.  The 15 minutes it will take you to print, hand fill the page, find an envelope, seal it up, address it, find a mail box and mail it is-- fuck, at least 15 minutes of whatever your time is worth. Even discounting that, it's $0.89 in materials.  What's an itunes tune cost these days? $0.99?  Less?

    Assuming your form isn't lost, mangled, misread, typed in incorrectly, or over the mysterious 75,000 limit.  Fuck, do they have one of those Hollywood computers that literally is filled with little files that fly off the server as they're downloaded?  WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

    And of course you aren't getting an iTunes download. I don't know who you're getting it from. The only 3rd part reference I can see is [url="http://www.hipdigitalmedia.com/"]HIP Digital Media[/url] (yes, all caps there... they sure are hip!).  I haven't even looked at their site yet.  I'll leave that one up to audience participation. It doesn't even say what the catalogue you'll be selecting from consists of.  I sure hope it isn't 5 indie artists or anything.

    And don't forget-- you have to fill out the form and send in the original copy of your receipt.  Hope you not only kept it (because I always keep my 7-11 recipts with only a can of chips on it), but it doesn't have anything else on it you might need the receipt for.

    *rantgasam*

    While I mop up, I just want to point out one more thing:  I had to actually look up how much a stamp costs, because it's been that GODDAMN LONG since I've sent a fucking letter. And I'm surely past the age of their target audience with this hip-cool-MP3 thing.  Do you think the average 18 year old chip eating fucktard even knows what a stamp is?

    The one and only thing I'll give them-- they at least spelled MP3s without an apostrophe. 



  • That's....fantastic. Nope, I'm afraid all that work is way too much to go through to save (pessimistically, mind you) $3.87.

    That said, you forgot to account that they would just be taking an envelope and stamp from mom's desk, and using their parents printer. So it just costs them time, and let's face it, if you're mailing in a chip tube lid for free mp3s, your time isn't valuable.



  • If I had to promote a product I didn't like by handing out MP3s, I would do exactly this, but the MP3s would be 5 minutes each of 30Hz, 60Hz, and 75Hz sine waves at 110dB. With lots of compression artefacts.



  • You're making the assumption that the MP3s are of the musical variety which are so popular on iTunes. I have a friend who is employed on this promotion and what actually happens is that they record:

    1. The sound of your envelope being torn open
    2. The sound of your order being entered by hand
    3. The sound of the codes being typed into an email.

    These are the three MP3s you receive; that's why you need to send in your receipt. If it was just music they'd be insane to do it this way.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

  • PRINT OUT A MOTHERFUCKING PDF AND FILL IT OUT BY HAND!!!!!!
  • <font size="3">HOLY FUCKING SHIT MAIL IT IN WITH A GODDAMN STAMP AND EVERYTHING!!!!!!!!!!</font>
  • <font size="3"><font size="3">Someone at Pringles will <font size="3">HAND <font size="3">ENTER</font><font size="3"> your <font size="3">order form and email you some codes</font></font></font></font></font>
  • <font size="3"><font size="3"><font size="3"><font size="3"><font size="3"><font size="3">.... IN 4-6 FUCKING WEEKS!</font></font></font></font></font></font>
  • I had to do this same exact thing once in order to get Internet access from a local university.  But I had to print out a text file.  PDFs didn't exist yet because it was 1987. @Lorne Kates said:
    A stamp costs $0.63
    Speaking of stamps -- I went to the post office and bought a book of stamps from a vending machine in the lobby and put them in my pocket.  A couple of hours later I walked into Target and set off the anti-shoplifitng alarm.  WTF is in those stamps?@Lorne Kates said:
    And I'm surely past the age of their target audience with this hip-cool-MP3 thing.  Do you think the average 18 year old chip eating fucktard even knows what a stamp is?
    That's the funniest part. I guarantee that the music they are giving away is nothing that would appeal to the only people who would actually take part in this "giveway".  I bet Pringles paid some company quite a bit of money for this project.  I'm obviously in the wrong business.

     

     


     



  • The real WTF is Canada, amirite? Amirite?!?!



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    A stamp costs $0.63.
     

    TRWTF is Canada Post.  And not just because of this.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    [...] or over the mysterious 75,000 limit.  Fuck, do they have one of those Hollywood computers that literally is filled with little files that fly off the server as they're downloaded?  WHILE SUPPLIES LAST!

    That's the magic of Intellectual Property.



  • @Ben L. said:

    If I had to promote a product I didn't like by handing out MP3s, I would do exactly this, but the MP3s would be 5 minutes each of 30Hz, 60Hz, and 75Hz sine waves at 110dB. With lots of compression artefacts.
    While I laud the general attitude, I have to point out that 110dB doesn't have a meaning in this context. If you'd want to make it annoying, you could make the volume jump 40dB or so after 10s, to startle anyone who is still listening.



  •  My super in the 'hood for some infathomable reason no longer sticks Pringles Multigrain, the only relevant flavour. So this entire thread is moot to me. Moot!



  • @TGV said:

    110dB doesn't have a meaning in this context
     

    There's a default SPL context.

     

     



  • @da Doctah said:

    @Lorne Kates said:

    A stamp costs $0.63.
     

    TRWTF is Canada Post.  And not just because of this.

    I think every postal service is a WTF. My wife got a parcel sent from the USA. The tracking revealed that it spent four weeks travelling between various US states and Canada. Obviously the seller didn't make it clear which country it was going to.

    (The tracking still says the last scan was somewhere in New York state)

    Australia Post isn't all rosy either. But that's a story for another day. Other than recently they upped the price of a stamp from 55c to 60c, which spurred lots of rumours that the government was getting ready to rid us of 5c coins.



  • Actually, I would like a telecharger!

    Sounds like something my Nexus 4 could use (Qi).



  • @dhromed said:

    @TGV said:

    110dB doesn't have a meaning in this context
     

    There's a default SPL context.

    Ah, you know about the secret function that's in all MP3 players that lets you play a song at any required sound pressure level? Didn't they tell you to keep it secret? Now everyone can deafen their neighbors by h4x0r1ng teh MP3s.

     



  • @TGV said:

    Ah, you know about the secret function that's in all MP3 players that lets you play a song at any required sound pressure level? Didn't they tell you to keep it secret? Now everyone can deafen their neighbors by h4x0r1ng teh MP3s.
     

    That is a good point.



  • @da Doctah said:

    TRWTF is Canada Post.  And not just because of this.

    My kids get packages regularly from family in Japan, and we sometimes send things there. I just compared mail rates for a 2 kg package:

    Canada -> Japan: $56
    Japan -> Canada: $29

    Really? Twice as expensive? When Japan has home delivery 6 days a week and we get "superboxes" so our whole neighbourhood has to go and pick up their mail?


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @gramie said:

    I just compared mail rates for a 2 kg package:

    Canada -> Japan: $56
    Japan -> Canada: $29

    Really? Twice as expensive?

     

    It's the Coriolis Effect. It takes twice as much fuel to fly anti-spin from Canada to Japan. Or more accurately, coming from Japan to Canada they can ride the spin and save on fuel costs by coasting.



  • @El_Heffe said:

    Speaking of stamps -- I went to the post office and bought a book of stamps from a vending machine in the lobby and put them in my pocket.  A couple of hours later I walked into Target and set off the anti-shoplifitng alarm.  WTF is in those stamps?


    Bloody hell, are they RFIDing stamps now?

    (Obligatory: Who are "they"? The Wizards!)



  • @aihtdikh said:

    Bloody hell, are they RFIDing stamps now?

    (Obligatory: Who are "they"? The Wizards!)
    The Illuminati, of course.  Or is it the Freemasons?

     


  • Considered Harmful

    @El_Heffe said:

    @aihtdikh said:
    Bloody hell, are they RFIDing stamps now?

    (Obligatory: Who are "they"? The Wizards!)
    The Illuminati, of course.  Or is it the Freemasons?

     


    One in the same, but they're being controlled by body thetans.



  • @gramie said:

    @da Doctah said:

    TRWTF is Canada Post.  And not just because of this.

    My kids get packages regularly from family in Japan, and we sometimes send things there. I just compared mail rates for a 2 kg package:

    Canada -> Japan: $56
    Japan -> Canada: $29

    Really? Twice as expensive? When Japan has home delivery 6 days a week and we get "superboxes" so our whole neighbourhood has to go and pick up their mail?



    Japan has home delivery because it's a fairly dense country and people don't live miles away from one another. When all the mailman has to do is walk 3 blocks, "home delivery" isn't such a burden.


    On the OP, imagine that it's by design. Most of those "promotional" things aren't actually intended to give the consumer anything. The point is just to splash "FREE SHIT HERE" all over your packaging so women will buy it (I remember a study done in the UK found that female shoppers had a preferences for things marketed with the word free). Once the object is sold, and the money is in your hands, all you want is for them to fuckoff. And making it difficult to actually get the free stuff works pretty well. It's like mail-in rebate offers. You'd think by now you could just type in a code on a website and get direct deposit. But they intentionally make it harder knowing that some people just say "fuck it, it's not worth the time or effort."

     



  •  @aihtdikh said:

    @El_Heffe said:

    Speaking of stamps -- I went to the post office and bought a book of stamps from a vending machine in the lobby and put them in my pocket.  A couple of hours later I walked into Target and set off the anti-shoplifitng alarm.  WTF is in those stamps?

    Bloody hell, are they RFIDing stamps now?
    (Obligatory: Who are "they"? The Wizards!)

     I once bought a jar of chewing gum in China and it set off the alarm in an electronics store in Finland a few weeks later.

    Yes, it had a tag. And no, it wasn't a big jar, it was one of the normal 70g ones. Blueberry flavored.

    Says something about the local income levels, I guess; around here tagging all the gum would cost more in labor that the total annual loss to theft is.

    But stamps... depending on the amount of stamps in a pack, it might be cost-effective to tag them; the value/size ratio makes them prime shoplifting targets.

     

     



  • Semi-related, at least regarding going out of one's way to receive shitty prizes.

    Earlier this year, my spouse tweeted about just having seen the Hobbit, with appropriate hashtags. Our local cable company, Shaw, (I guess) was having some promotion related to the Hobbit. We thought perhaps related to VOD or something, or the DVD set. We actually don't have cable service from them. Anyway, she receives a direct message from their official account saying she was selected to receive a prize related to the Hobbit, and to look for it via mail within 3-5 business days.

    2 weeks pass and still no package so she contacts Shaw again, and they said they'd priority-ship it. We missed the delivery the next day, so I had to drive to the depot the day after that.

    It was a fucking poster for the movie.

    I checked rates. It cost $19 for them to ship it (again) overnight. It probably cost me $4 in gas to drive to the depot and back. All for a $1.50 piece of paper. Which I left in the parking lot.



  • I've only ever taken the trouble to mail in something to get a prize once.That was a speaker with amplifier, in a casing that fit nicely to the top of a Pringles tube. This was a campaign by Pringles, of course; collect three tube-seals and mail them in to get the speaker to your tube.

    It was a surprisingly good little speaker. Powered by 3x AA-batteries. There was no noticeable difference with or without the tube, so I cleaned off the grease and discarded the tube. It's now waiting for a project that requires an active speaker.

     Of course, since the prize was guaranteed  to be useful (a speaker element is usually worth at least $3 in retail even without an amplifier), the prizes were all out by the time I'd mailed mine in. But due to the popularity (as in, amount of unfulfilled requests to get the prize) they decided to get another batch made, surprisingly, and shipped them to everyone who'd missed the first batch.



  • @dhromed said:

     My super in the 'hood for some infathomable reason no longer sticks Pringles Multigrain, the only relevant flavour. So this entire thread is moot to me. Moot!

     

       Stop calling me, I don't want to be involved with this shithole.
                          /



  • @anonymous235 said:

    Stop calling me, I don't want to be involved with this shithole.
                          /
     

    I feel an unexpected urge to punch this man and I don't even know who he is.


  • Considered Harmful

    @dhromed said:

    @anonymous235 said:

    Stop calling me, I don't want to be involved with this shithole.
                          /
     

    I feel an unexpected urge to punch this man and I don't even know who he is.


    Oh, it's justified. My Google-fu says he inflicted 4chan upon the world.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    The only 3rd part reference I can see is HIP Digital Media (yes, all caps there... they sure are hip!).  I haven't even looked at their site yet.  I'll leave that one up to audience participation.

    Hip Digital is the leader in promotional marketing technology that enables brands to increase sales, engage consumers and provide buyer analytics, by using premium digital content rewards such as music, movies, mobile apps, eBooks and virtual goods.
    Well that says about all I need to know right there. I like how they can't decide if they're Hip or HIP either.

    What amazes me is the site loaded and displayed correctly without any Javascript! And I can only assume that video would be autoplaying (even though it's almost completely scrolled off the screen when the page loads) if I let it.


  • @dhromed said:

    I feel an unexpected urge to punch this man and I don't even know who he is.

     



  •  Sorry, my mistake.

     

    I want to punch him twice.



  • @anonymous235 said:

    @dhromed said:

    I feel an unexpected urge to punch this man and I don't even know who he is.

     

     

    Oh come on, Moot is innocent. He only made 4chan. The shitty memes that spread from there were made by other people. Try posting a rage face comic on 4chan these days, you'll be trolled to death - they've went the way of 13375p34k, as all fads do. All you're seeing is people on facebook, reddit and 9gag picking up 4chan's discarded trash and hailing it as the next great thing.

     



  • @OldCrow said:

    I once bought a jar of chewing gum in China and it set off the alarm in an electronics store in Finland a few weeks later.

    Thinking about someone carrying around a "jar of gum" is amusing.

     



  • @malaka said:

    Thinking about someone carrying around a "jar of gum" is amusing.
     

    All the way from China to Finland, even.



  • @malaka said:

    @OldCrow said:

    I once bought a jar of chewing gum in China and it set off the alarm in an electronics store in Finland a few weeks later.

    Thinking about someone carrying around a "jar of gum" is amusing.

     

    English is not my first language. A small round container, made of white plastic, what is it called?

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @OldCrow said:

    @malaka said:

    @OldCrow said:

    I once bought a jar of chewing gum in China and it set off the alarm in an electronics store in Finland a few weeks later.

    Thinking about someone carrying around a "jar of gum" is amusing.

     

    English is not my first language. A small round container, made of white plastic, what is it called?

     

    PICK YOUR OWN JOKE TIME!

    1. Obama
    2. Crack Cocaine
    3. Tampon
    4. The Nuclear Football
    5. iJar
    6. Super Happy Fun Ball
    7. The world's worst ladder

    In all seriousness though, this is what most people think of as a "jar":


     

     



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    In all seriousness though, this is what most people think of as a "jar":

    True.  But we live in a world of plastic now, so there are lots of plastic jars.

     


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @El_Heffe said:

    True.  But we live in a world of plastic now, so there are lots of plastic jars.
     

    If it's plastic, I tend to thing of it as a jug-- a jug of milk, a jug of windshield washer fluid, etc. Or a container.  I just can't call something plastic a jar.

    Find me a plastic jar that can surviving processing inside a pressure cooker at 5 PSI / 220f, and I'll think about changing my mind.



  • @Lorne Kates said:

    If it's plastic, I tend to thing of it as a jug-- a jug of milk,
     

    Well, those are large containers for liquids like milk and laundry soap.

    Jar is pretty much correct,  especially when looking at those tiny mentos gum jars, but the primary association of jar is still this.


  • Considered Harmful

    @dhromed said:

    tiny mentos gum jars,

    I haven't seen gum packaged that way, over here it pretty much comes like this:



  • @joe.edwards said:

    I haven't seen gum packaged that way, over here it pretty much comes like this
    This used to be the only package available here, too, but in the last few years those plastic jars started appearing everywhere.



  • @Nexzus said:

    Semi-related, at least regarding going out of one's way to receive shitty prizes.

    Earlier this year, my spouse tweeted about just having seen the Hobbit, with appropriate hashtags. Our local cable company, Shaw, (I guess) was having some promotion related to the Hobbit. We thought perhaps related to VOD or something, or the DVD set. We actually don't have cable service from them. Anyway, she receives a direct message from their official account saying she was selected to receive a prize related to the Hobbit, and to look for it via mail within 3-5 business days.

    2 weeks pass and still no package so she contacts Shaw again, and they said they'd priority-ship it. We missed the delivery the next day, so I had to drive to the depot the day after that.

    It was a fucking poster for the movie.

    I checked rates. It cost $19 for them to ship it (again) overnight. It probably cost me $4 in gas to drive to the depot and back. All for a $1.50 piece of paper. Which I left in the parking lot.

     

    If that is the poster I am thinking about, one just sold on e-bay for nearly $100 [USD]


  • Considered Harmful

    @Nexzus said:

    All for a $1.50 piece of paper. Which I left in the parking lot.

    @TheCPUWizard said:
    one just sold on e-bay for nearly $100 [USD]



  • I'm just going to post here for no particular reason.


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

     Oh look. Someone discovered they can fuck up CS. Wow, what a completely and utter shock how can that happen

    >:|



  • @ender said:

    @joe.edwards said:
    I haven't seen gum packaged that way, over here it pretty much comes like this
    This used to be the only package available here, too, but in the last few years those plastic jars started appearing everywhere.

    I'd call that a tub rather than a jar but I may be in a minority


  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Lorne Kates said:

    Find me a plastic jar that can surviving processing inside a pressure cooker at 5 PSI / 220f, and I'll think about changing my mind.
    Some of the heavy-duty thermoset plastics ought to be able to cope with that. Does anyone have a jar made out of bakelite?



  • </font> @dkf said:
    Does anyone have a jar made out of bakelite?
    Wouldn't bakelite be too brittle for pressue cooking? Even cooking at around a third of an atmosphere?

  • Discourse touched me in a no-no place

    @Zemm said:

    @dkf said:
    Does anyone have a jar made out of bakelite?
    Wouldn't bakelite be too brittle for pressue cooking? Even cooking at around a third of an atmosphere?
    I don't know, but even if it is, bet there's some other plastic that will do, and I was assuming that the pressure was applied gradually (as happens during cooking) rather than as an instantaneous blast. Plus it might also be possible to compensate with appropriate internal structure; bulk material properties aren't the only potentially-relevant factor.

    Of course, if you're going to try this sort of thing at home, don't let your home be near mine…



  • @dkf said:

    Of course, if you're going to try this sort of thing at home, don't let your home be near mine…

    Well you and I are about as far apart as possible, without either of us leaving the planet. :-P


  • Trolleybus Mechanic

    @dkf said:

    I don't know, but even if it is, bet there's some other plastic that will do, and I was assuming that the pressure was applied gradually (as happens during cooking) rather than as an instantaneous blast.
     

     You apply it gradually, but hold it at 5PSI for a good half-hour.  At least that's what you do in home canning. 


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