falling in love with swan vestas' marketing

and a promotion, originally uploaded by gorgeoux.

Remember the smart celebration of the Swan Vestas matches this summer? Well, it goes on. The new packs bring one of the few promotions I've ever appreciated: for 125 years of existence there are 125 golden matches, and each can win you GBP 1,000. There is, of course, a catch: you don't see the golden cap until you strike the match.

Why do I like it better than others? It's fun, it's witty (strike gold), it's shiny, it gets the imagination going, it has many equal prizes (thus offering many chances) AND it involves the product directly, the product IN USE. Someone brilliant is running the Swan Vestas marketing.

And that explains why the promotion and its potential win are not part of the packaging only, as is the case with margarine and beer in Romania and cereals and smoothies in the UK, to name just four types of products (betting there are plenty more).

Other notable promotions, top of mind? Coca-Cola in Romania—giving away branded pagers (any years ago, when pagers were still cool) to kids who put together a number of bottle lids, and Coca-Cola in the UK—giving away branded yo-yos to kids who also collected some bits of the packaging (different, I understand, depending on the year when it ran). But even these, however sparking the imagination, were about the packaging alone.