CROWDCTRL

I started my career interests in advertising, which moved to an interest in journalism and pubishing, on to page design and layout to web design to computer programming and finally to interaction design. So those many and varied interests tend to spark deep thinking on dumb normal things.

Like soda bottle promotions. Drinking one of the many caffinated beverages I consume regularly, by habit I tore it open and checked to see if I had won. I realized it’s been a while since I had.. And I realized it’s because these caps all have this alien-like character strings that you have to enter online to see if you’ve won anything.

The string of characters is like 16. It could easily be the WEP key to my home network. In itself it’s an incredibly secure network password.

But scrunched together on a tiny bottle cap.. It’s not readable, it’s confusing, and I’m wondering how terribly effective it could be. Or deceptive? The entire bottle label is full of what I could win, if I simply hang on to the cap, log into the website, enter the thing in (it’s probably case sensitive), and then deal with the odds of winning.

What a pain! And a disappointment. Please, bring back the instant gratification. I’d like to see some numbers on the redemption of these winning numbers or bottlecaps. I think mentally it’s a much better win for the customer to find out immediately he’s won, instead of seeing the alien message on the cap and being disappointed yet again (when in fact you could be the winner!).