Tide Giving Away Ugly Ipods

Proctor and Gamble, a well known corporation who owns the Tide detergent brand, spent millions of dollars on a commercial that aired during the Super Bowl this past Sunday.  The commercial featured Tide's latest product, the Tide To Go stick.  The commercial went for the humor approach having a man, with a large stain, in an interview type situation and every time the man said anything the stain proceeded to yell gibberish over him, the commercial ended with the tag-line reading something like "don't let you stains speak for you, use Tide to Go."  From what I've heard people found the commercial relatively funny, and a lot of people already use the tide stick and enjoy its benefits.  

The article accompanying this recent commercial's success was found on an internet blog type website that discusses Apple products with the title "Tide Giving Away Ugly Ipods Through March 3."  This relates to Tide because Proctor and Gamble came up with the promotional idea to give away Tide t-shirts, coupons worth 50 cents off Tide products, Tide To Go sticks, or one of 34 (1/day) orange Ipods featuring the Tide logo.  This promotion is open to U.S citizens, and the author is under the impression that there is no limit to how many prizes one person can receive.  However, you can only enter to win the prizes once per day and  you have to upload a picture of yourself which is then turned into a talking stain like the one on the commercial during the Super Bowl.  You then can input dialog for the stain to yell and spend as much time as you want playing with it.  The article is short and only briefly describes the details of the promotion, but the main focus of the article really is "who would want an orange Ipod with the Tide logo stamped on it." While this promotion is a good opportunity for Tide to team up with Apple, a reliable and popular brand, there are not many people who honestly want what they are giving out.  

What I found interesting about this article was that directly below the write up, there were posts from people all around the world commenting on the promotion and what they think about the giveaways and the products themselves.  The posts vary from people wanting the Ipod to people complaining that the Tide To Go stick smells like a baby's butt, which in my experience is not true.  Even though the article was short, it got many responses, helpful feedback, as well as conversation about the products.  Proctor and Gamble would not have received this information had Jeff Smykil not written this article. 

The way I see it is that Tide supporters and people who like the Tide To Go stick will enter into the contest and it will be a success in raising the popularity of the stick.  However, the Apple connection seems lost because very few people actually want that Ipod, which is a negative aspect of the two brands teaming up.  However, like we saw in the chicken sandwich giveaway, people will sign up, camp out, and have a desire to win anything, so this promotion is sure to be a successful one.  I am curious to see if any other brands carried the use of a commercial on one of tv's biggest nights into a promotion like Tide did.