I too questioned the morals of going all out like Pudding Guy did, but then I came to one conclusion for Pudding Guy: WAY TO GO!!!

I am an account manager who works with a *huge* e-Commerce retailer here in the Northwest. I know that I have to be very careful about the wording in promotions that I use. And if you are a company of any size, the promotion usually must be run past legal. I originally thought that this was another one of those promotions that was put in place before any thought was put into and passed by legal, the bean counters, marketing, etc. never thinking that someone would use the program like Pudding Guy did. But with all the free advertising that they have received, how do we know they didn't intend for this to happen?

I've seen some dumb promotions as of late...remember the guy who spent tons of money to buy pepsis so he could win a fighter jet? Or all the people in California who lined up to buy electronic products on the MSN $400 rebate because Microsoft forgot to close the loop?

I just wish we had all known about it in time to be "pudding people" also.

[This message has been edited by Djlawman (edited 01-26-2000).]

Did pudding guy share this juicy info with us?

I would have felt guilty unless I ate all the pudding myself. Personal Consumtion rule, don't you know.

With this line of thought you could consider mileage runs at great fares "over-reaching"!

Every one is talking about Healthy Choice...I wish everyone was talking about my company!

"I just wish we had all known about it in time to be "pudding people" also."

Well, I tried telling about the pudding deal back in August (see my post from 8/24 on http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/001617.html ), but very few people were excited about it at the time. I myself ended up buying 2 cases of pudding, and had my sanity questioned by several of my friends. Now, after the Pudding Guy coup, I wish I bought more pudding!
And to add to the "moral aspect" discussion - that pudding has been sitting on the shelf at my local Grocery Outlet since July, and the sales were very poor. I'm sure that the situation was pretty similar at other stores. So if Pudding Guy didn't buy all that pudding and donate it to charity, it would probably have been thrown out when it expired.

I think Healthy Choice must be pretty satisfied with the advertising they got on this promotion. They spent some $12,000 ? Where would you find Wall Street Journal and prominent TV coverage available in this quantity for ten times that ? If I were the CEO I would give the guy who thought it up a bonus and invite Pudding Guy for dinner.

You know, I remember Darien's post... and I have to admit it that I ignored it, because I don't eat much pudding, especially the type that tastes like the plastic it came in(although Pudding Guy might say it tastes good).

And because I have more than half-a-million unused miles, I never thought of "buying" more miles this way.

First, this is one of the most entertaining topics in a while. Secondly, PuddingGuy is my hero.

MyleGuy, I salute you for speaking your mind. Also, your post raises a question; where would you set the limit?

Miles are like dollars; you can zip through them in a hurry. Let's say PG has a wife and two kids. Let's say they want to fly to Europe on AA in the 1st Class Cabin. If my math is correct he will shed 500,000 miles. If you have a million miles, or a million dollars, would you even want to know what it looked like behind the bulkhead? Naaaaaah!

The lifetime elite status is probably the most beneficial reward for the effort.

Darien should be the pudding guy. However, he didn't act enough. I didn't see his august post. I was trying to break a $2.00 item barrier for TV dinners. If I seen the post, I would have made the pudding guy look like a miser.

[This message has been edited by sergio (edited 01-27-2000).]

I wish I had known about the offer...would have bought $50,000 worth of pudding cups *s*. The offer was 500 miles for every 10 healthy choice purchases.

Here is the offer that expired on 12/31/99:
http://www.healthychoice.com/Frequen...catethanks.cfx

Also came across this site while I was searching for the healthy choice offer:
Links for FF mile opportunities.
http://www.toolcity.net/~sgiesler/

Thanks everyone who replied and e-mailed me on this. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and civility of the responses. I don't have any definitive answers or "rules" that apply to the issues I raised but I think they are worth thinking about. I just hope this was a win/win for all participants AND ConAgra so that they'll try again. I did love this promotion (picked up 10,500 miles) and did become a convert to their low-fat ice cream. And I'm glad I wasn't trashed like some artless spammer. Thanks again.

Aubie, that second link looks a lot like the older version of the Airline Mileage Workshop.
http://www.mileageworkshop.com/

MileageAddict, any opinions?

Actually, Healthy Choice lost out on more than just the cost of the miles.

Canned Foods Grocery Outlets is a close-out store. They purchase product that manufacturers can't sell elsewhere, and when they do, they pay a fraction of the original wholesale cost. Typically manufacturers lose money on any product sold in the close-out arena, be it to Grocery Outlets or any other retailer in the secondary market. More often then not manufacturers don't allow retailers such as this to take coupons, for an obvious reason... they already lost money on it once.

They gave Pudding Guy 1.2 million miles for purchasing products they had already sold at a loss.

I think you can bet your bippy that there will be some restrictions on their next promotion, regardless of how much free publicity was generated by this.



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Robert Johnson
danville 1K

One thing i have to say, I disagree they were concerned about selling at a loss... if you think about you can spend 1,000,000 on a comerical, and how many commericals they can do nationally in a year, it is a great investment. They want to generate excitement about their product, microsoft gives away the IE5 browser... create excitement. If the products are good, they will generate loyalty, but what they are doing is introducing people to a product. I would love to have everyone mentioning my company or our products... wow we would be so busy (wait, that is a bad idea.. LOL)

Kudos to Healthy Choice!