This article is more than 1 year old

Rot your teeth with cashless auctions

Coca-Cola teams up with QXL

It's a problem that has exercised many - how to prize pocket money from non-credit card-owning teenagers.

QXL has come up with an ingenious solution - get Coca- Cola to splash out instead. Coca-Cola is to provide a new cashless currency "Coke Credits", accumulated by collecting ringpull or special labels from 500ml bottles.

Armed with this new cashless currency, teenage punters can - from August - bid for "cool items and money can't buy experiences" at cokeauction.co.uk. Coca-Cola will encourage "stickiness" by offering free credits each month to people who sign up on the QXL-operated site. The promotion runs until December 2000.

It's depressing, isn't it, to so much ingenuity has been expended on such a tawdry, teeth-rotting, consumerist affair?

The "Children can be e-greedy People (but get permission from your parents first if you're under 16) too" promotion will probably be a runaway success. But why doesn't Coca-Cola dole out something useful and such as Air Miles. That way the promotion could be a success for runaways.

QXL.com says the Coca-Cola deal is "a further step in our efforts to partner with major offline brands to continue to weave QXL.com into the fabric of consumers' lives". Marketing bull, or crazed plan to take over the Universe? We'll let you decide. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like