I couple of months ago a local car dealership distributed 10,000 keys (cheap metal) in a mailer, claiming that one of them would unlock a prize car in their showroom. To me, it was a brilliant campaign because it sucked me in and I’m pretty damn cynical.
Over a 3 day period, people were encouraged to bring their keys in and try them on the car. Of course the dealership asked a bunch of marketing questions to build their mailing list (the whole point of the marketing campaign).
I don’t understand how the key mechanism worked. I doubt there was really one key that fit the lock, because they run the terrible risk of having that key show up early in the promotion…ruining their ability to collect customer data for the remainder of the promotion.
Is anyone familiar with this type of promotion? would they have a special lock that (randomly?) allows any key to open it on the last few hours of the last day?
I’ve just been wondering how this promotion was technically pulled off.
I’ll accept speculation, but if someone knows for real…that’s what I’m really interested in.
There’s no reason they have to end the promotion just because the winning key shows up. They can tell the winner “Come back next week and we’ll give you your car” or they can put out a new car that won’t work with any of the keys, just to make sure that people keep coming in to try keys out.
Okay, here’s my WAG: A great majority of the people who received the mailing aren’t going to show up at all. They probably have a 90% or better chance that no one will win the car, and that they’ll be able to collect this info all day long. Only a tiny chance that the winner will show up before lunch.
I realize that police supervision of this stuff is pretty spotty, but I’m guessing that a whole lot of fine print about the rules of the contest was included in that mailing, and I sure hope that they wouldn’t dare to do this.
You just need simple statistics for that question. All of the “cheap” keys were the same and wouldn’t work. The person that got the real key wouldn’t have any point of comparison with the other keys. The chances of the person with the real key walking in on the first day is very low and, even then, they will still gather lots of data from the people that came before. Chances are that they will have many days, weeks, or forever to collect data based on the promotion. The person with the real key may never show up at all. In the worst case scenario for the dealership, the winner would be the first person to walk in on the first day and a single new car simply isn’t that much money for a big business. The manufacturer may even be paying for a part or all of it.
What I don’t get about these promotions is, how does the winner not know immediately they’ve won? Anybody in a position to get one of these mailers knows what a real car key looks like and would be able to tell it at a glance from the fake toy keys they send out in those mailers.
They don’t have a point of comparison. For all they know, everyone else’s looks the same. Anyway, car locks don’t care about how cheap a key looks. It just has to have the right profile. I have a spare key for my SUV that looks like it came from a cereal box and it works just fine.
All the key has to do is open the door. You can make any key body do that. Only the ignition keys need to be special (if the car has special anti-theft features). My Honda came with a wallet key that looked like it would be a prize in a cereal box, but it worked just fine.
Perhaps everyone gets a numbered toy key, and “unlock” is figurative. They just record the numbers of the “keys” presented and tell everyone they’ll announce the winner (if there is one) at the end of the week.
One problem with using real keys is that for many cars, there’s more than one key out in the world that will work in a given car. There are several stories of people accidentally opening, and sometimes driving off in, someone else’s car because their keys fit it. Seems to me there’s a risk of someone coming into the showroom with a key from his own car that happens to fit the promotional car and claiming the prize. By tying the prize to a number sent out in the mailing rather than the physical key itself, this problem is avoided.
Just talking off the top of my head, cuz I don’t really know anything…
I thought I heard years ago that when dealerships have promotions like this, they buy an insurance policy against someone actually winning the car. If someone wins, the dealership is delighted because they don’t have to pay for the car (the insurance company does) and it’s a great promotion for the dealership to say that they actually gave away a new car.
You are probably right on that. The chance of the actual winner showing up are pretty low. How much junk mail do you get with “fabulous” offers that you never respond to? Most people are too busy to drive to a dealership to try for a prize that they are very unlikely to win let alone take the surveys before they even get a chance to try. It is a pretty good bet for insurance companies to take on that risk.
I think for a 3 day event, the chances of someone walking in with the key on the first day is NOT very low. That’s the point of my question. I would think the dealership would want to have more control over the situation so they don’t give the car away on the first day, and effectively miss out on the rest of the promotional data collection.
I should also mention that the keys didn’t feel like they were moving tumblers upon insertion. THey fit very loosely into the lock and hit a back plate about a 1/2 inch in.
It sounds like you are assuming that most people will show up in the first place. That is not the case. Most people don’t even claim rebates for things like computers even for a significant about of money. Most people’s lives are simply too busy to justify taking a special trip down to a car dealership to do work for a prize that they probably won’t win. The piles of junk mail that everyone gets makes most people jaded to the whole concept. There are always a few suckers but they probably won’t have the right key.
There are 10,000 keys going out for a 3 day promotion. Do you honestly think that the car dealership thinks that they can gather data and try keys for 3,333 people a day? Assuming that they are open 12 hours a day, that means that they have to process almost 5 people a minute. That is not the way these things play out.
Prize indemnification insurance. These policies are typically written for skill contests (“hit a hole in one, win a million dollars”), but can be written for other contests where there is a less-than-certainty of winning.
Has anyone actually went to one of these events? I’m wondering just how many hoops they make you jump through before they actually let you try out your key in the car. I doubt its as simple as you showing up and they say “oh, you’re here about the contest car? It’s sitting right over there. Good luck!”
And do they let you do the physical attempt or do they do it for you? I’d be leary about a bunch of over eager strangers one after another attempting to jam their key that won’t fit into the cars (ignition or door?) messing up the lock or breaking the cheap key off.
There is no reason that they have to tell anybody else that the winner has been found before the contest is scheduled to end. The contests I see all the time say a list of winners will be announced at a time after the promotion ends.
Why would it be illegal or surprising that the car dealer might let people keep trying keys even after a winner has been found? The terms of the offer remain the same: if your key works, you win the car. It’s not even a deceptive practice, since your key would never have worked under any circumstances.
