Byline: Robert MacMillan
I don't care what Bill Gates says. We're nothing more than little peas in Apple's pod.
The Cupertino, Calif.-based computer maker has created a market so eager to buy its digital music player that everyone from public health do-gooders to nefarious online marketers is capitalizing on the knowledge that people will do just about anything to get their hands on one.
Just look at Scotland. Whatever romantic notions we American descendants of the clans imagine, our lions of the north lately are more often thought of as connoisseurs of the deep-fried Mars bar (and deep-fried haggis, pizza and Scotch eggs). The region's own outgoing chief medical officer said that it could take an entire generation to dispel Scotland's reputation of being a land of binge drinkers, heavy smokers and heart-disease sufferers.
Enter Apple.
The Scotsman newspaper last week reported that Glasgow's school system is offering rewards -- the iPod chief among them -- to bribe their secondary school students into eating healthier foods: "The award-winning Fuel Zone Points Rewards Scheme aims to promote a good diet among teenage pupils, with those who choose a healthy option rewarded with points which go towards prizes, such as iPod music players, Xbox computer consoles, tickets for the cinema and book tokens. The experiment was introduced 12 months ago in all of Glasgow's 29 secondary schools."
The paper focused on 14-year-old Akil Memishi, whose family came to Scotland as refugees from Kosovo, as well as 13-year-old Katie Burns. Both students won awards for buying into the program. Katie chose movie tickets, but Memishi went with the iPod. Either way, both are putting in overtime as Apple's smiling Scottish shills. Do you think they'd be smiling so much if they knew how many iPods they could buy with the money that people normally get paid for modeling?
The program is available to approximately 30,000 students, the Daily Mail reported. The paper also quoted a spokeswoman for the school system as saying that cheating is impossible: "The swipecard has the pupil's photo on it and the dinner ladies who swipe them obviously know who is who," she said.
The London Times described the point system that students must satisfy to win an iPod. It's quite specific, though I'm happy to report that it's simpler than the British Airways Executive Club reward points system: "At the 'Fuel Zones', school dining halls, the pupils receive points for choosing items such as salad (15 points), pasta (15 points) and water (15 points), for example, instead of chips (nil points), beef burger or pizza (3 points) and Irn Bru (nil points). The points are accumulated on a term-by-term basis and can be redeemed for items ranging from cinema tickets (850 points) to the latest iPod (4,000 points) and Xbox games consoles (3,000 points)." (If you click the Irn Bru link above, you'll see an iPod giveaway promotion on the "It's Phenomenal" page...)
The Times noted that the most lucrative/popular choice is the Vital Mix for [pounds sterling]1.15 ($2.10), comprising soup, a stuffed pita or sandwich, yogurt, raisins or fruit and a healthy drink, such as milk. Suck down 100 Vital Mixes and you get the 4,000 points. The paper also pointed out that if the 10,500 students now opting for healthy food were eligible for an iPod, it would cost the city $3.7 million: "But Fergus Chambers, head of Glasgow's [pounds sterling]119 million ($218.3 million) school catering service, said that that would never happen. 'If things started to go crazy, we'd amend the rules,' he said."
The Herald newspaper's editorial board endorsed the program: "Bribery? Well, why not? If supermarkets and garages can woo adult customers with loyalty cards, why should our public services not use the same positive reinforcement technique to wean children off unhealthy food?"
Why not indeed? Bribery not only persuades some kids to do the right thing without having to wonder why, it motivates the other children who surely will develop an inferiority complex as their increasingly svelte buddies parade around with their new toy. Note for a news story one year from today: Glasgow's outraged schoolteachers confiscate record numbers of iPods while trying to get their slender, attractive students to pay attention for a minute or two.
When I visited a government trade show a few weeks back (please, don't stop reading!) I noticed that nearly every company's booth featured a drawing to win a free iPod -- a rather effective ploy by the exhibitors to keep attendees from contracting narcolepsy. The Glasgow trick clearly works with us too. All a business needs to do these days is offer a free iPod and it can sell just about whatever it wants. Just ask the Bucks County Courier Times just outside Philadelphia, or Citibank.
Nowhere is this happening as much as the Internet, but caveat victor. Reporter Romeo Cantu at television station KGBT-4 in Harlingen, Texas produced a story that says most free electronic product offers on the Web require strict adherence to Byzantine fine print.
Working with Dolores Salinas of South Texas chapter of the Better Business Bureau, Cantu tried to accept some free iPod offers: "The Web sites started off asking some personal information, so work address and e-mail were used. Next, the online questionnaire asked to fill out so-called short surveys, which wasn't always the case. '(The surveys) took us 25 minutes. And we never got anything free,' Salinas said. 'They're having you jump through different hoops, so to speak. At some point they're going to ask you for personal information, including a credit card number.' And that's exactly what happened. After filing out all the surveys, the online questionnaire asked that two offers needed to be completed to get a free Apple iPod. The offers were for all kinds of stuff, such as credit cards, stamps, music and DVD services and from some big companies, like Blockbuster Video and Circuit City."
Also from Cantu: "Since signing the e-mail address with the company, the only thing received for free were hundreds of spam e-mails, most of which were offering, what else, but more free stuff."
Jeff Tyler, a reporter for the public radio show Marketplace, said that companies offering free prizes make their money by getting interested Web surfers to sign up for trial memberships to AOL, Blockbuster and other online subscription services. By persuading them to sign up for more and more of these along the circuitous path to the prize, many people often give up. Thus, the company keeps the prize and gets paid for snagging new subscribers. One of these companies, Gratis Network, raked in $20 million this way in 2004, Tyler said.
Yankee Group analyst Patrick Mahoney told the Boston Herald's Jennifer Heldt Powell that such schemes are not necessarily illegal, but that doesn't mean it makes any sense to hang around: "If you don't know much about the site, it's probably not wise to fill it out," Mahoney said. "You're 60 clicks deep, they've been gathering way more information than you want them to know and, in the end, if you opt to pay them, then they also have your credit card." For another firsthand account, see Hiawatha Bray's column in the Boston Globe from way back in February.
Where are you seeing iPod drawings? The bank? The mall? Anywhere really unusual? Let me know and we'll use your stories in an upcoming edition.
If the free iPod offer proves irresistible, and suddenly your computer is acting funny, it might be because your passionate lapse of reason resulted in a social disease -- of the digital variety. Fortunately, Congress cares. The U.S. House of Representatives approved two bills last night designed to curb spyware, a general term for software that some companies install on your computer without your knowledge when you download free software and other programs. According to washingtonpost.com's David McGuire, the bills still require approval from the U.S. Senate. That proved a stumbling block the last time these bills came up, yesterday's resolution to the filibuster fracas ought to leave the runway wide open for more Senate action, that is... if they're not busy on more pressing topics. But what could be more important than spyware?
On a related note, see Security Fix, the blog run by my colleague Brian Krebs, on a new hacker extortion technique. The idea is simple and evil, and as with most simple/evil plans, it's devastating: The hackers scramble your text files, then demand payment to decode them. I'd say that the best solution is to buy some stamps and send a letter, but then you wouldn't be able to read my column.
