Shove those sweepstakes somewhere, will ya ?

Dude, I’m tellin’ ya…………

I think I’ve had my fill of sweepstakes, alleged environmental donations by big-name brands, and “quick win” games by fast food joints.

I was watching the full slate of Sunday football with my usual group of fellow neanderthals and I couldn’t help but mention how many advertisers were pushing some contest or give-away at least as much as they were hawking their very product. And in support of my observation, there HAD to be a ton of it being plugged because we have four TVs hooked up to the DirectTV NFL Ticket. We get every game every single week. As a result, we don’t hang around much to watch commercials on any of the four TVs. We just move on to a game with live action going on. So for me to notice how much of this marketing crapola was being shoved down our throats, there had to be a bunch of it.

My observation actually led to a discussion amongst us. Really.

These huge brand names act like they’re throwing cash out of a hot-air ballon to a major metropolis at lunchtime when they’re simply giving away a trip for 2 to the Fiesta Bowl. Whether it’s Miller Lite or Nike or Tostitos, these companies spend millions marketing a raffle/sweepstakes where a handful of their loyal customers will win a prize worth around $10K or less. The commercial hardly focuses on their product at all. If you asked all of us in the room which beer company was sponsoring the trip to the Super Bowl in the ad that we just saw, you’d get at least 2……maybe 3 different answers.

Then there’s the alleged do-gooders who brag that for every purchase we make, a dime or a quarter will go directly to the Special Olympics or the Amazon rain forest. The thing that I’ve noticed almost all of my life is that conveniently, the product’s price tag is exactly a dime or a quarter higher than the last time I purchased it. Who’s really making the humanitarian donation here?

Here’s an idea. How about instead of raffles, sweepstakes, and lottery-type games—–how about they lower the cost of the product their loyal customers buy? Install a nationwide decree that the product is to be lowered by 5 cents wherever it is sold. Then they can help every single one of their loyal customers each-and-every time they buy the product for a while. Of course, the price will have to go up again eventually. But instead of sending 10 customers to the Grammys or the 2016 Olympics in Rio, create a reward that benefits all of their dedicated customers.

McDonalds is back to playing their big Monopoly game. Didn’t this one get exposed as a tainted scam just a few years back? But here we go again.

You can win a million dollars !!!

Or a free regular-sized order of our french fries instantly !!!

Hey McDonalds—-how about you save the consuming public the scam and just re-direct the millions and millions of dollars behind the campaign? Instead of all of the (alleged) cash prizes and trips and free food to just a select few, how about you lower the price of french fries nationwide by 10 cents for two months? With the advertising dollars that focus on nothing but the Monopoly promotion + the value of all the (alleged) prizes themselves, it has to be a $20 million dollar campaign. By trimming the price of an order of fries by 10 cents, you could sell your loyal customers 200 million orders of reduced-price fries. If I’m under-estimating the costs of marketing these days and it’s actually a 40 million dollar campaign, that equates to 400 million orders of reduced fries. {Even if that is only three days of typical sales…..WE’LL TAKE IT !!}

And then after 60 days when fries go back to their regular price, instead of your next lame-ass, nobody-gives-a-hoot promotion, you can lower the price of soft drinks by a dime for the following two months.

Or you can make regular hamburgers and cheeseburgers under 75 cents permanently—-the way they should be.

The same holds true for Miller Brewing Products and all the rest of these huge comglomerates. Instead of offering us “club points” so that we can get your supposed cool merchandise like gym bags, sweatpants, and throw blankets, why don’t you take the money that is spent on marketing the promotion + the expense of the shoddy prizes and lower the case of beer by 25 cents? If I need a pair of sweatpants, I’ll go to Wal-Mart. If I want to go to the Fiesta Bowl on New Year’s Day, I’ll call a ticket broker.

What I truly want is for the price of the goods I buy from these companies to stop going up. The price of goods and services in the US is seemingly triple or quadruple the size of the pay raises people are receiving. Back in the day, people used to get somewhere between a 2%–7%  pay raise if they were doing a good job. That was to keep up with “the cost of living”.

Well allow me to let American industry in on a little secret. Not only do most people not receive a 2-7 % pay hike annually anymore, but a great many of us are out of work completely. Those that are working aren’t seeing pay raises at all….they’re seeing pay cuts to keep their job. Yet the cost of living keeps skyrocketing at exponential rates never seen before.

When I was a kid, gas was 57-62 cents per gallon. Oh, it would go up regularly. A few cents here….a few cents there. It was only in the last ten years or so that prices started fluctuating in nickels, dimes, and quarters on a weekly basis. But it doesn’t stop with gas. The same holds true for bread, milk, shoes, eggs, coffee, and most other household basics.

A year ago when I was working, and for many years prior to that, I used to purchase a can of Pringles potato chips as a favored snack. Almost anywhere I went….Wal-Mart, Jewel, Walgreens, Dominicks, etc. the cost was 99 cents. It was somewhere between 79 cents and 99 cents for about five years. I haven’t bought a can of Pringles in several months now. Everywhere I now shop, they are $1.79 per can. The price has just come up short of doubling in the last 12-15 months !! Pringles and about a thousand other products.

How are we possibly supposed to keep up with this? Gee, I can’t figure out why people are filing so many bankruptcies and defaulting on their mortgages. Let’s blame the bankruptcies on credit cards and the mortgages on the jobless rate. Note to government leaders: while some people do abuse their credit cards with frivolous purchases, a great many more are actually buying their groceries or even paying their mortgages on them. The basic truth of the matter is that our wages simply do not keep up with the price gouging that became part of the accepted economic model in the last decade. Three percent pay cuts don’t allow the consuming public  to keep up with 33% price increases.

How about the credit cards and their cash-back rewards and other nonsense programs? The public has been screaming for years for lesser penalties and better interest rates. It is now a matter of discussion in our legislature. But do they offer us better, permanent rates? Or have they slashed their ridiculous late fees? Nope. They spend millions of dollars promoting their cash-back programs that earn most card holders about $20 per year or less. Hey vultures, keep the $20 and lower everybody’s interest rate by one-half of one percent.

So to Miller Lite, Budweiser, McDonalds, Publisher’s Clearing House, Discover Card, Visa, MasterCard, Pepsi, Coke, Marlboro, and all you other bloodsucking corporations, shove those sweepstakes somewhere, will ya?

Nobody gives a rat’s ass about your contests—-we’re too busy slipping into poverty buying your over-priced bullshit.