Apparently, the Undead are Alive
While America undoubtedly is possessed of some overbearing cultural pride, other societies do need to remember the stones in glass houses adage when making fun of Americal Idol, NASCAR and Anna Nicole Smith. In case any European readers have managed to successfully managed to block it out of their minds again, let me remind you: Eurovision. Example A for 2007: Vampires Are Alive. Thanks a lot Switzerland.
Every once in a while, I run across a contest where I’m not entirely sure who the intended target audience would be for the prize. Today’s example is the Microsoft Office Live “I’m Going Places” Sweepstakes. The grand prize is ten flight hours for you and up to six friends on a private jet. While that’s a cool idea for a prize, the absurdly high value of the prize ($50,000), makes it a bit silly to offer as a prize. Since that value is taxable, you’re looking at anywhere from $10,000-$20,000 in federal and state taxes depending on your existing income bracket. To put it mildly, if you’re well off enough to even be able to consider affording that kind of a tax bill for a prize, you’re probably in the higher tax brackets, so we’ll say $20K. So the prize is basically a 60% discount on private jet fare for one long round trip, or two medium trips at a cost per head that takes you into first-class commercial territory even if you were able to split the cost between all the travelers. Microsoft can’t be targeting rank and file IT workers with this contest, who are they after, cheap-ass CTOs? Do they think a cheap-ass CTO is going to buy Office Live for their company? The mind boggles.
Every once in a while, I run across a contest where I’m not entirely sure who the intended target audience would be for the prize. Today’s example is the Microsoft Office Live “I’m Going Places” Sweepstakes. The grand prize is ten flight hours for you and up to six friends on a private jet. While that’s a cool idea for a prize, the absurdly high value of the prize ($50,000), makes it a bit silly to offer as a prize. Since that value is taxable, you’re looking at anywhere from $10,000-$20,000 in federal and state taxes depending on your existing income bracket. To put it mildly, if you’re well off enough to even be able to consider affording that kind of a tax bill for a prize, you’re probably in the higher tax brackets, so we’ll say $20K. So the prize is basically a 60% discount on private jet fare for one long round trip, or two medium trips at a cost per head that takes you into first-class commercial territory even if you were able to split the cost between all the travelers. Microsoft can’t be targeting rank and file IT workers with this contest, who are they after, cheap-ass CTOs? Do they think a cheap-ass CTO is going to buy Office Live for their company? The mind boggles.
Posted by Nathaniel Trost on
Sunday March 4, 2007 at 11:42am