Detergent company puts GPS into product to track consumers to their homes…
7.30.10 – NEW YORK — Unilever's Omo detergent is adding an unusual ingredient to its two-pound detergent box in Brazil: a GPS device that allows its promotions agency Bullet to track shoppers and follow them to their front doors.
Starting next week, consumers who buy one of the GPS-implanted detergent boxes will be surprised at home, given a pocket video camera as a prize and invited to bring their families to enjoy a day of Unilever-sponsored outdoor fun. The promotion, called Try Something New With Omo, is in keeping with the brand’s international “Dirt is Good” positioning that encourages parents to let their kids have a good time even if they get dirty.
Omo accounts for half of Brazil’s detergent sales and is already found in 80% of homes there, so Unilever’s goal is more to draw attention to a new stain-fighting version of Omo and get it talked about rather than looking for a big increase in sales.
That made the idea of doing a promotion where the prize finds the consumer, rather than the consumer having to look for the prize — and maybe not bothering — appealing.
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Comments
Boycott every product with RFID or GPS. Then tell the media that take their advert money that you won't be watching or listening to them either.
Just what we need, purveyors following us right to the front door. Why don't we implant a chip in every one of us so that every company, government agency and terrorist organization that would like an encounter with one of us can just home right in.
Don't buy a nickel's worth of product from those buffoons.
Yes,you can call us crazed conspiracy theorists if you like — but those of us who believe the New World Order is coming, to usher in the Antichrist, and his global government control and persecution of all who do not agree with him, have been saying for years that RFID and GPS will be the tools for one world government and tracking/control of the populace. Amusing little soap story — laugh away. Aint it cute.
How do you disable a RFID chip. I assume they are to small to see. Would running the box of OMO through the microwave oven for a minute be enough to kill it?