Sunday, October 5, 2008

Oct 4, Saturday

Meet up with the usual clique of friends, namely Tb, Mk and Hx. Upon reaching Jurong Point promptly at about 6:15pm, I was greeted with a booth giving away free Coca Cola Zero!

At first, I only heard the announcement and was very curious about it. Then I saw lots of people went to the booth and just grabbed a can of it. They had already opened up the cans for us to conveniently drink from it.

Lots of empty cans collectors from all walks of life came here to gather up. The construction workers from the nearby work site form a circle and each of them has a can in their hand. Even the purple coloured MRT staff came out to take a few cans for their colleagues. The nearby drinks stalls were of course furious about the booth being set up. I, of course, abandon my clique of friends and went ahead to get the coke zero without them.

Then I thought about it and felt that there was something fishy going on. There is no such things as free in Singapore. I did a search and it shows...

"98% of Singaporeans will try a product when a sample are given out, and 86% of those who try will buy it again".

So Coca-cola believes that by giving away free samples, more Coke Zero will be sold here. Whereas in Britain, only 66% of those who sampled went on to buy Coke Zero.



Singapore: 52th Country to Carry Coke Zero
According to the above report, Coke Zero had been launched in 51 countries since 2005 and sold "almost 2.5 million litres" within 18 months. 2.5 million litres is about 7 million (12 fl oz) cans or 1.25 million (2 litres) bottles. Let's say Coca-Cola sells each can of Coke Zero for US$.50, 7 million cans will generate a paltry revenue of US$3.5 million.

If the figures published in The Straits Times are correct then I think not many people like Coke Zero and is not selling well so they decided to give away free samples in Singapore.

Artificial Sweetener May Cause Cancer
Ask yourself what is it that they put in to replace the sugar? Artificial sweeteners!

Adapted from http://wassup.myblog.sg/2008/03/11/trial-driven-marketing-coke-zero/

Hmm, ok, lets pass this as it was free anyway. After that, we went to purchase tickets for the movie, Connected.

Connected



You know what? I actually didn't wanted to watch this movie as I thought it was a normal cop's shooting, kidnappers, car chasing action kind of movie. I felt that it wasn't a must watch movie in my list. However, I went ahead.

And to think I actually love it, in fact every part of it. I usually dismiss action movies because they are very noisy and ain't interesting. But this one, Connected, has injected many funny scenes to it. Not to forget the main leads, Louis Khoo and Barbie Tsu.



I know there is a American version of Connected and my friends told me that the Hong Kong version had some changes.

Spoilers!

I especially like the part whereby Barbie Tsu kidnapped and repaired a smash telephone and use it to randomly called Louis Khoo, which was a stranger. Imagine someone called you and told you that she was being kidnapped. Your first reaction would likely be "why don't you call the police?"

Since the phone is smashed, there is no way people could dial numbers to call the police hotline. She use the two major wires to randomly strike against each other to dial some numbers. And the first half of the story is about how the two leads talked to each other over the phone, locating the kidnappers and retrieve things.

It was a very intense movie and I was enjoying the movie throughout.

After the movie, we went to IMM to have long john silver. I wondered how many months had I been missing LJS. We walked to my house and played dai dee.

Remember the last week I mentioned about the jinx spot? This week, Mk sat on it and was the sole winner of the game. He won $22 and the other 3 lost, including me. And I hereby conclude that there is NO SUCH THINGS as jinx spot!

by Anonymous at 3:28 PM |