PinkPau's slaves subordinates would like to present: OPS Kentang!

Whew, after a week’s worth of scheming brainstorming, coming online at odd hours and checking e-mails 59568331347523 times a day, we, team B.U.M.P (Bloggers United for Mister Potato, formerly known as Group D) would like to present you with - OPS Kentang!

Updated: I just had to steal this picture from Mr. B's blog cos its soooo cute! This is the costume we're gonna wear when we win all 30 tickets to Old Trafford :P

Before I reveal our grand scheme, here’s a little recap of the requirements of our contest:

As mentioned in my introductory post, Mister Potato is currently running a contest, whereby 30 lucky people will win an all expense paid trip to Old Trafford, home of the Manchester United football team. Each of these tickets are worth RM15,000!

The rules of this contest are simple; all you need to do is collect as many Mister Potato Limited Edition bags or canister seals between 1st June to 30th October 2008, and mail them in at the end of each month to be in the running for their monthly prize (or you could just mail everything in at once if you prefer). Each bag/seal is worth a certain number of points (click here to visit the Mister Potato Contest Page for more details), which will be tabulated at the end of the contest. The 30 people with the highest score win! In addition, the top 5 scorers will each receive an additional cash prize of RM5000!

How could you say no to prizes like that? Just collect, mail, and win!

Collect

Mail

Win!
Now, on with the plan! One thing I loved about working with my team mates is their enthusiasm. All of them were so eager to come up with ideas and suggestions to help win this contest. However, that’s not to say we didn’t face any challenges. In fact, our biggest challenge was the scattered geographical locations of each of the members of our team.
Pink Pau – Kuala Lumpur
Bryan – Petaling Jaya
Ping Ping – Penang
Jeffrey – Sabah
Clare – Sarawak
Me – Timbuktu Rhode Island, USA
This prevented us from meeting in person for long, lengthy discussions of our plan, which I’m sure some teams would have managed. I felt so bad for requiring my team mates’ plans to accommodate my geographical distance, and I definitely didn’t want to be the weakest link.

In addition to that, we also faced another big problem:
How am I supposed to help my team win all 30 tickets to Old Trafford if I don’t have access to Mister Potato to begin with?

Team member Bryan had come up with a pretty awesome plan, but we ran into some glitches along the way. However, we still have him to thank because if not for his initial game plan, the light bulb for our final strategy wouldn’t have gone off in my head:

*Ding ding ding!!!!*
See these pictures?



Most of us have probably watched similar scenes on television countless times, never giving it a second thought. But when you actually come to think of it, donuts and the US police seem to go hand in hand. It is almost as if they have some sort of a symbolic (synonymous?) relationship. THAT, my friends is the main source of inspiration for our REVOLUTIONARY idea...

Not only did we come up with a plan to win all 30 Old Trafford tickets for ourselves, we’ve gone a step further to create a marketing campaign for Mister Potato that will change their brand and the history of Malaysia forever!

*DRUM ROLLS*

Ta-da! Polis Diraja Malaysia + Mister Potato = Love!

We are proposing that Mister Potato sponsor our Polis Diraja Malaysia with free Mister Potato chips throughout the course of their “Snack Your Way to a Live Match in Old Trafford” contest! The plan is to provide each police officer with 10 packets and 5 tubes of Mister Potato each month, both as a morale booster to our police force and also to gain free publicity!

As mentioned above, our inspiration came from the product association of donuts and Police in the United States. We hope to achieve the same recognition with our proposal to Mister Potato - that is, when we think of the Polis Diraja Malaysia’s favorite snack, we think of Mister Potato!

This next slogan + banner is also US donut-inspired (a VERY famous brand). Try searching on Google, I’m sure you’ll find it ;)

So, why should Mister Potato provide free potato chips to our Polis as part of their promotional campaign when they can just advertise the contest and wait for die-hard Man-U fans to buy lots and lots of chips?

Well, because all the other teams will probably be doing the same thing and we want to think out of the box!!!

How our plan would benefit the Mister Potato brand:

• As it is, Mister Potato is already pretty much a household name in Malaysia. This sponsorship would boost its public image by leaps and bounds – Mister Potato is a civic conscious brand, recognizing the efforts of our Polis Diraja Malaysia.

• In fact, they can even boast this new slogan: “Mister Potato – Helping to make Malaysia a Safer Place!” So cool! Then the logo of Mister Potato can wear a police cap instead of his big Mexican hat for promotional purposes :D

• It would definitely be the talk of the town! No other advertising campaign would be as effective because it is the first time in history such a partnership has ever been attempted. Just imagine all the news coverage they would get!!

• This would be cheaper than a full-scale, nationwide advertising campaign on TV, Newspapers, Billboards, etc. for 5 consecutive months…

• Existing distribution systems can be utilized with minimal or no extra delivery costs. Mister Potato delivery trucks could just drop off the Polis’ monthly supply of potato chips at designated stores or hypermarkets close to the police stations in that area while they are doing their rounds, then a representative of the station can go collect it.


As a reward for coming up with this genius idea for Mister Potato and getting free snacks for the Polis, all that we ask in return is sole permission to collect the bags and seals from them using our own resources.

Therefore, on our part, the challenge is not to collect bags and seals as many seals as we possibly can, it is HOW we will collect them. This is where team work and our scattered geographical locations come in handy.

Here is how our duties have been split:
Team Leader/Chief Communications Officer / General Manager – Pink Pau
Role: To Provide guidance, leadership and moral support to all members of the team
*click here to see what she has to say*

Chief Operations Officer – Me
Role: Developing the plan and facilitating the execution of it

Regional Manager (North Peninsula) – Ping Ping
*click here to see her side of the story*

Regional Manager (South Peninsula) – Bryan
*click here to see his side of the story*

Regional Manager (Sabah) – Mr. Badak
*click here to see his side of the story*

Regional Manager (Sarawak) – Clare
*click here to see her side of the story*


In summary, assuming the happening people at Mister People agree that our plan is genius, we will definitely win all 30 tickets to Old Trafford because:

Now, what do you think? Is our plan kentang-licious or what?
Support OPS Kentang today - Buy more Mister Potato!