Battle of the Cola Points Programs

As a graduating senior in college, I loaded up on "easy A" classes, and one of them was a marketing course taught by a former Coca-Cola executive. Aside from being an easy A, it was pretty interesting to see the psychology of advertising and how much it drives our lives.

I mean, look at rewards/points programs. Ever since we were seven years old and figured out that it cost our folks 50 times more to pay for those skee-ball tickets than it would have been to buy those stuffed animals and plastic spider rings, we knew that they're a way to get our compulsive sides to make other people lots of money.

But knowing that, I still collect the codes for the Coke and Pepsi rewards points--to the point that I'll dig through the recycling bin if my wife doesn't save them. And although you have to drink a hell of a lot of soda (or collect the codes from someone who does), I have gotten a couple of decent things from the Coke program: free product coupons and a nice NCAA basketball.

I'm relatively new to collecting the Pepsi points, but since the Mrs. prefers the anti-Coke, I'm stuck.

The biggest thing that annoys me with the Coke program is that it's built on Flash. Not only is the site always slow, it's a 10-min. affair to enter codes when I'm on a terminal connection. Plus, it sucks being bombarded with product, sweepstakes, and survey pop-ups. The designers there should be fired.

I like how the Pepsi Stuff program partnered with Amazon. Not only does it use a common sign-on with Amazon, but it's painless and quick to enter codes. I can actually use a Flash blocker and still enter them. Kudos for the DRM-free MP3's and DVD movie rewards. Yet, if I stop to think about it, I have flashbacks to the Chuck E. Cheese prize counter, considering the sheer volume of Pepsi I'd have to buy to get just one.

Got to go...it's time to dig through the recycling bin...and my neighbors...