World's most outrageous Product Promotions

Enter half-naked and leave fully dressed: On January 2, 2012 hundreds of customers lined up outside the store of Spanish brand Desigual at their Regent Street store dressed only in their underwear. No matter what the weather is the customers will have to wait in a queue only in their undergarments. The first lucky 100 in the queue will walk away with a free outfit (one top, one bottom). The customers will get an hour shopping spree to pick out the perfect outfit, plus 50% across the store on all summer collections, a great reward for embarrassing themselves. A fair trade for the humiliation, especially as this stunt goes down at 9 am on one of the busiest streets in London,

But as a brand Desigual is renowned for its fun loving philosophy and bold collections, this is a great way to get noticed. When they first did this ‘Enter half-naked and leave fully dressed’ event in Barcelona in 2006 hundreds of people turned out and the craze has since been hosted in Madrid, New York, and Amsterdam, and as well as London Berlin and Stockholm

Giving Away Cars free – Oprah Style: On 23^rd November 2010, TV host Oprah Winfrey gave away free her studio audience 275 Volkswagen New Beetles Monday as part of "Oprah's Favorite Things" promotion. Unfortunately, her audience members could get their cars immediately as Winfrey gave them 2012 New Beetles. At that time the new version of the iconic curvy little car has not yet been revealed to the public.

On the show, Winfrey showed only a silhouette of the new Beetle. Winfrey owns and drives a New Beetle and approached the automaker to arrange giving away the cars on her show. Volkswagen was only too happy to oblige the TV queen. Volkswagen donated all the cars, plus money to cover taxes and fees for all of the audience members,

In 2004, Winfrey gave 276 Pontiac G6 cars to her audience. At that time audience members were able to go out to the parking lot and inspect their cars immediately.

Giving Away Cars free – Daewoo style: In late 1995, Daewoo India the company that made Daewoo cars in India realized that it needed to give its flagship model Cielo a strong push to improve the sales. The company devised a innovative promotional campaign, called the ‘Diwali Bonanza scheme’ for corporates, offering one Cielo free on purchase of every ten cars.

This was followed up with a lottery scheme for individuals, wherein the winner was awarded a car. But it led to customers to look at the car with suspicion.

To top it all Cielo announced a test drive scheme to lure the buyers in April 1997. The scheme entitled all car owners to participate in a draw where 200 Cielos were given to the winners for 18 months. On completion of this period, the winners had the option of either buying the car by paying 70%of its original on-road price or returning it to Daewoo. The company claimed to have successfully tried out this scheme in the UK and Korea earlier. The scheme was intended to enhance Cielo’s credibility in the marketplace. However, the low finance rates and the test drive schemes faced the same criticism the free Cielo scheme did. These effectively doomed the fate of Cielo in India. It got branded as a cheap car that no one really wants and finally exited out of India.