(This is the Online column, written for The Southland Times)
I’m only human so, naturally, I love nothing more than a nice juicy scandal and goat-gate is shaping up to be just that.
Need a goat? Then have I got a deal for you!
I recently stumbled upon a wee news story about Mitsubishi coming up with what at first glance appeared to be a novel promotion: buy a Triton ute before August, get a free goat.
Sounds pretty straightforward, right? Well, maybe not. I mentioned it on my blog because I thought it was a cute promotion and I quite like goats. I mean, really, what’s not to like?
A couple of kindly visitors to my site then pointed me in the direction of a You Tube video where the the dastardly dealings were detailed. The bloke in the video a bloke by the name of Mark Holloway, from Holloway Advertising talked about a Hamilton car dealer who came up with the goat concept first. Shock, horror: someone stole the goat idea?
I followed up with another post to my blog, this time pondering the originality of Mitsubishi’s goat giveaway and came to the conclusion that while they were similar, there was at least one quite important difference: Mitsubishi is giving away several random goats but Ideal Cars has just the one, quite specific goat (her name’s Nanny, if you’re wondering) and everyone who buys a car goes into a draw to bring more goatly goodness into their life.
My second goat giveaway post prompted more comments, including one with links to other websites where goat-gate was being discussed and a story in the National Business Review, where a Mitsubishi spokesman was quoted as referring to the whole debate as a storm in a goat pen.
I might be sitting on the goat-pen fence but I reckon there are enough differences in the promotions to say no-one stole anything from anyone. Except perhaps the goat. Did anyone ask the goat if she wanted to be given away? Oh the humanity.
The goat-gate scandal looks like it’s not going away any time soon, with half a dozen emails about the drama hitting my inbox during the past few days. It’s a good thing I like goats.