A product claim stated in an ad is a promise. Build that claim into the discount mechanic and it becomes proof. The price might respond to how someone uses the product, how well it performs, the problem it solves or the result it delivers. Here are five tactics from the Discount Engine that turn product benefits into pricing variables and discounts into demonstrations.
- The Product Interaction Discount — the way the customer handles the product is the pricing variable
- The Product Proof Discount — prove the claim; the proof unlocks the price
- The Diagnostic Discount — the product reads its own condition; the discount reflects what it finds
- The Performance Discount — the customer's performance with the product determines the reward
- The Without-You Discount — the harder the world makes the alternative, the better the deal
1. The Product Interaction Discount
Make the physical interaction with the product the pricing mechanism — the more authentically the customer uses it, the better the deal.
KFC Shakin' Shakin' — KFC, Ogilvy & Mather / Gloo@Ogilvy, 2017, South Africa
KFC launched the Shakin' Shakin' Meal — snacks in a bag with flavoured sprinkles, mixed by shaking the bag — and needed a novel way to get a mobile-obsessed audience to trial it. They built a mobile ad that used the phone's accelerometer to mirror the product: the harder the shake, the more flavour was added to the ad visually, replicating the product ritual on screen before the meal had been ordered. At the end of the shake, a voucher was unlocked. The shaking was the ad, the product demo, and the discount entry mechanic simultaneously. Over a million views, more than five million shakes, and one of the most successful mobile ad campaigns ever at the time.
Focus Face Off (Goldfish, Zulu Alpha Kilo, 2021, Canada) launched Kravin' Ketchup Goldfish crackers with a Snapchat lens that required users to fix their attention on a Goldfish cracker on screen for exactly nine seconds — the duration of a goldfish's attention span — without blinking, tapping or looking away. The longer the focus, the higher the score and the better the discount. The product was the challenge, the product was the timer, and the product's own mythology was the mechanic.
2. The Product Proof Discount
Make the customer test the product claim — and let the result of the test set the price.
Drop Sales — Motorola Mobility, VMLY&R, 2017, USA
The DROID Turbo 2 was Motorola's first smartphone with a shatterproof screen — a claim that needed proving, not stating. VMLY&R partnered with WhatDropsNow.com and modified the site's code so products could only be unlocked on physical impact. Visitors had to drop their own phones to access the collection. The phone hitting a surface was the purchase trigger — a live product demo executed by the customer on their own device. 21% of visitors dropped their phones and unlocked the collection. 41% of those clicked through to purchase.
3. The Diagnostic Discount
The product reads its own condition — and the discount reflects what it finds.
Dancing Washers — Whirlpool, VML, 2025, Mexico
In Mexico, 71% of households own a washing machine but fewer than half maintain them properly. Whirlpool needed to drive e-commerce engagement and technical service requests without making the campaign feel like a maintenance lecture. VML found the brief inside a social media phenomenon: washing machines going viral for their spin cycle "dances." They built dancingwashers.com — users filmed or uploaded their machine in motion, and an algorithm analysed the vibration, matching it to a BPM from an extensive music library. The harder the dance, the more worn the machine, the bigger the discount on Whirlpool products and services. The machine diagnosed its own condition. The discount reflected the severity. E-commerce rose 47% during the campaign's most important sales season. Forty million impressions. Two hundred and fifty technical service requests — a historic increase — generated by customers who filmed their own machines and received a personalised assessment of what the footage revealed. See campaign ->
