Yuppiechef holds Woolies Lovebird ransom
Posted on 01. Feb, 2010 by Paul in Yuppiechef Diary
Update 14/02/2010: We hit R100,000!
Update 12/02/2010: Fin24 donates R10k & challenges others
Update 10/02/2010: Standard Bank Group gives Soil for Life R10,000
Update 09/02/2010: Sanlam Developing Markets donates R10,000
Update 05/02/2010: Philips donates R10,000
Update 02/02/2010: Woolies breaks down in tears
Latest press coverage (they’re having a field day)
So this weekend we were wandering through Woolworths and came across their exciting Woolies Lovebird competition, advertised throughout their national network of stores on big posters (thanks for the pic @TalyaGoldberg).
It really is an exciting competition, and we wanted in, so we went online to check it out: www.woolieslovebird.co.za… just as the poster says. But the URL was not registered. What they meant to write was www.woolieslovebirds.co.za. We can only assume that the hangovers from the Woolies New Year’s parties were the cause for this little oversight. So we did something sneaky: we registered it and now we’re holding it ransom.
To get it back, and have us point the address to their competition asap, we’re asking Woolies to match, rand for rand, all donations made towards our 2010 charity, Soil for Life, between now and Valentines Day (and to be nice, we’ll put a limit of R5000 on it). Sound good? Excellent. So we invite all our fans to go ahead and donate R25 or more to support a great cause and make Woolies pay or the lovebirds get it 
UPDATE: 2 February 2010: TOTAL R9,000
Woolies has broken down in tears and has begged for their lovebirds back. Not only have they agreed to pay the ransom, they have volunteered an extra R2500 towards Soil for Life! Even better, they’ve allowed us to hold onto the web address because they believe this is such a worthy cause – hooray! So donate now to save the lovebirds;)
And if you’re a real lovebird, fly away and be free: www.woolieslovebirds.co.za
UPDATE: 5 February 2010: TOTAL R50,600
After our interview this morning on 94.7 Highveld with Jeremy Mansfield, Philips South Africa got hold of us and said they would match a further R10,000 in donations! Thank you, Philips. We are moved. In addition to R5,000 donated by fans this morning since the show, KitchenAid South Africa lent their support and added R2,000 to the pot. If we added more exclamation marks to this paragraph it would start to look silly.
Total raised at the time of writing: R33,100 + R7,500 Woolies Ransom + R10,000 Philips contribution: R50,600!
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UPDATE: 9 February 2010: TOTAL R66,600
Sanlam Developing Markets called us this morning saying that they have just deposited R10,000 in our account towards Soil for Life! Thank you, Sanlam Developing Markets. Once again we are stunned by the generosity of people out there. Many other people have contributed in the last few days to raise our total to R66,000!
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UPDATE: 10 February 2010: TOTAL R79,000
Standard Bank Group (@StandardBankGrp) announced today on their blog that they are contributing R10,000 to Soil for Life! Incredible. Thank you Standard Bank Group. Read about it here: http://bit.ly/a716SJ. Total now R79,000.
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UPDATE: 12 February 2010: TOTAL R92,000
Just received a call this morning from Hayely at Fin24 (@Fin24) saying that they are going to donate R10,000 as well and put the challenge out there other companies in their industry to do the same! Here’s what they had to say:
Fin24.com challenge all media companies, and everyone linked to the industry including our readers, advertising and media agencies, PR companies and investor relations firms to, ahem, dig deep and see love, and gardens, blossom this Valentine’s Day through Soil for Life.
Wow! Total sitting at R92,000. 2 days to go…
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UPDATE: 14 February 2010: TOTAL R100,050
With 56 minutes to go before the close of Valentine’s day, the donations to Soil for Life from Yuppiechef fans hit the R100,000 mark. Absolutely incredible. For a project that started with a target of R5,000, we have been humbled by your generosity and support. Thank you Yuppiechef fans!
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Press Coverage
A big shout out to everyone in the press who has covered this story to date. The requests for interviews in print, radio and TV are coming in thick and fast. This is fantastic for Soil for Life, it’s fantastic for us and in a way it’s even pretty cool for Woolies. Anyone who needs more info can contact me (I am Paul) on media@yuppiechef.com. Here are a few of the highlights of the week.
Paul interviewed on Media & Money on CNBC Africa
Mashudu Masutha chats to Paul about the ransom.
94.7 Highveld’s Rude Awakening with Jeremy Mansfield
Jeremy interviews Paul and gives us a huge punt at the peak of rush hour traffic on Johannesburg’s biggest show.
Highveld 94.7 Jeremy Mansfield & Paul Galatis by Yuppiechef
Cape Talk: John Cherry breaks the story
Cape Talk 3/02/2010, John Cherry speaks about the Woolies Ransom by Yuppiechef
SAFM: Michelle Constant interviews Paul about the ransom
SAFM 6/02/2010, Michelle Constant interviews Paul about the ransom by Yuppiechef
Mail & Guardian Online
The Daily Maverick
Ambush marketers hold Woolworths to ransom, and get some lovin’ in return
My Digital Life
Woolworths Goes Web 2.0 For Valentine’s Campaign
Ideate
SA online retailer holds Woolworths to ransom
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A bit more about Soil for Life
Soil for Life are a wonderful bunch of people whose mandate is quite simply to ‘heal the soil, heal the plants, and heal the people’. Their main work is in under privileged communities where they teach people how to start their own home gardens, provide on-going support through a team of field workers and over time see them blossom into agricultural experts! Find out more
Related posts:
- That’s all folks, Happy Easter!
- Healing the soil and saving the world
- Supporting Soil for Life in 2010
- The Inaugural Chilli Growing Contest Kicks Off!
- @Collywolly speaks to Yuppiechef
Discuss this article
68 Responses to “Yuppiechef holds Woolies Lovebird ransom”
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02. Feb, 2010
[...] Woolies lovebirds held for ransom! 2 02 2010 I just found out about this very clever ‘david vs goliath’ match, where Yuppichef stumbled upon a typo error in Woolies’ latest instore campaign and held them to ransom! Here’s the low down from the Yuppichef blog: [...]
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02. Feb, 2010
[...] Courses « Best Kitchen Tools of 2009 Yuppiechef holds Woolies Lovebird ransom » We’re hiring: marketing assistant needed Written by Paul in Yuppiechef Shop [...]
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03. Feb, 2010
[...] registered the already publicised address. On Monday morning a ransom note was posted on the Yuppiechef blog with the dastardly news that Yuppiechef had kidnapped their [...]
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03. Feb, 2010
[...] I have donated a couple of bucks to the Red Cross and recently to Soil for Life, after some hostile initiative by the folks over at Yuppie [...]
NAICE!
Very clever campaign, but I believe the whole thing has been staged… Can’t believe that a company like Woolies would ‘forget’ to register a domain for a campaign… Let’s see if it the domain is changed to point to the website they should have built for this campaign or not
… I think it’s also a very clever way of Woolies using this idea to position themselves in the social media space as being so good natured… Very smart… it’s all for a good cause, so not knocking it… well done on an ingenious idea, but won’t be paying a ransom ‘fake’ kidnapping 
…
Go Yuppiechefs!!
Make the world better:-)) One good idea at a time…
Brilliant idea and thank you for giving us the chance to participate!
Paul, an absolutely fantastic (and very brave) idea. I think Woolies did the most unusual thing in going along with this. We all know how stuck-up Corporates can be and how they hate being proved wrong. No wonder Woolies is our favourite store and we miss it so much, being stuck here in Buenos Aires. Let’s open a Wooolies on the River Plate?
Hi Curious, so you don’t believe us huh? Fair enough
Here’s the scoop.
Woolies didn’t forget to register the domain for their competition. They registered the correct domain: http://www.woolieslovebirds.co.za. What happened is that when woolies designed their posters they made a typo and left the ‘s’ off the end of the address on the advertising material. They had never thought of registering http://www.woolieslovebird.co.za (without the ‘s’). That’s what we picked up on… and here we are. And Woolies have been super kind and let us keep the URL point here because they think the cause is worth it and they like the way we went about it. Nice hey?
Hope you believe us because it’s true!
@Yuppiechef, thanks for the background… OK, I believe you
. Glad it worked well for everyone all round.
Love your work guys and just made a little contribution to be part of this great cause…
My favourite part of it is that the domain name is still yours despite the ransom being paid. -Hooray for Yuppiechef and hooray for Woolworths’ great sport!
doing my usual scan through the daily maverick, i stumbled upon this fantastic story. there are some things, not too many, but a few that make me so proud to be part of the human race. i love every piece of this story – the importance of good copy editors, the intelligence of interested consumers, the speedy realisation of possibilities, the kindness and ‘business-wiseness’ of corporations, the triumph of NGO’s over a possible selfish onlooker, the lovely overall humour, the obligatory sceptics and most of all, the heartwarming abundance of readers who enjoyed hearing about this as much as i did.
well done to all, truly. this has been the most fantastic start to my week and i hope it sets the tone to the rest of the year. here’s hoping this triggers a large spike in donations that does not drop for a long time to come.
proudly south african indeed
wow, i shall be smiling every time I manage to squeeze this story into conversation, hopefully initiating even more donations. filled with smiles at the moment
Paul
Thanks for the call yesterday, Had just been talking to @Rubygold at classic FM about this the day before.
Its a very cool story and its amazing to hear how much money you have managed to raise for charity, how much publicity you got for your business and how much has been generated for woolies.
I will blog about it – and it will go into my digital strategy course as a local case study.
Well done to Woolworths for going with the flow on this one. It must have raied their “cool” kudos significantly! Great idea.
It has been so cool following and taking part in this amazing “crime of passion” You guys all rock.
Woolies and Yuppiechef making us love to be South African, I can imagine what this whole thing could have turned out like if it was in America or Europe. Lawyers for both sides would bespending sleepless nights trying to nullify each other’s actions in court. But here in Mzansi we have brands like Woolies and Yuppie chef who can manage to create positive outcomes out of the whole situation-now that’s the real “ubuntu” we always talk about as South Africans!
This is just brilliant all around!
Hey. Has anyone thought to give Woolies a thumbs up vote for this on helloPeter?
i actually heard you on highveld. i was chuffed to say the least (why? well because I had a personal email from you guys…does that make me famous also?) . so glad it all turned out well. hugs always.
JT
xxx