No Free Beer For You, You Greedy Lot

Last week I was quite excited about Budweiser's new Ice Cold Index app. Well it appears that an awful lot of other people were too because Budweiser apparently hadn't expected the app to be so popular and have temporarily pulled it. If you visit www.icecoldindex.ie now you're greeted with this message:


(Sorry about the poor quality image. Visit the site to get a clearer image)

So Budweiser are claiming that the unexpectedly large number of downloads crashed the servers I have heard that there are other reasons for removing the app but I haven't been able to find much else online about it so maybe I shouldn't add fuel to the fire. If you were that way inclined, though, you certainly could take a very cynical approach to the whole thing.

I have to say that despite my initial excitement I wasn't really impressed with the app in the few days that I did get to use it. Most days the temperatures the app gave were completely different to the actual temperatures. I had a look at the terms and conditions and saw that they take their readings at 12 noon each day - hardly the hottest time of the day and most likely a completely different temperature to pretty much any time during the afternoon or evening. I suppose they have to take the temperatures at some stage and can't really monitor or change them throughout the day but this is beginning to look more and more like a poor marketing gimmick rather than a genuinely creative and clever way of getting people to drink your beer.

Unless they can rescue it soon then it will ultimately have been a failed poor marketing gimmick, just one more in a long line.