Drinks promotions reach new heights

SMALL PRINT:SOME PEOPLE are just happy with a free pint, but drinks promotions have stepped up a notch in order to get people into bars, and then to get them to drink the product in question.

Budweiser recently launched its “ice-cold index” promotion (which never really took off), promising discounted beer depending on changes in the weather. Now Bulmers are upping the ante, offering a massive 30,000 free flights to the European “style capitals” of Barcelona, Paris, Lisbon, Edinburgh, Madrid, Stockholm and Milan.

The promotion is running at 150 venues around the country, with 200 flights up for grabs in each venue for one night only.

Buy a pint bottle of light cider, get a code, text it to a number, get another code back, log on to a Facebook page, and see if you’ve won a free return flight (including taxes.) Phew.

Publicans have been joking that pretty soon people will be paid to go to nightclubs and bars, such is the number of drinks promotions, free drinks and other offers taking place in venues across the country.

Emigration jokes aside, offering free flights to drinkers certainly seems to have hit the top of the promotion mania scale.