Announcing: Pantene Ambassadrice 2007

As promised, here is the final Pantene update:

Sandrine is their 2007 Ambassadrice.

Congratulations to a lovely lady, and many thanks to all who joined me in voting for Virginie.

In the end, it was all about who could drum up the most *clicks*. I suppose Pantene designed it that way, just hoping that they could get the maximum number of individuals to visit the site daily and think positively about Pantene.

One time I scanned a couple of discussion groups (in French) and found it interesting to peek in on analysis from people with no vested interest in who wins. They discussed the ladies' hair, their photos, their personalities, and who was--in their supposedly objective opinions--most appropriate to represent Pantene to Belgium in publicities and ad campaigns. It was intriguing.

By the way, one of my readers told me off-blog that they worried that Isabelle might have felt bad about having the lowest voter turnout. I don't know exactly what happened, but I did notice one day early in the voting process that her votes leaped way ahead of the other two ladies' (unnaturally fast and unnaturally high) and then plummeted a day later. I wondered--and this is mere speculation--if someone may have clicked and clicked and clicked, not realizing that they were only supposed to vote once a day. And I wondered if the computer program then penalized her, or at least erased the extra votes? Who knows? Maybe it was a well-intentioned aunt with time on her hands clicking happily away thinking she was helping her out? Whatever it was, Isabelle's votes never recovered from that blow.

Again, it was fun to participate and promote the possibility of a Virginie win. Now that the prize money is going to be sending Sandrine off on her tropical vacations, I wish I had a spare 3000 dollars to donate to the Burundi project, but at the moment I don't.

Perhaps it could be a good long-term project for my kids--to start saving up spare change in a jar for Burundi. We've certainly talked more about Burundi in our house since this contest. And in that regard, I have to say that Virginie's "Pantene dream" did do some good: she raised awareness for the project, which was one of her goals.

Thanks, Virginie.