Authentic Truths

I have this immense desire to meet someone who has won the lottery, but I have an even greater desire to know someone who has won one of those ad contests like the ones on margarine lids or in toothpaste boxes.

It’s been a while now that I play the lottery every time the prize of the mega-sena exceeds 10 million. I made an official statement that if I win I will not keep a penny for myself. I just want to make sure that it is in fact possible to win that prestigious game.

I’m also going to buy in on the next one of these “truck Faustão” sweepstakes from TV Globo. Before my departure from this life to another, I intend to eliminate these two curiosities.

Back in 1948 and 1950, in front of the house where I lived, there lived a lady named Fiuca who, although unmarried, out of our curiosity, had half a dozen children. At home, our daily soap for bathing was the same bar soap that’s used for the clothes washing. For our birthday presents from our older sisters we got a miniature Lever soap that we kept for the religious holiday festivities. At Fiuca’s house they used Lifebouy, which was even more fragrant smelling. Even today, more than 60 years later, I can still go back and smell the soap from the buckets of water chucked out the window of where the neighbor’s boys took their baths.

At that time there was a legendary rumor going around that said that the Lifebouy soap company offered a brand new car as a prize for whoever found the key inside one of their soap bars. Time passed and in early 1960, I moved to Belo Horizonte. In the following years here in the capital and legend continued. Now it was said that the key was to a Volkswagen sedan, the popular Volkswagen Beetle.

The belief was so strong that it was common to go to drugstores and grocery stores and find a tiny hole punched in all the soap bars where it’s said that the employees discretely skewered with a fine needle in hope of striking that precious piece of metal.

We had a roommate who was this super cheapskate, and whose dream was to get rich. Let’s just say in passing that he is now in fact rightfully and filthy rich. Those days in the pensions, hostels, hotels and fraternity houses, the residents became close friends and had access to each other’s rooms and closets.

One time, a friend of our fellow “cheapskate” came into his room, carefully opened the soap bar and cleverly so introduced to perfection the ignition key to a Beetle. Half a dozen colleagues were already in on the gag and everyone waited attentively in silence. Then one fine day, while in the shower, our friend felt the tip of the metal key. He could simply not contain the euphoria, and the first thing he did was run to tell the author of the prank. They discussed excitedly and hurried to a nearby pharmacy. Since everyone believed in the urban legend, the store employees to their own bafflement gave even more credibility to our game.

The matter ended up in Mila, the only distributor of Volkswagen vehicles in Belo Horizonte at the time, and was taken to the attention of Dr. Moacyr de Oliveira Carvalho who was the owner of the dealership. It seems that even his employees believed in the story.

Upon the unraveling of the lie, our friend turned into a beast. For several days he did not speak with most of the fellow guests, except with his big buddy who was the sole mastermind and architect of the mockery. After this one, I hope someone tells or reminds us of other marketing myths, so well engineered that they seemed like authentic truths.