It is another of those hypocricy instances in our country. Allegedly, Ergo granted a little sex to their best salespersons. And everybody is outraged. Why? Because it is so terribly amoral? Because a social taboo has been violated?
Is it better if they go riding a GoKart or a bobsled? Or if they fly in a helicopter? Just because it costs more? Or is it better to issue nice invitations to a three-star restaurant? Go bowling together? Or attend a medical congress on Mallorca? Formel-1 or ice racing in Norway? Or the NY Incentive (USA) just for a briefing on the newest sales activities? Or rafting for creating a team spirit? Or whatever they offer?
Let me give you a businessman’s point of view.
Allegedly, they bought 20 prostitutes for one hundred top salespersons at the ERGO party. It is said that the prostitutes got one stamp – as a coupon worth money – for offering sex once (source – how nice: BILD!).
Well, I presume that 50 % of the guests accepted.
I reach this number by multiplying the number of prostitutes with the number of trransactinos per month. And then by dividing the number of sexually potent male individuals by the result. As an approximation, you can compute as follows:
Let us assume that a city has one million inhabitants. Less than half of the population is male, half of those are sexually active. That adds up to around 200,000 potential customers for prostitutes. Let us further assume that in said city around 1,000 females sell their services regularly and that they have an average of 100 transactions each month.
That would be 100,000 transactions each month on the whole. If the rhythm among the male population is an average of once a month, we get 100,000 users. Mind you, these numbers are all just approximations. Statistics are welcome!
So if every other man attending the party accepted the free ride, this would mean that the 20 prostitutes would have servd 50 men on the Ergo party. I assume that a prostitute in Hungary will get around 50.- € per count for this sort of “Quicky” (again, this is just a random number I am using, I will gladly let myself be corrected by more knowledgeable authorities). Since the Hungarians (still?) pay in Forint, it stands to reason that a clever insurance company like ERGO also took advantage of the currency exchange. That would mean 2.5 customers per lady or 125.- €. Well, nothing exciting about this, is there? And for ERGO, the total cost was 2,500 Euros.
But even if all men present had taken advantage of the offer, ERGO would still not have suffered great financial loss. They would have paid 5,000 Euros (50 € x 100 men – 250 Euros per lady at an average). Five thousand Euros is still a rather negligible amount of money for an incentive event offered to top salespersons.
I wonder what kind of commission you get, for instance, for selling a life insurance contract worth 250,000 Euros. Would 5,000 Euros be enough? Maybe not.
Not to mention the sums usually spent on these kinds of events.
Well, here we have it again: hypocricy. As soon as we are talking sex – even worse, sex for sale – everybody yells murder. The fact that insurances that do nothing but annoy the customers in the end are often sold is irrelevant. It is also quite normal that insurance salespersons are shady characters who occasionally have no problem selling things nobody needs is also accepted as quite normal. We have nothing to worry about even if we know full well how the sale of insurance contracts sometimes ruins entire lives. Shareholder Value is fine. Gambling raw materials is fine. Everything that will end with a profit is just fine.
But never, ever try to deduce sex as sales cost from the tax. That is the moment when all red sirens will start sounding on the philistine.
Sometimes I almost believe that the collective cry of “abomination” is more envy than anything else. Maybe some salespersons missed the ERGO party and now regret not having been there.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
P.S.
I read that Ergo terminated their advertising due to this episode. Riding my bike through Munich, however, I see Ergo adverts gleaming all over the place. I could almost believe that ERGO is secretly quite happy about now being the focus of attention. Maybe they even enjoy an increase of popularity! So – was it all just marketing? Perhaps viral marketing?
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