The Whole Idea

How does one get people to ask for Official Receipts? In general, we rarely ever think about ORs. We accept whatever the storekeeper or restaurant owner or doctor or whoever gives us - whether that is an "official" receipt or just one of those "acknowledgement receipts" sold in a National Bookstore.

The BIR has been at pains to try and get people to ask for ORs - it's been one of their longstanding campaigns. Some years ago, they came up with a promo: send in your OR and they would then put all these into a tambiolo and draw out winners. They received so many entries that they had to put them all into a pool-sized corral in some mall and get a poor dignitary to swim through all the entries to pick out the winner.

Two years ago, they came up with a better idea: use an electronic tambiolo and get entries via text. The program was called "I-text Mo Ang Resibo" and it generated a few million entries. The dampeners were that texters were asked to register first and the prizes weren't too hot - P25,000 was the typical grand prize. After running for a few months, the BIR scuttled the program.

This year, R came up with the idea of increasing the prize money to a few million pesos plus lowering the text cost from P2.50 to P1.50. He got PAGCOR and DOF Secretary Gary Teves to support the idea - and voila! - suddenly Premyo Sa Resibo was being launched with all the print media fanfare one could muster.

The PLDT head honchos were some of the first to support the program, agreeing to the reduced text cost which was a total 180-degree flip from their usual VAS arrangements. Based on the estimates, millions would text in daily and the text revenue would provide enough funds to cover advertising and marketing plus enough prize money to fund five P1 million prizes weekly, starting August 1, 2006.