Coca Cola will pay her 100k to stay off her phone for an entire year, and she is more than half way home
Elana Mugdan is a millennial’s millennial.
She’s single, in debt, and recently moved back in with her parents in Queens, N.Y. She works part-time jobs while writing fantasy novels. She’s blocked the president on Twitter (TWTR) and, despite her parlous financial condition, she hopes to eventually be in a position to donate to a charity fighting global warming.
But if she can last another four months without a smartphone, she’s looking at a fat payday of $100,000 courtesy of the Coca-Cola Co. (KO)
“I [will] have to take a lie detector test,” she says. “Because I’m an extremely anxious person, I’ve been very rigid with the rules.”
Last winter, Mugdan won the “No Phone For A Year” contest run by Coca-Cola’s Vitaminwater. She’s agreed to go a year without using a smartphone or any similar device, like a tablet. She’s stuck with a flip phone.
She’s two thirds of the way through the challenge: It began in February. She’s looking good for the payoff. “I’ve detoxed completely from the smartphone and I don’t need it,” she says. “The biggest challenge I’ve faced in the contest is other people pushing their phones at me. People are always trying to show me their phones.”
GM