News

Badly run competition equals PR disaster

By Spark and Fuse on September 12, 2011

A cautionary tale this week of how running a competition without due consideration can generate very bad publicity…

A well-known toy company recently launched a brilliant competition on Facebook promising to reward the winner with a big cash prize. The competition was judged and the winner notified. A week later, the winner was contacted again to say that the judges’ marks had been added up incorrectly and the winner was in fact not the winner after all and wouldn’t be awarded the big cash prize.
Unfortunately for the toy company, the winner was a professional comper with a well known blog which talks about all her experiences, good and bad. And so the PR disaster began… the toy company was trashed on Facebook, Twitter and comper websites.

Rightfully, the toy company then decided to award a cash prize to both the original winner and the new winner. But it was an expensive mistake to make given that advice on how to run the competition correctly in the first instance would have cost them less than the additional prize. And it’s not possible to put a cost on the damage to their reputation as the competition generated substantial criticism, which is a shame because they really do produce great toys.

If you’re thinking about running a competition and would like some advice on how to do it properly, drop us a line at bright.sparks@sparkandfuse.com.

British Council Chinese Speaking Competition

By Spark and Fuse on September 9, 2011

UK students show off Mandarin Chinese from British Council on Vimeo.

The British Council Chinese Speaking Competition launches today with a little help from Spark & Fuse. Sponsored by HSBC, the competition is open to UK secondary school students who are non-native speaking learners of Mandarin Chinese that have learnt the language from scratch. And for the lucky competition winners, there’s a trip to Beijing. It’s our second year assisting the British Council with this prestigious competition and we’ve been instrumental in ensuring all elements (from the entry procedure right through to the final) are fair and fully compliant with industry regulations. It’s a really exciting project with which to be involved and last year we were so impressed by the participants’ commitment to learning such a difficult language. For details of how to enter the competition, click here.

A Spark-ling Wedding

By Juliette Thomas on September 8, 2011

Spark and family

Our small but perfectly formed bride, Spark, looked beautiful at her equally small and perfectly formed wedding.  It was an intimate affair with a wonderfully relaxed atmosphere. As ever, Sarah’s attention to detail played a strong role with a gorgeous table setting, fabulous dress and delicious food.  And not every bride can boast four wedding cakes, which all went down a treat.