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Win some bling!

By Juliette Thomas on May 30, 2012

Win some bling

Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock for the last few months, you’ll be very much aware that the Diamond Jubilee weekend is almost upon us.

To help you get into the celebrations we’ve decided to tell you about a few promotions we’ve come across on the ‘net (all with a Jubilee theme, of course).

Diamonds are a girl’s best friend apparently so we’ll start with the ones where you could land yourself (or your better half) a fabulous big sparkler – one of which is worth a whopping £10k!

Blue Nile has a very glam Signature Round Diamond up for grabs – if you fancy landing yourself something shiny head on over there now.

Just by saying why you deserve a gorgeous, glittering jewel, you could win a glamorous diamond worth £1,000 courtesy of Carmen Reid.

Metro radio is running a fun promotion where the person in possession of the ring at 6pm on Friday 1st June gets to keep the Princess Cut loose diamond worth £2700! Think ‘pass the parcel’ but with a significantly more exciting prize up for grabs.

And the diamond of all diamonds is being offered by Tatler.  Worth a stunning £10k, and with a simple prize draw mechanic, you’d be off you rocker not to enter.

If you’re in the Southwell area in Nottingham be sure to check out this promotion to win a cash prize.  All you need for your chance to win is keep your peepers open for anything strange in the local shop windows …

For the fashionistas out there you could win yourself 12 fabulous Jubilee inspired dresses courtesy of Fuse Fashion (no relation).

And if you think you’ll need help recovering from all the Jubilee celebrations you might want to try to win yourself a little TLC courtesy of Spa Finder.

Finally not forgetting our younger readers … you could win a Kindle, laptop or Nintendo by taking part in this creative competition. Or if you think you have a tea cup design fit for the Queen then check out this competition.  The winning design will be put into production and presented to Her Majesty!

And as Spark & Fuse aren’t linked in any way to these promotions  for once we’re allowed to enter!  The £10k diamond has Fuse’s name all over it …

My name is Igglepiggle…

By Sarah Burns on May 28, 2012

We’ve been giving away prize tickets for In the Night Garden Live and making lots of children across the UK very happy, so I was chuffed to receive some complimentary tickets to take my not-quite-three year old to the show, too. Although In the Night Garden is a mystery to me (the thought of being trapped on the Ninky Nonk fills me with horror) my son loves it, to him it’s hilarious.

in the night garden

We saw the show at the Showdome in London’s 02. When it started I felt a piece of my heart break just a tiny bit as the characters emerged on stage as PUPPETS. But they were only teasing us - a FULL-SIZE Igglepiggle quickly made his stage entrance to huge gasps from all the children. Much waving and shouting ‘hello’ followed, all of which actually brought tears to my eyes seeing my little boy so delighted and enchanted.

The show lasts an hour (there will be no plot spoiler in this account) and it’s most definitely a crowd pleaser. There’s storytelling, dancing and of course megaphone singing with Upsy Daisy. My son was utterly captivated for the whole performance. Spark and Fuser, Clair, came with us (she’s much older than three and hasn’t even seen the TV programme) and she loved it, too. It also makes a nice change to see something where the audience aren’t particularly well behaved or quiet… and are almost as entertaining as the show itself.

Thanks to Cameron for the tickets! www.nightgardenlive.com

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Whatever happened to the tie-breaker?

By Spark and Fuse on May 21, 2012

postal entries

Spark & Fuse desks circa 2006!

How the prize promotion landscape has changed! When we first started Spark & Fuse in 2006, Twitter was only a few months old, Facebook had been around for a couple of years but people used it mostly to poke each other and none of our clients had even considered either as a platform for prize promotions. In fact most of the projects on which we worked required postal entry only.

Every day the postman would drop off a bulging Royal Mail postbag, and we literally spent hours counting hundreds of thousands of postcards. It was admittedly not much fun. We also oversaw many a competition for which postal response was the only mechanism for entry. One year we received 32,000 posters drawn by school kids as part of an anti-bullying initiative – there were some very late nights (and tears) shortlisting those. And for many years, we helped to judge a Marks & Spencer Christmas shopping competition where customers had to complete a tie-breaker for a chance to win one of 25 £1,000 store vouchers. Each year on average we received about 12,000 entries and the crates of entries actually reached our office ceiling.

But it’s been years since this office has seen a tie-breaker! And what we mean by tie-breaker is complete a sentence or slogan in say, 25 words. It appears to have been replaced with far more creative and sophisticated competitions– thanks largely to social media platforms. We’re not sad to see them go – tie breaker competitions did generate a lot of very similar responses and the search for something truly original and clever was always incredibly difficult. Perhaps we’re not looking in the right places, or maybe they’re just a thing of the prize promotion past, along with sending in postcards… have you seen a tie-breaker competition recently? Let us know!

Oh to be a prize winner!

By Sarah Burns on May 18, 2012

Possibly the best bit of our job is contacting lucky winners to tell them of their good fortune. I once had to call someone to let her know she’d won £10,000. Needless to say, that took some time for her to digest. This week has been truly wonderful for winner notification. Firstly, we sent a tweet to the winner of our Jo Malone prize draw which we launched at Cybher – he was delighted. I then had to call nine mums to tell them their child had won a national story writing competition – not only do all the children win a prize for themselves (a zookeeper’s day at Paradise Park), each of their schools receives a £500 donation to fund new library books. They were all so chuffed and proud of their kids, I actually felt a bit tearful at one point. My favourite call this week was to a Jubilee party prize winner – she’d won £2k in food and drink to throw a party over the bank holiday weekend. I was so excited when I called it took some time for her to make sense of what I was trying to tell her.

We rarely get to tell prize winners face to face, so we can only imagine their reactions when we put down the phone. We can only hope that it’s a little bit like this …

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Are you a winner?

By Spark and Fuse on May 16, 2012

We have an amazing prize to give away – the problem is we can’t get hold of the lucky winner – we have emailed so many times now that we’ve actually lost count. Under the CAP code, there’s a 28 day notification period in which to contact a winner and if that person does not respond within this time frame, we have a further 28 days to try and get in touch with them. We are now coming to the end of the period – and it’s looking very likely that we’ll have to conduct a redraw because the winner hasn’t left any other contact details.

So our plea to everyone that enters prize draws and competitions is please check your email or listen and reply to phone messages. Perhaps our emails go into your junk folder? Perhaps you think we’re trying to sell you something when we leave a message on your mobile? Please don’t be surprised to receive a notification (occasionally) that you’ve won!

We hate to think you’ve gone to all the trouble (and sometimes expense) of entering a prize draw only to miss out on actually claiming it. And so would our clients, because ultimately they run prize promotions to reward their customers.

Do let us know if you have any thoughts on how we can communicate with winners more successfully.

Cybher – presentation overview

By Spark and Fuse on May 13, 2012

CYBHER SPEAKER BADGE

Here’s an overview of what we covered at Cybher 2012 for anyone that missed it, and for those of you who’d like to see the points again.

We are not electricians

All UK Marketing Communications must be legal, decent, honest and truthful. A prize promotion is a marketing communication.

Name your prize promotion correctly – a competition requires an element of skill while a prize draw/giveaway is a game of chance and winners are chosen randomly.

Under the Gambling Act 2005 it is illegal to charge people an inflated price to enter a prize draw or to pay an entry fee. It is within the law to charge people to enter a competition as long as there is a genuine element of skill. ‘Where do Florida Oranges come from?’ – is an example of a competition question for which there is no element of skill.

There is a code for UK Marketing Communications written by the Committee of Advertising Practice and applied by The Advertising Standard Authority – it’s called The UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing and is known as the Cap code. It’s recognised by the courts, OFT and Government and the established means of consumer protection in non-broadcast media. All prize promotions must adhere to the code.

The ASA’s digital remit covers non-paid for space. This includes Facebook, Twitter, websites and blogs. Anyone can complain to the ASA about a prize promotion that is not conducted properly.

This is a real example of a response to a compliant made to the ASA. It will remain on the ASA’s website forever ‘Bentleys of Blackpool stated they had withdrawn the competition because the first winners had left the guest house unimpressed and they did not wish to offer prizes to such people and therefore cancelled the competition’

You can download a copy of the code for free from www.cap.org.uk

Facebook also has its own set of regulations for how prize promotions can be run. These are in addition to the CAP code. You can find them here www.facebook.com/promotions_guidelines.php

It is not acceptable to like something on a wall as a means to entering a prize draw on Facebook.

Rafflecopter facilitates prize draw – but that is all. It is a US application.

Think about who can and can’t enter your prize promotion. Do you really want to send a prize to Hawaii?

Include a closing date and time. And don’t change it once the promotion is live.

State how many prizes you are giving away and make it clear what is, or isn’t included.

Creative competitions require judging criteria. Stating the winner will be the ‘best’ entry is not enough information for anyone to understand what the judges will be looking for.

Pick winners appropriately – draws should be conducted randomly by a person who is independent to you and the results verified. Competitions should be judged appropriately by an independent person with related experience in the subject of the competition.

A real example of how prize draws should not be conducted: ‘I was given some tickets to LEGOLAND. I kept three for myself then picked winners within a reasonable distance from my office so they could come and collect their prize tickets’.

Post promotion, don’t give away entrants details or contact them for any reason other than prize fulfilment, unless you have their permission to do so. Check to see if you should register with the Information Commissioners Office to store entrants data www.ico.gov.uk

We love prize promotions and just want everyone to understand how to conduct them well.

For great inspiration on how to run fun comps and prize draws from your blog, take a look at our Cybher session host Di Coke’s blog.

Thank you.

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Win a Jo Malone candle at Cybher 2012!

By Spark and Fuse on May 11, 2012

You could win one of these at Cybher

We are running a prize draw at Cybher – retro style! Leave your business card or just scribble your name and contact details on a piece of paper and drop it into Di Coke’s hat at the end of our session. We’ll have a winner picked on Monday and  the candle with you by the end of the week. You’ll find us talking with Super Lucky Di from 11.05am in the big old Ballroom about how to run really brilliant prize promotions from your blog.

See you then!

Terms and conditions: Prize draw open to all Cybher 2012 attendees aged 18 years and over, and resident in the UK. To enter the prize draw, leave your name and contact details in the Spark & Fuse hat at the ballroom between 11.20am and 12.10pm on Saturday 12th May 2012. Only one entry per person. No responsibility can be accepted for entries which are not received in the hat for whatsoever reason. The winner will be drawn at random by an independent person on Monday 14th May 2012. The winner will be notified by twitter, email or phone within 2 days of the closing date. If the winner cannot be contacted within a further 28 days, the prize will be forfeited and a redraw will take place. The prize is a Jo Malone candle worth £38 of the winner’s choice from the Home Range. The prize must be accepted as offered. There is no cash or alternative prize. In the event of unforeseen circumstances, promoter reserves the right to offer an alternative prize of equal or greater value. The promoter’s decision is final and binding. No correspondence will be entered into. Entry implies acceptance of these terms and conditions. Winner’s  name available 28 days after closing date. Send an email to bright.sparks@sparkandfuse.com. The promoter is Spark & Fuse Marketing.

Only two sleeps until Cybher …

By Spark and Fuse on May 10, 2012

Three Ladies

Only two sleeps until Cybher 2012! We’ve polished our talk (and our shoes) and now we’re feeling excited (and actually quite a bit nervous) about the big day. We’re so excited and honoured to be included in such an impressive line up of speakers.

In keeping with the title given to us by @Geekisnewchic as ‘Competition Gurus’ we want to make sure that everyone who comes to hear us talk leaves with lots of best practice advise and the confidence to run a prize promotion properly. We’ll have some handy postcards with top tips for you to take away, too. We’re looking forward to meeting Di Coke as we’ll be taking the stage with her and we can’t wait to meet all our Twitter friends!

Love Spark & Fuse x

Cybher Meet and Greet

By Spark and Fuse on May 8, 2012

Cybher 2012 Meet and Greet
So here we are, just a few days away from Cybher, polishing our presentation and worrying about what to wear. We’ve completed our meet and greet so you know a bit more about us – look forward to seeing you all soon! 

Fuse

This is Fuse

   

Name: Juliette ‘Fuse’ Thomas
Twitter ID: @sparkandfuse
Blog: www.sparkandfuse.com/news
Height: 5ft 5
Hair: Brown 

Five things you should know about me:
1. I am Scottish
2. I once won a Landrover Freelander in a prize draw
3. I lived in Japan for a year
4. I love travelling and have just returned from Beijing where I was offered cricket, tarantula or scorpion for my tea
5. It’s a popular misconception that I am a Bruce Springsteen fan
 

 

Spark

This is Spark

  

Name: Sarah ‘Spark’ Burns
Twitter ID: @sparkandfuse
Blog: www.sparkandfuse.com/news
Height: 4ft 11
Hair: Brown (with help) 

Five things you should know about me:
1. I used to be a Thai kickboxer
2. I once left my baby at the dentist (not intentionally)
3. I love MGM musicals and named my son after the legendary Gene Kelly
4. I am very envious of anyone that can breakdance
5. I have absolutely no sense of direction and frequently get lost even with a map, GPS system or any other direction-helping device.