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Making competition entries public – it’s a no go!

By Sarah Burns on July 25, 2012

We’ve seen a rise in creative competitions that request for entries to be pinned to Pinterest, or uploaded to a Facebook page or a website gallery. While it might not fit your marketing requirements, making competition entries public before the closing date breaches the CAP code – the rule book for how prize promotions in the UK must be conducted.

‘What? Why?’ you’re probably shouting (our best practise advice on this particular subject is generally met with some surprise). Put simply, competitions which are conducted in this way are unfair. If everyone can see entries as they are posted, the competition ceases to be a level playing field. Those people that enter at the beginning may have had an original idea but there will always be others that just use these entries for inspiration and submit a similar yet improved version, while some contestants will wait until just before the closing date to see what has already been submitted then use this to their advantage to upload something better and unique to improve their chances of winning.

The CAP code states that ‘Promoters must conduct their promotions equitably…. must avoid causing unnecessary disappointment.’

There is nothing equitable about a competition where everyone can see entries as they are submitted. It doesn’t matter if you’re asking contestants to upload a recipe, or a photo, or even just leave comment, if you are judging these entries against a set criteria, the principle remains the same. To avoid contestants complaining to the Advertising Standards Authority, or complaining loudly on social media sites and forums, ensure all entries to your competition are not received in an open forum. You can put them all online the minute the competition closes, even if they haven’t been judged.

Running a promotion on Facebook?

By Sarah Burns on July 11, 2012

No Likey

No Likey!

Not only must a prize promotion in the UK adhere to the CAP code, if it’s on Facebook, it must also meet regulations set by Facebook, too. And if you breach its terms, you could find your page is removed. And we don’t want that, do we! Not everyone is aware that Facebook has its own regulations, so we’ve put together a little summary which will help you to get it right.

First and foremost, you cannot run a prize promotion from your wall. Facebook stipulates that you must use a third party application to build and administer your promotion. This means you have to add a tab to your page from which your run the prize promotion. Don’t panic if this sounds like an enormous and expensive coding job. There are loads of apps online which you can download to help administer your prize promotion. Here are just a few: Wildfire, Snapapp, Strutta and Shortstack.

Once you’ve built this prize promotion platform, the only functionality you can use as a condition of entry is either liking the page, checking in to a place or connecting to your app.

What you can categorically not do is use liking your wall post, leaving a comment on your wall or uploading an image to your wall as a means of entry or condition of registration. And this is where most promoters fall foul of the regulations. You can ask entrants to do any of these things as part of the process but it cannot be the actual entry – entrants must leave their details via the lovely app you’ve built. Otherwise how can you tell the difference between someone just liking your page because they like it, or because they are entering your prize promotion?

To see the do’s and don’ts for yourself, the full regulations can be found here:  www.facebook.com/page_guidelines.php

Good luck with your prize promotion!

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.