Enter To Win

This annual contest by Canada’s most ubiquitous coffee brand has off-the-charts social media spin this year.  We’ve seen everything from simple blog posts, dedicated blogs, discussion forums and dedicated groups and applications within social networks.

If you’re a regular coffee drinker, this contest is hard to escape and easy to play.  In a cheeky move, Country Style, a Tim Hortons competitor, hijacked the contest by offering a free coffee for every losing Roll Up The Rim To Win cup.

While many players are complaining about infrequent wins, based on our speedy calculations the odds of winning a prize in the 2008 contest are virtually identical to the odds of the 2005 Roll Up The Rim To Win contest.

Roll Up The Rim To Win must be single-most popular contest in Canada in history.  We’re not about to search for stats to support this statement, but we’ll welcome any facts, figures, arguments, friendly or otherwise.

Our friends at PriceCanada.com currently have a contest that features a Facebook-specific component. The mode of entry for Facebook users is to add the PriceCanada application to your profile.

The promotion is straightforward and the PriceCanada.com application is a small, unobtrusive icon that positions itself discretely on the left side of the profile page. In terms of its function, the application is simply a link to the PriceCanada.com web site.

The contest also permits entries by way of installing a similar PriceCanada.com icon on blogs and web sites.

We’re interested to learn about this contest’s results.

This story has been covered by bloggers and traditional media alike simply because Canadian iPhone enthusiasts were looking for a hint of an announcement from Rogers. The anticipation is palpable, but for all the cracked iPhones that we’ve been seeing, how much of a frenzy is the official launch going to cause?

Back to the topic at hand–this Molson Dry contest. Molson’s Twist And Score contest launched October 1, 2007 and among the prizes offered was an Apple iPhone. Of course, many took this to mean that Rogers‘ iPhone launch announcement was imminent. A spokesperson at Rogers indicated that they knew nothing of this promotion and Molson has indicated that it was a mistake by their agency.

The contest site and rules have since been updated, and the prize description amended to include a “digital mobile phone + accessories”, still valued at $800.00. All this, no doubt, done with the permission of the Régie des alcools, des courses et des jeux.

I’m sure this isn’t the first use of a Facebook “Group” created in order to facilitate a contest.  The folks over at RICH GUY have quite cleverly used the viral power of social networking to grow their RICH GUY Millionaire Weekend Giveaway contest group.

As of this writing, group members (and also, evidently, contest entrants) exceed 40,000.  That group member count is, according to the loosely-written rules, another milestone and apparent prize level, so one lucky person has won an “Automatic Infrared Trash Can - The lid opens when trash gets close!”  The 60,000 group member level prize remains “TBA”, while the 80,000 level means a trip to Toronto for another lucky winner.  According to the contest rules, the grand prize trip to Toronto and Quebec City is valued at $50,000.00.

What I find most interesting is the ongoing dialog on the group’s Wall.  It includes bad luck stories, begging, skepticism of varying degrees, anonymous defense of the contest and criticism of group members by the organizer.

We also had a look at Facebook’s Terms of Use and, without contacting Facebook for a clear interpretation, we’d say operating a contest under the guise of a group is at least a gray area.
From a legal standpoint, the contest itself and the rules are missing a number of key elements in order to comply with Canadian and international law.  Faithful readers, feel free to chime in here and let me know what you think.

Hopefully for RICH GUY, no enterprising group member (or, de facto contest entrant) or government body will challenge this contest.  Then again, there are lots of people who know their way around the applicable laws.

Upshift Marketing Group’s Brian Makse and the TrackAddicts.net team won the inaugural 24 Hours of LeMons Detroit race. This was the first 24 Hours of LeMons to actually run around the clock.

The 24 Hours of LeMons Detroit concluded at 2PM, Sunday, September 30, 2007 after twenty-three hours and forty-five minutes. The finishing order was:

1. Bernie’s Revenge (TrackAddicts.net) 2433 laps
2. Car and Driver (Tony Swaaaaan) 2383 laps
3. The Latch-Key Kids 2350 laps
Forty teams entered the competition, with thirty-nine successfully taking the green flag to start the race.

Team TrackAddicts started from the pitlane in last place due to a last-minute repair session to fix a damaged fuel line and re-route the exhaust to comply with LeMons regulations.

After considerable effort on the part of the team, their 1986 Celica Supra had caught up to the first-place team, an RX-7 operated by Car and Driver. Tony Swan, the driver of the RX-7, was pressured into damaging the car, allowing TrackAddicts to take first place at approximately the nineteen-hour mark. Strong work from the final two drivers and the crew ensured that TrackAddicts crossed the line with fifty laps in hand.

The team was awarded $1500 in nickels and a silhouette of copulating rabbits, which was welded to the Supra’s roof earlier in the event.

Some TrackAddicts.net team photos are available here and race event photos are available at Flickr.

We’ve been hearing the radio ads for the contest at rightmortgage.ca and something about this contest hasn’t been sitting right with us.

On one hand, it could be said that this contest is not fair for all consumers because there is exclusively one mode of entry.  In order to participate in this contest, consumers must submit a mortgage application to Mortgage Alliance broker.   This simply excludes a large number of consumers who are exposed to their advertising.  We can’t imagine many consumers who aren’t seeking mortgages would be motivated to submit a mortgage application simply to participate in this contest.  Hopefully this contest does increase the number of legitimate, net new mortgage applications for Mortgage Alliance.

On the other hand, could Mortgage Alliance be missing an opportunity to build their marketing database?  We certainly think so.  A contest is a great opportunity to collect leads, which in this case could be pre-qualified via a simple on-line contest entry form, creating that proverbial funnel of sales leads for Mortgage Alliance brokers.

CBC, Campbell Canada and the CFL have launched a new consumer-generated content contest, targeting football fans, with a tailgate-party theme. Their media includes 30-second spots running during CFL game broadcasts on CBC. The contest is to promote Campbell Chunky soups.

Consumers are asked to submit their tailgate-party themed videos to the contest site. Videos will be judged by a panel and some will be featured on CBC CFL game broadcasts. Winners receive a trip to the 2007 Grey Cup.

At Upshift, we’re very interested to see how this works.

At Enter To Win, we appreciate different points of view, so today we have a guest on our blog. This post was written by and is copyright Eric Swetsky, and originally appeared in his Advertising & Marketing Law newsletter.

Ask yourself this – why is a formal set of “rules” necessary when running a contest? Your answer probably relates to complying with the law. Actually, that’s only half the answer.

Without question, the law requires that certain features form part of a contest, and that they be publicized. For example, you cannot give a prize away by chance alone (such as drawing a name out of a hat). There also has to be a skill component so that the contest is a game of “mixed chance and skill.” That’s why a skill-testing question forms part of most contests conducted in Canada.

The other purpose behind contest rules is to protect the sponsor of the contest. A good example of this is the “Kraft case.” In the U.S., Kraft ran a contest in which participants had to match the “left half” of a minivan found in specially marked packages of Kraft cheese with the “right half” of the minivan that appeared in Sunday newspapers. A “match” meant that you won the minivan.

Instead of a single winner of a $17,000 minivan, enough matching pieces were mistakenly distributed to make about 10,000 people winners. You can guess the rest. Kraft eventually settled the matter by distributing $10 million in cash and product coupons, both for the minivan prize and other lesser prizes (bicycles, skate boards, etc.) that also had more winning game pieces mistakenly distributed than originally contemplated.

As a result of the Kraft case, any “scratch & win” contest today contains a “printing” rule. It says that should printing or any other type of production irregularities occur with the Scratch cards and if, as a result, prize claims exceed the number of prizes available to be won, a random draw will be made from amongst all those making a prize claim to award the total number of prizes stated in the rules as available to be won. The “Kraft” rule has one goal – to protect the Sponsor.

Another example of contest rules protecting the sponsor of the contest relates to on-line entries. What happens if the server goes down two days before the end of the contest? Usually, the rules for an on-line contest covers this by stating that if you cannot complete the contest because of technical problems, the draw will be made from among those entries already received.

The message: A set of contest rules ensures that the Sponsor not only complies with the law, but also provides it with protection against contest crises that can easily happen.

Eric Swetsky is a Toronto lawyer who practices advertising, marketing, trademark and copyright law. His website is advertisinglawyer.ca.

This year’s Sharp Championship Golf Giveaway II contest has been clearly successful with the on-line contest enthusiast crowd. Last September, we wrote this post and, as a result of this years contest at Sharpgolf.ca, our blog has received thousands of hits in recent weeks.

And like last year’s contest, this year Sharp ties in their Aquos LCD TV and Callaway Golf products. From the web traffic we’ve seen so far, it looks like this summer’s contest will be another success for Sharp.

This is perhaps one of the finest examples of how not to execute an instant win promotion.  According to CBC.ca, the promotional agency printed a run of 50,000 scratch-and-win cards where all cards were found to be winners:

ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) - Everyone’s a winner after a direct-mail marketing company hired by a local car dealership mistakenly sent out 50,000 scratch-off tickets to residents - all of them declaring the ticket-holder the $1,000 grand prize winner. Just one of the tickets was supposed to be the grand prize winner.

Jeff Kohn, Roswell Honda general manager said a typographical error by Atlanta-based Force Events Direct Marketing, which printed the advertisment, had given all 50,000 scratch-off tickets grand prizes.

“Unfortunately, they missed it in the proofreading,” said Kohn, who was able to stop an estimated 20,000 direct mailers from being sent.

Kohn said the dealership is “making a full-faith effort” to investigate the mistake, which he said is “not how we portray ourselves or our community.”

In a statement, Force Events apologized “for any inconvenience this may has caused car shoppers in the Roswell market” and asked that any questions and concerns be directed to the company.

Force Events representatives are expected to be in Roswell on Thursday to sort out the mess, Kohn said.

Meanwhile, the names, addresses and phone numbers of “winners” who arrive at the dealership were being taken down. Kohn said they will all be invited back to the dealership.

“At this point, I don’t know what exactly the company’s solution is going to be,” Kohn said. “We are not sure how Force Events is going to handle this matter. That’s why they are flying out to Roswell and that’s why I’m taking down people’s names.”