How to run a successful competition – our breakfast briefing
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Last week we ran the latest event in our series of ‘Be in the know’ Breakfast Briefings. The topic was how to run successful prize competitions.
Introduced by our Managing Director, Jeremy Stern, his first point was that many brands and agencies make the mistake of calling their latest prize promotion a ‘competition’ and then picking the winners at random. In fact this should be called a ‘prize draw’, because legally a competition, or contest as they known in the USA, needs to have its winners selected either by skill or judgement.
Emily Gent from CAP (the Committee of Advertising Practice) went into the details of the CAP Code and what promoters must do to run compliant competitions. This includes;
- Clearly communicate all significant conditions upfront (8.17)
- Explain where the full Terms & Conditions can be obtained (8.28)
- Don’t change anything once published in the Terms & Conditions (8.23)
- Be clear if the reward is a Gift or a Prize? (8.19)
- Don’t exaggerate chance of winning or imply consumers are luckier than they are (8.20, 8.21)
- Fair selection of winners for prize draws (8.24)
- Fair selection of winners for competitions (8.26):
8.26 In competitions, if the selection of a winning entry is open to subjective interpretation, an independent judge, or a panel that includes one independent member must be appointed. In either case, the judge or panel member must be demonstrably independent, especially from the competition’s promoters and intermediaries and from the pool of entrants from which the eventual winner is picked. Those appointed to act as judges should be competent to judge the competition and their full names must be made available on request.
This was followed by a presentation by Di Coke, champion comper and blogger at Superlucky.me. Di gave our attendees the lowdown on what makes a great competition and shared some insider secrets such as;
- 71% of compers will buy a product they don’t need to enter a competition
- Twitter and Facebook make the best platforms for competitions
- Holidays and bespoke experiences make the best prizes