Flipping bottles

Entry forms leave me cold; retweets and like-shares positively frigid. So any competition with a novel entry mechanic has my attention from the off. As a matter of fact, the more fun it is to enter the comp, the less I care what the prize is - and sometimes about winning full stop.

Buxton Water ran such a promotion about a fortnight ago, with goodie bags for the first 50 people to tweet video evidence of them flipping a water bottle (Buxton, obvs), along with the #buxtonflip hashtag. The video with the most retweets also won a much bigger prize, but I didn’t pay that part much mind as (a) it was tickets for something I couldn’t attend and (b) spending the weekend acting adolescent was never going to get me into my (teacher) wife’s good books.

I should add that I don’t typically buy into purchase-necessary competitions, but as my first-born was already pestering for a plastic bottle to lob around the back yard, I figured this one might also buy me a half-hour of peace. As it happens, it was a mere five minutes, but peace is peace, right?

After a few practice flips, I captured some passable footage and called my lad in, flipping the bottle once more - looking, for all intents and purposes, like I’d pulled it off first time. Momentarily speechless with awe, he looked at me like I was some kind of god. What can I say - seven-year olds are easily impressed, and as a parent, you’ve got to get your jollies.

And indeed, further jollies ensued a week later with the delivery of a tee-shirt, USB stick, iPhone case, earphone case, keyring containing a disposable shower poncho, and a rubbery trumpet accessory that makes phones marginally louder when on speaker mode.

I wasted no time in using the cable tidy, which is why I forgot to photograph it along with the other goodies!

Out of interest, I did a quick sweep for the #buxtonflip hashtag just a few days later. As far as I can tell, less than half the prizes were given out, providing a textbook example of the extent to which odds can shorten once a little effort is required - there’s a lesson there, my comping friends!

What effort-based competitions have you enjoyed lately - and were you lucky?!