Define "Win"

When the goodies arrive before you complete your entry, does it still count as a win?

Forget what it says in the dictionary, I’m saying YES, because that’s what it feels like!

Sounds strange, I know, but I was recently introduced to a sweet little tactic to boost my win rate - or, more precisely, feel like I'm boosting my win rate, namely, BzzAgent.

For the uninitiated, BzzAgent describes itself as a way to “sample fun products and share your thoughts with friends and top brands”. In other words, they send you free stuff on the proviso that you promote it through your social media channels.

Naturally, there’s no guarantee that you will be deemed worthy to promote the brand in question, so - much like comping - an element of good fortune clearly comes into play.

Ahh, that luck thing again... Well, Luck is a saucy mistress, 'tis true, but my so-so fortune over the last few weeks is largely my own fault for failing to stay on top of things - indeed, the fact that two prizes clean slipped through my fingers provides ample evidence that my luck management has recently been off key.

With this in mind, when BzzAgent asked if I'd like to road-test a bag of coffee, I saw this as a bona fide opportunity to take control of my luck once more.

Always read the brief - adding the vapour trail was a key part of the instructions;
that and to look like I was enjoying my cup o' mud...

But how is this like a competition, you may ask? Well, in my case, my entry constituted a couple of tweets and an Instagram picture or two. Sounds easy, but I’m yet to score an excellent, partly because I'm a typical male and failed to read the instructions before posting my first photo. Fingers crossed I've not blotted my copybook - I’ll keep you posted!

What are your tactics for boosting that winning feeling? Perhaps you review products or send off for freebies? Share your secrets in the comments below!

Unboxing August 2017

As you may have noticed, August has been a quiet month - I lost a large chunk to my first holiday in three years (yay!) and then a further wedge to the humungous dollop of unscheduled and definitely uninvited work that appeared on my desk during my absence (not yay!).

Add to this the school holidays and the nightmarishly huge backlog of household endeavours I've been waiting all year to address and you'll understand why I've not only failed to post anything these last few weeks, but I've barely even managed to enter anything either.

All work and no play makes Neill a dull boy, or more precisely, an unbearable stress monkey, so here's hoping that September heralds more joy. In the meantime: August wins.

Technically, that should be in the singular. One win. yes, that is all. For this reason, I'm bundling a little extra into this unboxing video - my first freebie from BzzAgent. It might not have come from a competition per se, but it still made me feel like a winner, but more on that in due course!

In the meantime, enjoy the moving pictures.

WARNING: some scenes unsuitable for the faint-hearted...

That’s the way to do it!

Competitions with great big prizes are fantastic - obviously - but how often do they stick in your mind? Sure, if you’re a winner, you’re going to get a warm fuzzy feeling every time you hear the promoter’s name, but what about those comps you entered but didn’t win? Let’s say you’re desperate to win a PS4, and in the last six months entered every last competition to win one - how many of those promoters can you still name, and how many have been lost in the general haze of comping noise swirling round your head?

Are comps with lots of smaller prizes any better? Certainly, the physical footprint of the promotion is larger as more people will be touched personally by the brand, and their affection for said brand will flourish accordingly. But again, what about the folks who go without? What impact has the promoter’s marketing (for that is what the competition is, after all) had on them?

For some promoters, that’s simply the price of harvesting contact details for a future mailshot. They’ve done the maths, and they’re happy with that. Promoters looking for something more touchy-feely, however, such as raising brand awareness or improving customer relationships, may well be disappointed. I know I am - if only because I hate to see effort go to waste.

For this reason, when I see a promoter execute something technically brilliant, I think it’s only right to single them out for praise. To this end, consider the recent flash competition from PayPal.

Let's start by bearing in mind that a key aim of advertising is to strengthen brand associations through well-timed repetition. In this instance, the comp pounced on a topical event (the demise of the paper fiver) to leverage its ongoing ‘New Money’ marketing campaign.

The precision timing of the competition was textbook: the old five pound note ceased to be legal tender on Friday, 6th May and the competition ran on the following Monday, with the catchline, ‘New money doesn’t expire’ - a great example of using a competition to reinforce the campaign message.

Second, advertising with an emotional message, rather than a rational one, has a greater impact on customer attention, memory and behaviour. Here, the competition targeted frustrated members of the public who had just missed the window of opportunity for spending their paper money and gave them the chance to add a silver lining to their cloud. In other words, PayPal offered to make a virtue out of their fail. That kind of touchy-feely stuff is manna for positive brand sentiment.

Third, 100 people won a tenner’s worth of PayPal credit - that’s a great prize pot by any measure!

Fourth, to redeem the prize, the winners had to log in to their PayPal account, which is to say, they had to experience the brand, the positive emotion associated with their win combining with the familiar visual elements of the brand to create the best possible impression on their long-term memory.

Winners without a PayPal account of course needed to set up one tout suite - another win for PayPal, as all marketers like to grow market share.

Finally, I was one of the winners, so naturally I feel GREAT about the whole thing!

What comps do you think have been well executed this year? Let me know in the comments below…