Happy (professional) hunting!

'Job vacancies have opened for professional Crème Egg hunters with an hourly wage starting at £45 an hour.'

This from the same people that reckoned if you could ‘find at least five competitions an hour and, if possible, enter them’, then you could make £20 an hour as a ‘professional competition enterer’.

Where to begin? The idea of taking just over ten minutes to complete an entry form sets the bar so low as to make it a trip hazard. With a work rate like that, you wouldn’t get return on investment even if you paid minimum wage. Given also that third-party entries are generally forbidden, this hypothetical employer would also be disqualified for breaching terms and conditions.

‘The service launches thanks to increased demand for professional “compers”, as it’s revealed many can quit their jobs thanks to competition success.’

Who exactly are these 'many' people - and who is revealing them? Yes, there are people without conventional salaried employment who devote a lot of time to comping, and who may even be really successful, but you can’t pay the mortgage with nut butter and Nutribullets. Lottery winners might quit their jobs. Compers, not so much.

Around this time last year, the same company suggested it was possible to earn upwards of £45ph plus expenses as a professional McDonald’s Monopoly player. It’s a sorry sign of the times that even fictional jobs are losing their perks.

The little things in life

Never work with children or animals. I’ve tried both. Which is worse, I couldn’t say: cats by their very nature cannot, do not and will not cooperate; my first-born likewise.

That’s an exaggeration - he did cooperate once, when he was four. Since then, his behaviour has - as they say - explored boundaries. Combined with his extreme control-freakery, he’s not a natural at taking direction, generally only playing ball once you’ve tears in your eyes and are genuinely about to throw in the towel.

Exhibit A: Cooperating child

The net result is that every video comp I try to recruit him for turns into a complete ordeal with my wife asking why I keep putting myself though this. To be honest, I don’t really know. Time after time, I somehow manage to convince myself that if I chuck a kid or two into my video then the judges will love it. Sadly, and much to his frustration, the results don’t bear that out, making him even more reluctant to cooperate next time, meaning that the next video is even more likely to miss the mark. It’s a vicious circle. The cat, at least, is always consistently uncooperative.

There’s also the problem that having put in the effort, he feels the prize should be guaranteed. I get that. Failing to win an entry-form or like-RT comp is a statistical doddle; it’s also emotionally straightforward as there’s little to no investment. When you’ve spent hours on an entry but fail to make the podium, however, it’s disappointing, no matter how old you are. And more effort equals more disappointment.

He’s gutted that he’s not modelling for Gap, so I have to remind him how much he enjoyed doing his photo shoot. Likewise, he was disappointed not to win a heap of books when we spent the best part of a weekend turning a cardboard box into a Noddy car - but he was so proud of his work that he asked to do it again just a few weeks later. The video we made for an Oreo comp was an even greater success, although since that involved eating biscuits, perhaps there’s no surprise there.

There’s no point comping with children if they don’t enjoy the process. Of course, you could always say the same about adults.

If you have any tips for getting children to cooperate, PLEASE let me know in the comments below!

Tales of the midnight comper

Purchase necessary comps aren’t generally on my radar. Partly that’s because I can’t trust the grocery pickers at Tesco to put the right goods in my basket, and partly it’s because I refuse to pay for something that I have no intention of consuming. Case in point: I wouldn’t touch high-caffeine energy drinks if I was dying of thirst (I know, my body’s a temple, right?) so I’m hardly going to fill a trolley with them.

Sometimes, of course, such bloody mindedness serves only to spite myself. Consider, for example, the Walker’s Snap & Share comp from 2017. All I needed was one bag - one! - and I could have been off to watch Champions League football or playing Pro Evolution Soccer on one of the 500 PlayStation 4 consoles they were giving away. Instead, I just waited to womble a packet, by which time there was about a fortnight left to enter. Sure, I won an adidas football (and it was the best football I’ve ever won), but imagine if I’d pulled my pointlessly principled finger out?!

Here, I can only paraphrase Beverly Knight: what-ifs are for chumps. The only sensible thing to do is to thank Mr Walker for my ball and move on.

Moving on from what might have been is easy enough, but what might yet be is another matter. In this regard, I’ve had a change of heart. It’s not just that I’ve been spending so long on Instagram that I fancied a change, but also because there has recently been such a glut of prize-heavy instant win promotions that I’d have been an utter mug to turn my nose up.

The most obvious example is the recent Ribena Pick Your Own Gig promotion, through which my wife and I were blessed with more than a dozen bottles of Ribena and a few quids’ worth of Amazon vouchers. To be sure, I missed out on the biggies, but a score of soft drinks is always handy in summer.

I also found the Ribena comp to be a bunch more generous than the Lucozade Born to Move promotion, which I’ve entered religiously and won two prizes: one last year and one this year. I say “won” but the “free bottle of Lucozade” came in the form of a voucher that I had a fortnight to redeem and wasn’t accepted at any major supermarket. It also didn’t cover the full cost of the product, so for two years running it has cost me fourpence to purchase my prize. And I don’t even like Lucozade.

But that’s by the by. More important is the fact that I’m a terrible sleeper. At best, I’ll wake up some time around 3 am and then some time annoyingly close to my wife’s alarm going off, then again when the alarm actually goes off, and again when she actually gets out of bed. Come the weekend, the alarm clock gets put on ice for a couple of days so that the children can wake me up at a similar time instead. Weeknights, my wife will still be working by the time I go to bed, so the odds of me waking up when she turns in are pretty good too. On top of this, one of our children is currently midway through a season of wee-hour nosebleeds and bed-wetting through which it is unacceptable to sleep. And did I mention the gurgling of the radiators? Yeah, that too.

Now, when it comes to winning moment competitions, it’s often said that there are good times to enter, and there are bad. Bad is the peak time - daytime, especially lunchtime and other down times; good is when anyone in their right mind is asleep. And since sleep deprivation has contributed less than nowt to my comping, I figured it was about time for it to start pulling its weight. To this end, I decided to try small-hour comping.

For the first month or so, my success was limited to the Walkers/Pepsi Perfect Match promotion, from which I won a plastic bowl and a couple of tumblers, one of which had got smashed in the mail. To be sure, wins on this scale fall under the umbrella of tiny acorn rather than great oak; however (and more importantly), they also bear out the theory that moonlight comping can indeed bring grist to the mill.

But why settle for grist when there are bigger fish out there, just crying out to be fried? Fish by the name of Freddo’s Big Adventure and Dairylea Super Cool or Super Cheesy.

Why these two? Well, I’d like to say it was because of the prizes, but actually it was because the entry mechanic involved keying in a barcode rather than a unique code, so they required the smallest outlay.

Shining blue light into my face when I should have been KO took about a week to pay dividends: Freddo, bless him, chucked a couple of GoApe tickets my way, while the benevolently bonkers gods of Dairylea endowed me with a Polaroid instant print camera, which for some reason they classified as a cheesy prize, lumping it in with the karaoke kits and Dairylea onesies.

It's not cheesy - it's awesome!

For the absence of doubt, I mean no disrespect to Dairylea, but giving away 150 cameras on top of 100 Samsung tablets, 100 Bose speakers and 100 bikes is definitely bonkers. And - unlike with the Freddo or, for that matter, Foster’s Thirstiest Place on Earth comps - the Dairylea T&C don’t specify a limit on the number of times you can enter each day, meaning that sweat shops full of cheese-wielding comp-mongers are no doubt tapping away 24/7 in the hope of bagging a giant Jenga set.

Speaking of Foster’s, I also won a chiller disk at about 5 am today, so it looks like my bleary-eyed endeavour will be continuing a while longer.

Is that really wise, though? Wee-hour wins taste just as great as their daytime counterparts, but much like the house creaks so much louder at night, so too is the winning buzz amplified. Just try grabbing that shut-eye when you’re still high on that sweet dopamine-adrenaline combo!

The question then is what price a good night’s sleep? For a £150 camera, I’m happy to spend the next day as a crotchety growl-bag. The only thing is, in my twilight stupor I thought I’d won something else - a (genuinely cheesy) disposable camera. Not something that most people would toss and turn the rest of the night over. But then again, maybe people should take more pleasure from not being on the wrong side of a four-penny mugging.

Have you tried small-hours comping? How has it worked out for you? Let me know in the comments below!

Mindfulness for compers?

The Mayday Bank Holiday was the hottest day of the year, and while I was out basking in my mum’s garden, I noticed myself enjoying a warm, if slightly unfamiliar, fuzzy feeling. It wasn’t just the sun radiating positive vibes - although that always helps; the long overdue family reunion helped too. But the clincher, if I'm honest, was firing up the coals for the first barbie of the season.

I hate cooking. And yet I love to grill. It’s not just that there’s something primal about it, or that my life zenithed when my first-born was ten weeks old and we barbecued for 20 days solid. There’s also fact that I love reconnecting with my prizes - in this case, the cute little Weber barbecue that I won a couple years back.

Every time I set it up, I smile to recall how it was, until recently, the largest object I’d ever won, and how it arrived on the same day as the least physically imposing prize I’ve ever received: a font.

Sadly, I must confess that said font (Thistle Creek) has had precious little impact on my life. Unlike, for example, the swanky watch I won from a 2015 Warner Bros promotion, which I was using to time the cooking, while sipping my prize lager from the last advent season, and wearing one of the brand-spanking shirts I won less than a fortnight prior.

And while I watched the children guzzle the fizzy drinks we’d fixed with the strawberry purée I’d also won over Christmas, I thought to myself: I’m so glad I decided to be lucky.

In the same vein, when I first started writing this post, I was wearing the sweater I won at Christmas, having just packed away the football shirt I won during the last World Cup and boxed up the night’s leftovers in the Happy Jackson pots I won that same year. This was after making my first-born stop reading his Roald Dahl book and put away his X-Men headphones, both of which I won in 2016, and washing up my wife's flask (won 2017). I’ve also just finished off the chocolate I won last month, and before I pass out tonight, will be applying the fancy eye serum I mentioned a couple of weeks back.

Am I a premier league comper? I doubt it. On the off-chance that I do somehow qualify for the top-flight, I’m very much a Huddersfield - standing under the armpits of giants.

Indeed, I’m in perpetual awe of the many fantastic - and more importantly - dedicated compers out there, whose drive to win the big-ticket prizes is plainly inspirational. People like Di Coke and Nikki Hunter-Pike, for example, spring to mind - and not just because of their success, but also because of all the work they do to support the wider comping community.

Next to these guys, I’m a blatant also-ran. But that's also cool. Comping isn't a sprint race; if anything, it's a marathon. I’ve been in the game for about four years now, and despite a few episodes of mojo fatigue keeping me on the sidelines, the wins have slowly but surely stacked up, and I can confidently say that my “winner’s luck” has manifestly embedded itself into my life. That translates to a constant reminder of what it feels like to be lucky. It also translates to feeling good about myself.

Some might call my win rate unremarkable, but that’s no bad thing! Unremarkable, means replicable. It means that anyone with half a mind to “be lucky” can make it happen! And once you've made it happen, soak it up as much as you can. Every prize is a happy moment made concrete.

To be sure, this isn't mindfulness per se. Nevertheless, if you take time to contemplate each episode of joy that literally passes through your hands each day, then you'll find an awful lot of cheer coursing through your brain. And that's definitely good for your stress!

Does comping make you feel like a lucky person? Do your past wins blend into the wallpaper or do you keep an active eye out for how they weave their way into your everyday life? How does that make you feel?

A prize from The Moon Under Water?

This isn’t a winning story. For a start, there’s no such promoter. The Moon Under Water was a fictitious boozer invented by George Orwell back when the Evening Standard was paying him to write pretty much whatever popped into his head.* It’ll be a long time before anyone pays for my jibber jabber, but then again, the dubious luxury of writing sans client does mean that there’s no one to stop me from doing likewise. So, with this in mind (and with a respectful nod to Mr Orwell, on this, the 68th anniversary of his death), let me tell you about the fabulous competitions being run by The Moon Under Water.

George Orwell: Probably would have had strong opinions on comping. Dunno, just guessing.

The promoters at The Moon Under Water have seen comps on Instagram that fail to mention that they are being run on multiple channels, and they feel this is at best ambiguous and at worst misleading. For this reason, The Moon Under Water promotes its giveaways across all its media channels. It has pinned posts on Twitter and Facebook, as well as attractive creative on Instagram. All these posts direct potential entrants to its website, where every last detail about each competition can be found in its full glory - the entry mechanic, the prize, the T&C - the lot.

The Moon Under Water wants people to engage with its brand. It wants to embed its name in people’s minds so that everyone who has taken part - even if they haven’t won - will associate The Moon Under Water with happy memories. For this reason, it never asks entrants to mindlessly like and share or follow and retweet, because it knows entrants will have already forgotten their name in the time it takes to fulfil those actions. Likewise, it never directs entrants through a mystery tour loop of allied companies it would like them to follow as it knows this will dampen enthusiasm for its brand. It also never obliges entrants to click through a dozen Gleam or Rafflecopter entry widgets, as it knows that ticking boxes is no way to engender brand love.

For this reason, The Moon Under Water always runs effort-based competitions. Sometimes it invites entrants to create an original - and impossible to plagiarise - photograph with a certain item, or something that corresponds with its latest marketing campaign, be that seasonal (say, Christmas) or activity based (say, jumping for joy). Certainly, whenever it asks for a selfie, it publishes T&C that define EXACTLY what the word “selfie” constitutes.

From time to time, its competitions require entrants to submit a brief video clip: sometimes something simple and silly such as mixing the promoter’s name into a tongue twister; sometimes more demanding, such as a sketch or a monologue, that - again - resonates with the latest marketing campaign.

The Moon Under Water also loves tie-breaks - indeed, its company slogan was originally coined via a tie-break competition.

Entries are always limited to one per person. No one gets additional credit for tagging more people, reposting the competition or kissing promoter ass.

Winners are never decided by public vote. Rather, winning entries are judged by an independent third party. Furthermore, winners are contacted directly rather than announced, untagged in a social media post.

The Moon Under Water never extends the deadlines for its competitions. They always close on a defined date - rather than, say, 10,000 followers. Likewise, winners are always announced as scheduled. Winning entries are published on all social media feeds, and, where possible, old posts promoting the competition updated to point to the announcement.

Sometimes prizes are big; sometimes they are small. But whatever their size, they are relevant to the brand and both delightful and useful to the winner. When The Moon Under Water produces merchandise, its mugs are artful, its pens built to last. More often though, it gives away its own product or gift vouchers (as opposed to discount codes) for its online shop, as it knows this will encourage genuine word-of-mouth enthusiasm about its brand. And from time to time, it also partners with like-minded brands to provide bigger - but, crucially - congruous prizes. These additional prizes always complement The Moon Under Water’s product and its present marketing campaign, whether that be in the form of traditional concepts, such as champagne and chocolate for Valentine’s Day, or immersive horror experiences to tie up with Halloween.

What it doesn’t do is give away iPads for the sake of it. Competitions to win iPads are great, but they are ten a penny. They also have no congruence with the Moon Under Water brand. Instead, each prize is carefully considered for the unique circumstances of the promotional campaign in question.

Perhaps you know of a promoter such as The Moon Under Water, or one that runs giveaways with even greater panache. If so, I should be glad to hear of it - do please let me know in the comments below!

*For the absence of doubt, this post bears no relation to the Wetherspoon’s pubs that desecrate Orwell’s vision with such reverence.

What you say about you...

Tell me about your comping persona: is it you, the whole you and nothing but the you? I suspect not.
In fact, I’d guess that your comping persona pays no nevermind to the majority of traffic in your head.

For example, would you start a thread in your preferred comping forum about your forthcoming MOT or tell a promoter that you ran out of leeks last night?

Yes, such information might create a more three-dimensional picture of you, but it’s hardly germane to the task in hand, ie comping.

What *is* germane is this: your passions. Yes, we all love Apple tech and holidays, but I'm talking about everyday passions.

Maybe your thing is socks. That being the case, I imagine you’ve already entered every last sock competition out there. Well, that’s a start.

The next step is to tell all your comping buddies that that’s what you’ve been up to. Share the comps with them - tell them how just how much socks excite you! No - more than that! How you live for socks. How you breathe socks. How you would swap your first-born for a barrel of socks.

Start tagging your friends in other comps (Twitter is especially good for this), and nudge the conversation to - you’ve guessed it - socks. Doesn’t matter if the comp is for biscuits or dishwasher tablets - steer the narrative to socks.

Why? Because now you’re the crazy sock lady, and whenever your comping buddies see another sock giveaway, you’ll be the first person they think of, and before you know it, you’ve got a dozen eyes out there, hunting down sock comps, and you can start banging on about the next thing - granola perhaps? Socks full of the stuff!

I wish I could claim this piece of crazy genius as my own, but as it follows a recent conversation I had with Lorna Beattie, I'm giving the entire credit to the peanut-butter-coated vinegary tea-swiller herself!

I’ll be tapping Lorna for some more pearls of wisdom sometime very soon, so keep an eye out. In the meantime, if you’ve got an idea for the first brick in your comping persona, let me know in the comments below. And more importantly - tell your buddies, then tell them, tell them and tell them again!