I’m not a big fan of Twitter competitions and I’m certainly not a big fan of competitions or survey incentives where the prize is an iPad or iPhone.

Why?

Well, mostly because those that enter don’t really care about you, your brand or what your purpose is. They only care about one thing.

An iPad or iPhone.

I recently illustrated what your results might look like if you did run a survey and offered a iPad or iPhone as an incentive:

I don’t think I’m that far off.

This morning, courtesy of Liz Male, I had found out that a certain Twitter competition had been rapped by the ASA. Wooo hooo! Love it when this sort of stuff happens!

The guilt party (Bev Tyler @mojocomms – account now deleted) had tweeted “Follow us for a fab Kindle competition giveaway”.

Except there was no terms and conditions, no deadline and no indication of when the prize would be awarded.

And so what happened?

Well the complainant (The Institute of Promotional Marketing on behalf of the winner) complained to the ASA to say that the Kindle hadn’t been received and that the competition had been run unfairly.

The ASA then requested a response from Bev who responded with:

[quote style=”boxed”]we intended to award the prize and provided a deadline to the ASA.[/quote]

What did the ASA decide?

UPHELD!!! Basically “not good enough”

Here’s what the ASA stated on the adjudication page:

[quote style=”boxed”]We noted that the complainant had responded to the competition tweet as requested by following the advertiser on Twitter. The advertiser had subsequently tweeted again to confirm that the complainant had won. We were concerned however that no information was given in the competition tweet about the terms and conditions of the competition or where the terms and conditions could be found[/quote]

The ASA also discovered:

[quote style=”boxed”]We noted that the complainant had not received the prize within that timeframe and that the advertiser had subsequently told us that the complainant would need to wait up to eight months from the end of the competition before they received it.[/quote]

8 MONTHS!!!

You can read the full statement here: ASA Adjudication on Bev Morley

What can we learn from this?

Treat competitions seriously and make sure you have covered your ass on the legal side such as making sure terms and conditions are set and you take the necessary steps to ensure everyone involved, be it organising or taking part, is aware of the terms and conditions and where they can be found.