Enhance the Chance!Every once in a while, a “dream” comp will come along that you’d really love to win. Not necessarily because of the value of the prize, but simply because the promotion somehow manages to push all the right buttons and capture your imagination. You therefore pull out all the stops to try to improve your chances of winning, and willingly put extra time and effort into the task. I’m sure that we’ve all been there. For me, it usually happens about once a year – it’s something that can’t be contrived or helped along, it just “happens”. The last time for me was the Tesco Bestfoods Lapland comp last Christmas, a fairly modest prize value-wise, but everything just seemed to click. Happily I was a winner, and sure enough the prize day ranks up there as one of my best ever. Well worth the time spent, but because this was one of those rare “dream” comps, I actually enjoyed the challenge anyway. It matters not that other, more mundane tasks fell by the wayside as my enthusiasm was reawakened – comping had become FUN again. It’s a feeling that I’m sure that many of you reading this will recognise, if not then I’m certain that your time will come!
Wouldn’t it be nice if we could somehow “bottle” this enthusiasm, and apply it to every comp we enter so that the enjoyment – and prizes – could be sustained? And wouldn’t it be great if it had an ‘on’ and ‘off’ switch. Then you could choose to ignore the unmistakable “feeling” when you felt it brewing in the presence of a near-impossible ‘instant win’ task, which you just KNOW is going to cost you a fortune in pursuit of something more elusive than even the Holy Grail. But maybe that’s just me!
Although you can never force or truly replicate the enthusiasm and overall feeling that a “dream” comp will trigger, I’ve tried to think of what it is that I do differently on the rare occasions that one does actually come along. Perhaps by applying one or more of these ‘tips’ to our general comping life, it might make our hobby run smoother. It’s unrealistic, I think, to resolve to put them all into practice against every single comp we enter, but just by being aware that “we can do it when we really want to” might help concentrate the mind. And if you still can’t muster up any real enthusiasm for a particular contest, then perhaps it’s time to ask yourself exactly why. Lack of time? Lack of motivation? A sub-conscious admission that no, you don’t really want or need a free pack of denture fixative? If the only effect of this checklist is to make you reappraise and prioritise your hobby, thinking properly about what precisely you want to gain from it and what you can realistically achieve in the time that you have available, then it will have been useful. It’s no accident that I said ‘you’ a lot in that last sentence. The most important ground rule for giving a particular competition your best shot is to make sure that it’s within your own personal “comfort zone”. In other words, the resources that are going to be needed to do it justice – the time, the expenditure, the skill – are realistically at your disposal. It’s a point that I’ve made in this column before, but one that I feel cannot be emphasised enough simply because comping can sometimes encourage a “keeping up with the Joneses” mentality. Just because someone else seems to be able to spend 24 hours a day doing competitions, and has a bottomless pit of money to spend on expensive qualifiers and all the latest comping tools, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you can do the same. Acknowledge it, accept it, get over it, find your own level and make sure that you operate only within the realistic boundaries that you’ve set yourself. This is your “comfort zone”. A place where you don’t have to fret about spending time or money that you haven’t got, or making arrangements for a prize that you neither want nor need. A place where – having honestly weighed up your own skills – you know deep down that you have a genuine fighting chance of success if you really put your mind to it. A positive place with nothing whatsoever to worry about, nothing at all to lose and plenty to gain.
So then, we’ve established the right attitude for a particular competition. This isn’t just “Top Tip No. 1”, but is a fundamental requirement. Now let’s consider the nitty gritty; the little things that you should always be trying to do to increase your chances in a “dream” competition. And of course, they won’t do your chances any harm in the more run-of-the-mill promotions either!
Get your entry forms and qualifiers early.
Chances are, you’ll want to enter a “dream” comp more times than usual. Even if you need to come up with a slogan, your genuine motivation will probably mean that you’ll come up with many more ideas and styles than you might do for a typical promotion. So it’s very important to plan in advance for this. Make sure that you have enough entry forms – remember that if the bug really bites, you could end up needing dozens rather than your more usual one or two. If the qualifier is an on-pack token, ensure that you buy plenty of the special packs before they disappear from the shelves. If you need till receipts, plan ahead and make sure that you start collecting these early, maybe even collecting more than one on each store visit. The golden rule with forms and qualifiers is that it’s better to have too many than too few. Spares can always be swapped or, more likely with “dream” comps, used to make even more entries. When I got the bug with the Lapland comp, I ended up collecting more than thirty till receipts almost accidentally. I simply bought a qualifier every time I visited a Tesco store, and obviously didn’t fully appreciate how often I darkened Tesco’s doors! But when it came to making my entries, having created a huge stack of tiebreakers using techniques that I’ll explain later, the receipts were all used. In fact, I could have used more (and did indeed have to make one extra, last minute purchase for a final, spur of the moment slogan that ultimately proved to be the winner!). So plan ahead and start piling up the forms and qualifiers as soon as you can – and never underestimate the numbers you might need if the bug REALLY bites!
Enter often – and on time.
I always like to spread my entries when I enter a particular comp many times. Too many entries in one envelope could appear too professional or, indeed, desperate. And by putting all of your eggs in the one basket, you’re leaving yourself vulnerable to the vagaries of today’s Post Office, or the mood of one particular member of staff on one particular day at the handling house. Entries for prize draws especially might not even be opened prior to the draw, so all of the time and effort you have put into cramming hundreds of entries into just one package will be wasted. Better, I think, to spread your entries out across the whole promotion period. With a “dream” comp I will always try to enter daily if the rules allow, beginning as early as possible and continuing as close to the closing date as I dare. This method ensures that you have a good spread of entries throughout the ‘sack’ at the handling house. It can also have advantages where a comp has several draw dates. Get in early and you beat the rush. Carry on until the bitter end, and others may have long given up. On-pack promotions will invariably disappear long before a final closing date, so entries for these comps will peak well before the end. Prepare for this by buying plenty of packs when they are available, but staggering your entries right up until the closing date.
Where possible, you should also try to cover every type of entry route if you’re given a choice. Phone, text, email and postal entries should all – we are constantly told – stand an equal chance of winning. All are logged onto the same computer, or all are painstakingly transferred onto postcards for the final draw. You can choose to believe this if you want to, and I’m sure that it sometimes does happen, but I prefer to take a more cynical approach. Cover all of the options if it’s possible, if not then I always choose the ‘headline’ route – the one that gets the most coverage in the comp blurb. You’ll often find that this costs you the most to enter, and rings up (no pun intended!) the biggest profits for the promoter, but your willingness to add to a company’s profits will do you no harm at all. Of course, there are plenty of people reading this who have won prizes via a ‘free’ route – it genuinely does happen. But in the world of the “dream” comp, where you want to be considering anything that might possibly swing the odds in your favour, you may as well push the boat out. If a promoter has gone to the trouble of setting up a premium rate phone line, the comp is headed ‘Ring To Win’ in big letters, and details of the free postal route are buried away in extremely small print away from the main comp, ask yourself why – and then give them what they want!
Don’t forget too, that you can enrol willing friends or family members to enter a “dream” comp in their name. Just make sure that you tell them first, and that everyone involved is clear on what happens to any prize. This is a good way of improving your chances in a comp where there is a restriction on the number of entries. You can also use this technique to ‘target’ an entry in a particular promotion – male or female, young or old – depending, for example, on the type of magazine in which a comp appears, or the design and wording of an entry form which might give strong clues as to the target audience.
Take a chance – try something different.
We can never be sure what a judge will be looking for in a comp, so if we’re entering a particular contest lots of times then it might be prudent to try a few different styles. This can apply to tiebreakers – I’ll come onto those later – but also to draws. Decorated envelopes or cards, coloured or irregular paper and envelopes, different coloured inks, fancy handwriting or printing. Even using scents – delicate aromatherapy to make a judge feel good maybe, or perhaps something less subtle. I once impregnated an entry form with aniseed in a draw where a famous dog would supposedly be choosing the winning entry, since I was sure that I’d read somewhere about aniseed being a dog’s most favourite smell! Alas, I didn’t win. But everything’s worth a go, just remember to send a few ‘normal’ entries too in case the judges choose to deliberately ignore the ‘attention seekers’. The luxury of a “dream” comp is that you’ll probably have plenty of entries to play with, so let your imagination run riot. Cover every eventuality, and hopefully at least one of your attempts will hit the spot.
On a practical level, you should make an extra effort with your “dream” entries to ensure that they arrive at their destination safely. Give them plenty of time to arrive, and address them clearly to avoid any mis-sorts at the Post Office or handling house. Returning to my Lapland example, I was concerned that the same address was also being used for a major on-pack draw. This draw was probably attracting tens of thousands of entries, dwarfing the hundreds that ‘my’ comp was generating. If my envelope had been accidentally put into the ‘draw’ sack by an inattentive sorter, then it would probably never see the light of day again. So I used a small padded envelope, addressed with a bold marker pen, which would have stood out in a subtle way. Enough to make the person doing the sorting at the handling house snap out of their hypnotic trance anyway, pay attention and realise that my envelope needed to go somewhere other than the ‘draw’ sack where most of the other mail was headed.
Work hard on the tiebreaker.
This might sound like I’m stating the obvious, but stop and think about your own tiebreaker “routine”. How do you do yours? Do you have several on the go at once? Do you try to tackle one or more in a set session? Do you have a time limit, either planned or accidental as a closing date hurtles towards you? Chances are, your ‘normal’ slogan writing is now part of your established comping pattern. It must take its turn, and possibly even fight for your time. Which is ridiculous really, considering how fundamentally important a decent slogan is when it comes to winning a prize. So when that “dream” comp comes along, the first thing you must do is forget your usual methods. Clear the decks, and focus completely on the task in hand. You shouldn’t need any motivation to do this, if this is a genuine “dream” comp then you will have more motivation and positive vibes than you know what to do with.
Of course, you can skip this bit if your “dream” comp doesn’t involve a slogan. You can follow the tips elsewhere in this article to improve your chances, but ultimately your efforts will be in the lap of the comping Gods – and Lady Luck. If the comp involves a slogan or other skill tiebreaker though, then you can really start to turn the odds in your favour.
My own technique for a “dream” tiebreaker is to commit the lead-in line to memory on day one and – whenever you have a spare moment – to think of nothing else. Where possible, try to ‘manufacture’ spare thinking time by going for a walk or having a long bath or early night. Always carry a pen and paper to write down your thoughts, however outlandish they might seem. As your thoughts develop, you’ll start to build on these early ramblings. Think of anything and everything associated with the promoter, the product and the prize. Keep a completely open mind as to the style of your tiebreakers. Nothing should be sacrosanct, and with multiple entries you will have the opportunity – and the desire – to experiment. As time passes, favourite themes will emerge – and perfecting and building on these will naturally take over in your thought processes. Play around with every possible combination of words, and every conceivable variation, the golden rule always being – if in doubt or you can’t decide whether one slogan is better than another, get yourself another qualifier and enter them both! A “dream” competition doesn’t turn up very often, after all.
As your confidence grows, the ideas and themes will start to flood in. The process will start to take on a life of its own, as you create more and more slogans. Recurring themes can be emphasised; provisional slogans can be mixed and matched. Early slogans that seemed unbeatable will fall by the wayside as improvements, enhancements and whole new ideas come thick and fast.
Creating slogans in this almost leisurely way will be a completely new experience for most people. I’m sure that we’ve all read those comping advice books that tell us how we “should” be doing it, but in the real world our good intentions often fall by the wayside (if indeed they ever get off the ground in the first place!). Time, financial and other pressures often conspire to make our tiebreakers rushed, last minute affairs. A “dream” comp, though, is different. The positive feelings that you have for the promotion, when added to the time that you somehow magically free up, make for an irresistible combination. The length of time that you positively set aside for the project is ultimately your greatest weapon even though other, less important tasks may have to fall by the wayside. But this is no more than ‘natural selection’, survival of the fittest. And let’s face it – you would never have given the forgotten comps your fullest attention anyway since, as the “dream” comp has proved, you’d have really rather been doing something else!
Of course, a “dream” competition is a rare beast. For which, in many ways, we should be thankful – we’d simply not have time to do anything else otherwise! But when one does come along, it’s amazing how the project immediately becomes a pleasure and a priority, naturally assuming first place in the order of things. I’ve given some indication in this article of how my own mind works when faced with a “dream” promotion. I hope that some of you find the ideas useful, others will have your own techniques that work just as well for you. Although “dream” mode as an entity can never be forced or fabricated – it will inevitably just “happen” and even you will sometimes be at a loss to understand how or why – it will always bring out the best comper in you. So even though all of the effort and ideas explained in this article can only fully come together very occasionally, why not try to incorporate the odd idea into your general day to day comping? This will hopefully make you feel a little happier and more positive until the next “dream” comp comes along.
Smid x
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