KitKash - Bidding for victory!The first couple of months of each New Year are traditionally quiet on the comping scene. Companies take time out to evaluate their big Christmas promotions, stores concentrate on straightforward price reductions to tempt people back through their doors after the seasonal buying frenzy, and in many cases it’s simply a case of promoters seeing out the last few weeks of the financial year before their next promotions budget becomes available in the spring. Whatever the reason, we compers usually have more time on our hands than usual – although it must be said that this year’s Christmas comp glut didn’t seem to materialise with its customary verve.
The relative peace of January and February looks like being shattered this time around though, with the latest on-pack Kit Kat promotion. Special packs should be widely available by the time you read this, and with £5,000,000 worth of prizes up for grabs it looks like it could be – well – interesting to say the least! The comp will be based on an ‘auction’ format, a genre that reared its head briefly a couple of years ago with Coca Cola and Cadburys Crème Egg promotions, but which promptly sank without trace amid much acrimony and gnashing of teeth among ‘real’ compers. Surprising then that the concept has returned with such a reputable company as Nestle at the helm. Hopefully they’ve learnt lessons from the previous promotions, but given the laughably inept manner in which Kellogg’s ran another recent auction on their Pop Tarts, I probably wouldn’t bet on it.
I thought then that this month, it’d be a good idea to offer some advice on how best to play these ‘auction’ promotions. Apologies to those of you who were eagerly looking forward to the second instalment of the ‘order of merit’ article that was promised last month, but I do like to be topical in these pages whenever possible and such a major promotion as Kit Kat (or Kit Ka$h to give it its proper title) is too good an opportunity to miss. Hopefully I’ll be able to conclude the OOM article next month instead, as well as announcing the winners of my Grand Christmas Competition. Watch this space!
The first major auction-style promotion in the UK was ‘cokeauction’. The basis of the competition was simple – you just collected as many Coke ringpulls as you possibly could and used them to bid for prizes on a special website. This type of comp, Coke announced, was the way ahead. They struck a long-term deal with one of the major internet auction sites to run auctions for years and years to come. But the wheels soon came off the idea. An extremely inferior ‘cokeauction2’ appeared shortly after their first big effort, and then… absolutely nothing. Those of us who played along soon realised that ‘normal’ Coke customers would never stand a chance of winning any of the big prizes. People were bidding thousands of ringpulls for single prizes – still making a good profit, mind you (I’ll come onto that later) – but a typical ‘one can a day’ drinker would quickly feel alienated. Newspapers and television soon jumped on the “Coke are encouraging people to be unhealthy” bandwagon, and it quickly became apparent that the type of consumer being attracted to the promotion were way off-target from the kind that Coke (somewhat naively in hindsight) were probably expecting.
A little while later, Cadbury’s joined the fray with their Crème Egg auction. The principle was the same (if slightly stickier!) – the more egg foils you sent in, the more you could bid for prizes. No surprise then that exactly the same thing happened to Cadbury’s as had happened to Coke, and the Crème Egg version didn’t even make it to a sequel.
Hence my surprise that Kit Kat seems to be gearing up to go down exactly the same path now, one possibly fraught with even more dangers this time around. The debate on unhealthy eating is raging more loudly than ever. And with this latest promotion you don’t even have to physically send in your Kit Kat wrappers – you just enter codes from the packs onto the website. But when the Australian and Canadian versions of cokeauction used this format, both were hacked and descended into chaos. Could the same thing happen here? Do Kit Kat appreciate exactly what’s going to happen? Do they frankly care? This kind of promotion is not renowned for encouraging long term loyalty, but is a perfect tool for when a temporary, short-term fillip is needed in sales figures. And as to whether this turns into one of Nestle’s greatest triumphs ever, or one of their biggest disasters, only time will tell.
I’ll slot in a brief disclaimer at this point that, owing to seasonal deadlines, I’m writing this article before the Kit Kat auction goes ‘live’. So I don’t know the exact form that the promotion will take. Hence, the advice that follows is fairly general. And if it doesn’t fit the Kit Kat promotion exactly, then you can at least hopefully put it to some use in similar competitions in the future.
Your first stepping stone to success then is fairly obvious. Buy lots of the product. And I do mean LOTS. Be under no illusion here. If you want to be in with a chance of scooping the major prizes in this type of comp, then you’re going to have to make an extra special effort to obtain promotional packs. One or two additional purchases on each shopping trip are never going to be enough. The bigger promotions usually offer plenty of smaller prizes to keep everyone interested, so you should get at least something if you manage to collect a modest stack of wrappers. But Kit Kat is promising us cars, kitchens, holidays and more – and the simple truth is that a few dozen wrappers is never going to be enough for these big prizes. The fact that Kit Kats are so widely available, and are easy to carry and store, means – I think – that some of the bidding could go through the roof. It took a special effort to source, collect and store a thousand Coke cans for cokeauction, and it was a very messy and time-consuming task carefully unwrapping Crème Eggs. On top of which, with those promotions you had to endure the extra effort of counting up and mailing in your qualifiers. There are no such obstacles this time – hence me thinking that this one could be BIG!
Of course, the need to buy hundreds or even thousands of Kit Kats will inevitably lead to cries of “not fair” from compers without the time, inclination or resources to do such a thing. But, as I’ve often said in these pages, it’s not compulsory to enter a particular competition. The fast, instant auction format, much like the recent NutriGrain comp, can suck you in and get you caught up in the thrill of the chase if you’re not careful. So, take a deep breath and be strong enough to walk away if this kind of promotion isn’t for you. There are plenty more comps out there! But the fact is, if you are willing and able to participate in an auction comp in earnest, then unless you’re particularly unlucky and provided you keep your wits about you, you should always turn in a profit. £1,000 worth of Kit Kats might sound greedy and over-the-top, but if you were going to spend thousands on a new car, kitchen or holiday anyway then the outlay starts to sound comparatively modest. Who’s the maddest? Someone who spends £10,000 on a new car? Or someone who goes out and buys 5,000 Kit Kat bars to win the same car? You do the maths!
The next important strategy is to get your timing right. Make a concerted effort to have plenty of credits ready to go right at the start of the promotion. I have many fond memories of major prizes going for just 30 or 40 ringpulls in the early days of the first cokeauction. And the Crème Egg auction got off to such a slow start that some of their initial prizes went for the equivalent of just one tenth of one wrapper! Time really is of the essence. Although Kit Kat seems to be giving us a longer than usual lead-in time before bidding starts, meaning that more people will be better prepared, bids will still be noticeably lower on the earlier prizes compared to later on.
Also, try to avoid falling into the common trap of thinking that later auctions will be less popular. Experience has shown that people do not get fed up of a promotion, or run out of credits by the end. On the contrary, an awful lot of canny players will pace themselves and deliberately hold credits back until the closing stages. The last couple of days of cokeauction saw prizes going for ten times more credits than usual, as people desperately tried to spend their credits. Of course, Kit Kat could be different. The promotion has a much longer closing date than usual (30 September), so if promotional packs disappear a long time beforehand, and if players are tempted with a constant stream of valuable prizes right up until the end, then there might be a shortage of credits still in play at the climax. Another factor could be whether Kit Kat hold back one big prize right until the very end. A car, say, in the very last auction. If you hold back all of your credits but are subsequently outbid, then you’ll end up with nothing but a pile of worthless Kit Kat wrappers. Could it happen? It never has done yet in a UK promotion – they’ve always been designed to give you at least a couple more chances to spend your credits if you fail on the final biggie – but overseas versions HAVE presented players with this ultimate ‘Grand Finale’ dilemma in the past. So who knows? We’ll obviously have to wait to see how the latest promotion pans out, but generally – as the recent NutriGrain comp also demonstrated – I would never advise you to deliberately hold on to credits until the bitter end. Because an awful lot of people usually have exactly the same idea.
Staying with the timing of bids, most of these auction promotions – much like any ‘real’ auction on ebay, for example – will be at their busiest in the last few minutes before the closing time. So always ensure that you are on line then. Don’t show your hand too early on, otherwise you’ll give your competitors too much time to respond. If there are variable closing times of auctions throughout the day and night, try to target prizes that close at off-peak times – or auctions where more than one lot is closing at the same time. Loyalties will be divided in these cases, so your competition might be less. But always try to avoid becoming involved in more than one auction yourself at a time. It’s physically possible of course, by opening multiple windows on your computer, but mentally it’s a nightmare – especially if you’ve got your heart set on a particular prize. Best to sacrifice the rest and concentrate on just the one lot. In most of these promotions, the same prizes tend to come up more than once anyway so chances are you’ll be able to bid again at a later date.
How then do you ‘pitch’ your bid? If you try to be clever and outbid the current leader by just 1 or 2 wrappers each time, you’ll inevitably end up disappointed. My advice is to decide on your maximum spend, and place that bid as near to the closing time as you dare – preferably with just seconds to spare so that others can’t respond. Make sure that if an auction clock is provided, your own timepiece is exactly synchronised to ‘Kit Kat Time’ since every second really does count. The previous course of an auction is rarely any indication of how the bidding will eventually end up after the usual bidding frenzy in the final couple of minutes, so never be fooled into thinking that you might get a prize for less than you were originally prepared to pay. Likewise, don’t get caught up in the madness and end up bidding over the odds for a prize. Decide on your top bid, and stick to it. If you’re really desperate to win a particular prize and bid all the credits you have, but are still beaten by someone else, then you’ll obviously be disappointed but you know that you tried your best. If you lose out by trying to be clever and by playing cat and mouse, and you eventually get beaten by a bid that was actually well within your reach, then you’ll be absolutely gutted and will be kicking yourself into infinity. Trust me on this one – I’ve been there! If you’ve invested, say, £500 worth of Kit Kats to win a prize worth £5,000 – then don’t lose sight of the fact that, in the grand scheme of things, an extra £50 ‘stake’ is comparative small fry. Don’t risk throwing everything away for the sake of one or two 30p credits. When you’re up there with the big prizes, it simply isn’t worth it.
It’s always easier to pitch your bid when more than one prize is up for grabs in an auction. If there are twenty DVDs say, then it’s slightly less fraught to slot your bid in at third or fourth place with a minute to go and then just sit back. But you still mustn’t rest on your laurels. Those last few seconds of an auction can still produce plenty of surprises. In one Coke auction I went from first place to outside the top thirty in less than ten seconds. So be warned, and constantly hit that ‘Refresh’ button to keep a close eye on what’s happening in the dying seconds.
Easier said than done I know, when you’re caught up in the thrill of the chase. But never get carried away, and only ever target items that you actually want or need. And always check the Terms and Conditions of particular auctions. Because they were targeting the student and teenage market for example, Coke had lots of prizes only open to particular age groups, or students in full time education etc. It was all very annoying when they were winning amazing prizes with ridiculously low bids that I could easily have beaten but hey, that’s life. The Kit Kat auction is the first that is only open to over 18s, and which is offering more mainstream prizes rather than the ‘yoof’-oriented high tech gadgets and white knuckle experiences so favoured by promoters previously, so it’ll be interesting to see how things eventually pan out this time around.
My final piece of advice is to not register your codes too early. Have plenty of wrappers ready to go of course, but see how the promotion unfolds first. There may be restrictions on certain prizes, for example, which might make it prudent for you and your family to open more than one account later on – you don’t necessarily want to be stuck with just one account loaded with thousands of non-transferable credits if so! Cadbury’s were hit with so much criticism with their Crème Egg auction that they started to change the rules mid way through and began to restrict certain prizes to ‘first time winners’. Kit Kat may do the same, and their method of crediting accounts gives us compers much more control and flexibility than before. Take advantage of this, and pace yourself just in case.
It’s clear that these auction promotions aren’t for everyone. Personally I love them. Most of the hi-tech gadgets in my home – widescreen TV, DVD player, music system – are there courtesy of Coke, and my major wins from Crème Eggs included a holiday to Hong Kong and a round-the-world trip. I’m sure that there are plenty of people who thought I was mad, buying up swimming pools full of coke and Crème Eggs by the hundred. Indeed, I thought I was mad myself sometimes! But I like to think that I had the last laugh when the value of my wins is compared to the outlay. I can’t promise that Kit Kat will take us back to those halcyon days, but if you heed the advice above and – most importantly – have FUN, the weeks ahead should prove fruitful for many of us. Enjoy!
Smid x
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