WHINES AND SPIRITSI’ve noticed an innocuous little clause that has started to pop up in a few Terms and Conditions recently, always something along the lines of “entries that are not within the spirit of the promotion will be disqualified”. Now, what on earth is THAT supposed to mean?
It all sounds rather too subjective for my liking, call me paranoid but it could even mean the end of ‘professional’ comping as we know it. After all, might not marketing ‘experts’ decree that the true ‘spirit’ of a particular competition would be for a bored housewife to knock out a quick slapdash entry in a spare moment – thus condemning anyone who actually makes a concerted effort to win as contravening that ‘spirit’? Heaven forbid there are some of us who might actually target a competition with modest multiple entries, a single-item till receipt, a decorated envelope, or a slogan that took more than thirty seconds to think up! I can perhaps understand the reasoning behind including such a clause in a competition’s rules, but surely a better solution would be to address specific concerns with individual points in the T&Cs themselves, rather than with a sweeping (and, some might say, lazy) statement that is open to much (mis) interpretation.
When, then, might someone go against a competition’s ‘spirit’? Whenever they annoy the promoter for any reason would seem a rather churlish answer, but in the absence of any further clues, I’m afraid that it’s the only advice I can give. Quite what you will have to do to get the promoter hopping mad with rage is another matter, but again we can only guess. Blatant cheating would, obviously, go against the ‘spirit’ of a competition – but by cheating, you’re already deliberately contravening one or more of the rules anyway so should be disqualified for just that reason, ‘spirit’ or not. So we probably have to search deeper. Multiple entries being allowed, but your 25,000 attempts going against the ‘spirit’, maybe? A postcard requested, but your giant florescent version that takes two people to hand-deliver pushes things too far? Or, less extreme but perhaps more sinister, might a quality entry from somebody who regularly appears on winners lists go against the ‘spirit’ of a ‘fun’ promotion aimed at a company’s ‘real’ customers? I’ll be keeping a close watch over the next few months to see whether this clause becomes more commonplace and, if so, will be interested to find out the reasons for its sudden appearance. My suspicion is that it’s just another of those cover-all clauses designed to cover a promoter’s back – along the lines of “we can amend the rules of this competition at any time”. But wouldn’t it be better if promoters put more effort into making a competition’s rules completely watertight and unambiguous in the first place?
Whilst the definition of ‘spirit’ might need some thought, it does hammer home the fact that almost everyone has a different opinion on what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour for a comper. Using family and friends addresses, decorating entries, peeling off stickers in stores, recycling winning slogans, deliberately making entries dog-eared and coffee-stained for that amateurish look, even ‘doing a smid’ on instant wins. Perfectly acceptable to some people, outright cheating to others. I’m sure that everyone reading this has their own opinion, and lines that they will never cross, and of course it’s galling when others are successful with tactics that fall firmly inside your own ‘no go’ zone. Personally, I get irritated when people blatantly try to sway a judge with decorated entries, or put them in an impossible situation with slogans that shamelessly gain capital from ill or disabled family members. And people who brazenly steal tokens, barcodes etc. by simply ripping them from products in store – a totally different scenario from taking a loose neck collar or easy-peel sticker that doesn’t damage the actual product. And… well, I’m sure you get the picture! One man’s meat is another man’s poison in this wonderful comping world of ours, and most of us are content to ‘agree to disagree’ on many aspects. But to suddenly have a promoter start judging whether your own comping tactics are in the ‘spirit’ of the hobby or not… humph, what do they know?!
One competition where it would have been interesting if ‘spirit’ had been mentioned in the rules is the still-current ‘Kit Ka$h’ promotion. OK, so I warned in January’s article that you’d need to buy thousands of Kit Kats to stand any real chance of the bigger prizes. But even I didn’t quite appreciate exactly how many thousands! As the promotion wore on, it became clear that just a couple of big players were cleaning up almost all of the worthwhile prizes having purchased hundreds of thousands of bars – taking advantage of wholesale prices, and having retail outlets where they could easily dispose of the resulting – codeless – chocolate to an unsuspecting public. And if that wasn’t bad enough, tales soon emerged of multiple accounts, computer software being used for things like automatic bids on items, and even the Kit Ka$h website itself being tweaked by those in the know to gain an advantage. Nestle have tried to stay one step ahead – not particularly successfully, it must be said – by changing the T&Cs as the promotion has gone along (which the original rules allowed them to do), but a ‘spirit’ clause would have made their job a lot easier. The ‘spirit’ of Kit Ka$h was – Nestle keep telling us – for typical consumers to have some fun, on a level playing field, with a few Kit Kat wrappers. For someone to dominate the promotion with hundreds of thousands of wholesale wrappers, while at the same time indulging in various computer shenanigans, clearly goes against that ‘spirit’. End of story. But of course, there could still be problems. Where do you draw the line? Would buying as many as 100 bars be against the ‘spirit’? 1,000? 10,000? Who knows? Which all takes me back to the point I made earlier – surely a straightforward declaration in the rules as to what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t would be easier? It might mean promoters having to put a bit more effort into setting their competitions – no more obvious ‘cut and paste’ T&Cs that have clearly been lifted with no thought, and even less proof-reading, from an earlier contest – but surely this is better than uncertainty and doubt.
Personally, I view the entire Kit Ka$h adventure with an overwhelming sense of laissez-faire. I said at the start that Nestle had clearly not done their homework since, in my opinion, they would never have gone ahead with such a promotion otherwise. The wreckage of earlier attempts by others was there for all to see. And nothing that happened as the promotion panned out has made me alter my view – although Nestle executives might be rubbing their hands with glee as I write this, of course. Who knows?! There has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth amongst us compers as we’ve seen ‘our’ prizes snatched away by ‘outsiders’, but the most important strategy for compers in a promotion like this – to get in and out early, before those ‘outsiders’ cotton on – once again held true. We probably had one or two weeks before the rot well and truly set in, which was more than enough time for some of us to do rather well. But for anyone left with burnt fingers as prices soared and as more and more people piled in, the whole episode should still act as a useful lesson. That the early bird invariably catches the worm, that you should only spend time and money that you can afford on a promotion, and that spending hundreds, even thousands of pounds on a promotion is no guarantee of success. Also, that us ‘serious’ compers have no divine right to prizes in a competition. Multiple Kit Ka$h computer accounts is arguably no different to us using friends and relatives addresses on an entry form to circumvent restrictions on entry numbers. Or using computer know-how to exploit weaknesses in a system – no different to ‘smidding’ an instant win. Or a few technical tweaks to make your entry somehow ‘better noticed’ by Nestle’s own computer – nothing more than the hi-tech equivalent of a decorated postcard. It would be rather boorish of me, after all I’ve said in past articles about the importance of playing to strengths, to attack someone who’s a computer expert with the resources to easily obtain and dispose of hundreds of thousands of Kit Kats, for embracing this promotion so heartily. Especially since Nestle obviously let him! It does appear to be a match made in heaven for the lucky chap after all, and I don’t doubt that if one of “us” had been so fortunate, then bouquets would have replaced the brickbats. I don’t condone blatant cheating of course, be it by a comper or not, but again it all comes down to where individuals draw the line. As long as we keep within the rules… and the ‘spirit’ of the thing, of course! Although how on earth we’re meant to pre-empt and interpret the required ‘spirit’ of a promotion is an entirely different matter.
Smid x
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