Know your competition.I was recently asked what the best single piece of advice would be for someone just starting out in our hobby. This, to be honest, is one of those questions that will probably receive a different reply from me every time you ask it, depending on my mood and what’s going on in the wonderful world of comping at a particular moment.
Of course, there are some obvious nuggets that will always be important. You can’t win a competition if you don’t enter it. Always respect a closing date. Read the rules. Double check to ensure that your entries are correct and complete. Make sure that postmen and judges alike can read your writing. And always try to make the effort to find rare or unusual comps where entry numbers will be lower.
But my current ‘top tip’ is never underestimate your fellow compers. Last month’s Walkers iPod frenzy was the event that sent this racing to the top spot and, particularly for a new comper, it’s an aspect that can sometimes be overlooked. It should, however, be a major factor in any comping strategy – and its importance must never be dismissed.
The Walkers promotion was the first for a long time that seemed to really capture the imagination of the general public. Non-compers in my office took great delight in telling me that they were joining in. Snatches of conversation overheard in supermarket crisp aisles made it obvious that extra crisps were being purchased simply to win an iPod. Walkers cleverly maximised interest with blanket advertising, and structured the competition in such a way to give people the thrill of the chase in thousands of quick, five-minute draws. With so many prizes to be won, countless iPods seemed to be in easy reach and success seemed assured.
But of course, people forgot – or simply didn’t realise – that Walkers sell millions of bags of crisps every day, and that this particular promotion appeared on well over 150 MILLION packs. Which suddenly makes the few thousand iPods on offer look very distant indeed. But why let the facts get in the way of a ‘guaranteed’ prize? Plenty of people were drawn to the comp, and seemed genuinely disappointed when their only reward was an ubiquitous ‘Sorry’ message. How could this be, when an extra multipack had been purchased to cement what should have already been a sure-fire win? Or when the player stayed up for ten minutes after their usual bedtime to take advantage of a more ‘off-peak’ slot?
And we must not forget those entrants who made no special efforts whatsoever but who, by the law of averages, would still strike lucky occasionally and throw an almighty spanner in the works for the rest of us. The busiest time of the day for entries was invariably lunchtime – presumably when Joe Public was most likely to have a bag of crisps in his hand, entering there and then with no thought or concern that thousands of people would most likely be doing the same. OK, so us hardened compers would doubtless snigger at such amateurish antics as we carefully collated our codes for a 4am blitz – only to find that entry numbers were still in the hundreds even at that hour. And those ‘sorry’ messages are even more soul destroying in the middle of the night, trust me! Oh, how I yearn for those brilliant Walkers skill comps of the seventies and eighties, the cunning treasure hunts and quizzes, having to pore over dusty volumes in the local reference library and actually learning something as I went. Which might all sound like I’m going misty eyed and dreaming of the good old days again, but which in fact brings me back to today’s top tip quite nicely.
Back in my formative comping years, I genuinely had no idea that ‘professional’ compers existed. Or that there were dedicated magazines and clubs (but no chatrooms or websites back then as the internet hadn’t been invented!). I honestly believed that if I managed to get 8 out of 10 questions in a quiz correct, then I’d be in with a chance since very few others would probably have made the effort. If I purchased one or two extra bars of chocolate to enter a comp more than once, then I’d be unbeatable. And my slogans, back then at the ‘they taste delicious and are great value’ stage (some might say that they haven’t improved much!) were of the finest quality. I never imagined that while I was having to spend hours in the local library finding, without fail, never quite all of the answers I needed, others simply spent thirty seconds scanning a solution magazine for the full set. Or that, back then, there was a magazine widely available at the newsagents that listed winning slogans and other comping news. Or that there were actually people out there who did nothing but competitions, all day every day, who would deliberately buy dozens, even hundreds, of products just to enter the competitions on them.
Of course, I know now! And in this information age, the penny probably drops a lot quicker for new compers these days compared to back then. But it IS something that you must always be conscious of. If you remain realistic about your chances, then you won’t be quite so disappointed when the prizes fail to roll in. Which in turn means you stay a little more optimistic than you perhaps otherwise might, and you’ll keep on trying long after others have given up. How many Sorrys from Walkers did it take for the average man in the street to get disheartened, do you think? Whereas if we approach a competition realistically, calculate the probable odds and – thus – our likely success, we’ll have a clearer picture of the task in hand. And as those not so well prepared fall by the wayside, then our own chances improve.
Those of us who joined in NutriGrain, or KitKash, know that the current breed of ‘inkjet code’ promotions are not for the faint-hearted. You must speculate to accumulate, and never underestimate the wiles of your fellow compers. This kind of competition looks like it’s here to stay, with another KitKash promotion promised at the end of the year, and major comps on Cadbury’s chocolate and two different Kellogg’s cereal as I write this. Walker’s parent company Pepsi are running exactly the same type of comp in the USA at the moment on one of their drinks brands (to win a games console every ten minutes), so with a truly global company at the helm such promotions could even become an international phenomenon. It’s a fair bet that these large manufacturers are not investing in the necessary machinery and software just for one-off promotions, so I think that we’ll start to see more and more of them appearing. Which may have some of the more traditional compers gasping for air, but is something that we’ll all have to learn to live with. But if you remain realistic – in what you need to do to have a fighting chance of success, in what your chances of winning genuinely are, and in how tenacious many of your fellow compers are likely to be – then there’s no reason why you shouldn’t succeed.
To return to the message in several of my past articles, it’s important that you don’t misinterpret this as some sort of ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ clarion call. For clearly if you have neither the time, inclination, or money to spend on keeping up with the comping Joneses, then trying to do so will be a recipe for disaster. You just need to be aware of what’s likely to happen and, armed with that knowledge and expectation, best decide how to approach a comp. You might even conclude that a particular promotion is not for you, and that your time would be better spent on a comp where you may have a more realistic chance. Big KitKash winners bought tens of thousands of bars. Some Walkers players had access to canteens and cafes where empty bags were discarded by the hundred. Tales abound of entire comping families texting all night, every night in shifts, and spending hours every day downloading thousands of free ‘no purchase necessary’ codes from the website. At the other end of the scale, many a shameless comper can be found unearthing bags and wrappers from litter bins, and rooting around in gutters. Nothing wrong with any of this, of course. Just be aware that it happens, and never underestimate the lengths that some compers are prepared to go in pursuit of a prize – however pointless and minor that prize can sometimes seem to be.
Smid x
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