VA – VA – OOM!In the December issue, I gave a brief overview of Order of Merit (OOM) competitions. I promised to conclude the article last month, but the rather more topical Kit Ka$h intervened. Time to continue now then, with apologies for being a month late.
When you’re faced with a list of OOM statements to put into order, your first important task is to carefully read the rules and instructions so that you are clear on exactly what it is you’re being asked to do. Barring the occasional slapdash copywriting, most comps should clearly state (or, at worst, give a few hints) as to whose shoes you should be putting yourself into for your OOM challenge. And it’s important that you do this. It’s no use going with your own personal opinion if, for example, you’re a retired man and the entry form asks you to put statements in order of importance to a busy young mum! Priorities will obviously be markedly different, but you’d be surprised at the number of competition entrants who make this most basic mistake. So make a conscious effort to digest the exact task that’s being asked of you. If the guidance is not as clear or obvious as you’d perhaps like, then consider other aspects that might point you in the right direction. An OOM task in a particular newspaper or magazine, for example, would probably use their typical reader as the common denominator. A particular supermarket, their typical customer. So if information is lacking in the competition blurb, simply try to do a little research or lateral thinking to transform yourself into the person that you think the comp is primarily aimed at; the person that the promoters are expecting you to be.
Once we’ve kept our side of the bargain of course, we then have to hope that the judges don’t let us down. But we can only trust that they have been properly briefed and are as diligent as we’ve been in interpreting the task. An OOM is always going to be subjective, and just because a judging panel doesn’t agree with your own answer it doesn’t necessarily mean that the judges got it wrong. In any event, OOM comps should always be judged by a panel rather than just one individual, so arguably the resulting consensus view should be a faultless meeting of minds. Indeed, this can be a useful exercise to try yourself if you’re attempting a particularly difficult OOM; just ask your friends and family to tackle the list independently. It’s surprising when you do this how recurring themes often emerge, and you can use the data that you collect to arrive at an ‘average’ result – always worth sending in as an entry in its own right.
So then, you’ve carefully considered the task in hand and have decided on the approach that you are going to take to put the items in order. Next, you must dissect each statement on the list in turn and consider it through the eyes of the OOM subject (which, remember, almost certainly isn’t going to be you!). This bit must really be down to your own instincts, but it probably goes without saying that something along the lines of “low, low prices” would be immaterial to a Harrods shopper, but paramount to a Kwik Save devotee. “In depth gossip and soaps coverage” may be attractive to a Sun reader, “political and world affairs coverage” to a Times reader. “Cheap, quick and easy” would be important to a busy mum, but not at all to a dinner party hostess keen to make an impression. So you need to get into the mindset of your subject, and then consider every word or phrase. It’s this kind of exercise that will help you separate seemingly identical sentiments such as – for example – “low prices” and “great value”. The “price” factor will always come first in the eyes of discount retailers such as Aldi, Kwik Save and the like. They offer overall “great value” obviously, but this is always ‘price-led’ in industry parlance and so, by default, the “price” element will always come first. At the other end of the scale, the more upmarket retailers – Tesco, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s et al – see themselves these days as offering a whole new shopping experience involving choice, quality, and other benefits on top of just competitive prices. So they’d probably put “great value” – where ‘value’ incorporates many more factors other than simply price – at the top of their list.
Another important thing to remember is to tell the promoter what you think they want to hear. They may have delusions of grandeur in your eyes, but it’s their competition so always give them what they want. If a particularly grotty shop boasts of an “unrivalled shopping experience” in their advertising, and then run an OOM comp featuring exactly the same statement, then it’s obvious that this will feature highly in the final shake-up – even if you think it’s rubbish. A “favourite” product doesn’t necessarily mean the “best” product. “The finest I’ve ever tasted!” in the context of a 50p microwaveable pizza would probably never realistically stand up against a gourmet restaurant equivalent. But it’s a safe bet that the more truthful and technically accurate “Looks and tastes like cardboard” is never going to feature in an OOM comp! Be careful not to massage a promoter’s ego too much though – a product whose main selling point is that it’s cheap and cheerful probably would genuinely see statements such as “reassuringly expensive” and “top quality, the best there is” as definite negatives, off-message and inconsistent with the brand. So it’s always worth studying the packaging and advertising material before embarking on an OOM challenge, just to give yourself a better idea of how the promoter sees himself, and where a product has been positioned in the grand scheme of things.
Even after you’ve moulded the statements on offer into some kind of order, the format of today’s typical OOM probably means that you’re still up against some serious odds before you will win a prize. Nothing less than an exactly-correct order tends to do these days and, as I mentioned last time, this means beating odds of 40,320-1 against for an 8-item OOM, 3,628,800-1 for the usual 10-item OOM, and a next-to-impossible 479,001,600-1 for a 12-item OOM. One way of getting these odds down to something slightly more favourable is by using a system of “bankers”. A “banker” is a statement that you are reasonably certain will occupy a particular position on the final list, usually first or last. You then ensure that every entry you make has your “bankers” in the same place, and you then only have to concern yourself with the remaining points. Using bankers can really improve the odds in your favour. If, for example, you’re reasonably confident of the statements that will occupy first and last place in an 8-item OOM, then you have effectively turned the challenge into a 6-item OOM instead. With odds of just 720-1 rather than 40,320-1! Of course, your bankers might turn out to be wrong – but at least you were able to approach the task in a more methodical way and, with a bit of practice under your belt, you might have more success next time.
An ‘optimum’ target for many OOM enthusiasts is to try to reduce the challenge to a 4-item task. At this point, assuming all of your bankers are correct of course, your odds of getting a correct order have become a more realistic and achievable 24-1. In other words, there are 24 different ways of putting four items in order. All of which means that, providing the qualifier is reasonably cheap and multiple entries are allowed, you can make 24 entries – with a different permutation each time – to guarantee that one of your lines will be correct. I must emphasise again at this point that there is no certainty your bankers will be correct. Obviously, if they’re not, then every entry that you make will be wrong. But if they are, then it makes your task infinitely easier. A risk well worth taking!
Another useful odds-reduction tactic that you can use either alongside “bankers”, or instead of them if none of the statements jumps out at you as being a ‘dead cert’, is to group statements together and perm them within their groups rather than across the whole OOM. For example, if in a 10-item OOM you think there are 4 strong points, 3 average ones, and 3 weak ones, then you ensure that the top 4 places on your EF are always taken up by the strongest 4 points (in varying orders), the next 3 by your three average points, and the bottom 3 places by your weakest statements. Once again, there are no absolute guarantees with this system. You’re effectively keeping the three sub-groups completely separate so if, for example, one of the statements in your bottom three is actually ranked fourth from bottom by the judges, then this will make every single one of your entries incorrect. But the benefits of getting it right are clear to see. I believe that using some kind of “banker” or permutation system to improve your odds is always better than creating random, haphazard lines. Of course you must be strong and have absolute faith in your bankers, and clearly you won’t be right every time. But by reducing the odds down to a genuinely attainable level, the few occasions that you do get it right will almost certainly bring you success. Whereas an illogical hit-and-miss approach, up against such huge odds every single time, carries no such guarantee.
The Order Of Merit is not for everyone. In the good old days they were always worth a go, because someone had to win. This tends, sadly, not to be the case today. But it’s still true that you’ve little to lose and potentially plenty to gain from an OOM. So, providing you fully understand the odds that you’re up against, and you don’t have to spend too much on a qualifier, pitting your wits against an OOM judge can still be something of a challenge. Using some of the tricks of the trade touched on here, you can start to shift the odds in your favour, so why not have a go. Believe it or not, people do win!
I was pleased to see that when Kit Ka$h finally got up and running, my attempts to pre-empt the promotion in last month’s article weren’t too wide of the mark. The main difference with Kit Kat, compared to previous auction promotions, is that you’re unable to up the bidding by more than one wrapper at a time – so some of my advice was inappropriate. This fundamental difference also means that luck plays a major part in proceedings, and a sure-fire winning strategy is impossible. Chatterboxers are having some good successes with the promotion though, so pop into the site if you haven’t already done so for all the latest updates, tactics and ideas.
SMID’S CHRISTMAS BOX
Thanks to everyone who entered my Christmas competition in the December issue. The gifts that you should have sent me were, in original clue order: a ringpull, a piece of holly, a Quality Street wrapper, a Lego brick, a halfpenny – either decimal or pre decimal, a standard UK definitive stamp (i.e. with just the Queen’s head on), a button, a drawing pin, a NutriGrain barcode, a Walkers Crisps barcode, any UK coin dated 1976, a piece of BacoFoil, a Polo mint, a paperclip, and a gift tag with your tiebreaker on.
This was my most popular competition to date, and it’s clear that – without exception - everyone put a lot of time and effort into their entries. The three lucky winners of the Find-it games were Jose Allison from Dunstable, J. Eddy from Cornwall and Jean Taylor from London. Plus, since it was Christmas and because of the exceptional standard of entries, we decided to throw in a few extra consolation prizes of one-month CN subscription extensions. These went to Beryl Davie of Devon, Tiff Jordan of Stockport, Carol Notman of Kent, Angela Gibbs of Bury St Edmunds and Vicky Voller of Suffolk. The main winners should have already received their prizes, and the winners of subs extensions should notice revised renewal details on their address label. All of the coins in the matchboxes – and some of you thought that the halfpenny clue referred to a 50p piece, which bumped up the total a bit – were donated to the Tsunami relief fund. Congratulations to all the winners, and sorry to those of you who weren’t lucky this time. I had some great feedback about this comp, and will definitely run something similar again in the future. In the meantime, look out for my next competition – an Order of Merit, to find out how much attention you paid to my words of wisdom above – next month.
Smid x
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