A bit late for Hallowe’een, but I only noticed this Text 2 Win promotion on Wychwood’s Hobgoblin Beer in my local Spar. It’s a ‘no purchase necessary’ promotion, so all you have to do is text ‘Hobgoblin’ to 60300 or enter online at www.wychwood.co.uk. I try texting first and get a message with a code to download a ‘screamsaver’. This is a good way to get non-winners to go to the website and provide more data about themselves. The website seems to work really well on my iPhone, but I switch to my netbook to enter again online. At the mandatory date of birth screen, I’m asked whether I want to see the full site or a light version. This is a classic mistake which can only confuse consumers. How are they supposed to know which button to choose? I choose the full version and see that it’s a choice between Flash content and non-Flash content which could easily have been automated. The Flash doesn’t actually add anything so I switch over to the non-Flash content. I entered by giving over a lot of data including full address and phone number but didn’t win this time either. I was entered into a Free Prize Draw though. Wychwood is owned by Marston’s PLC.

I stumbled on this cool feature in Twitter for iPhone. Click on a trending hashtag and a button appears that brings in an explanation of the hashtag from whatthetrend.com. In this case, the trend is #TwitterJokeTrial which relates to Paul Chambers and his prosecution for tweeting: “Crap! Robin Hood airport is closed. You’ve got a week and a bit to get your shit together otherwise I’m blowing the airport sky high!!”

I think we’ve all learned not to make jokes like this in airports, and the authorities were right to look into it, but enough already. There are better things to spend taxpayer’s money on.

It’s moments like this that drive home the innovation gap between the US and the rest of the world.

Good to see that Westons have moved into the mobile age with this Text To Win neck-collar promotion. I found it on a delicious bottle of 2009 Vintage Oak Aged Herefordshire Cider. I had a choice of text or online entry, but I decided to go with the mobile option. A well as a 2 day loan of the Morgan car, the prize includes nights in a hotel with dinner at the Westons Scrumpy House Restaurant.

There are good secondary prizes of picnic baskets, rugs and miniature cars. I texted HENRY followed by my unique code found under the bottle cap to 83010. I received a message straight back: “Sorry, no instant prize but we’ve entered you for the prize draw. Visit www.win-with-henry.com for more information”.

I clicked on the URL on my iPhone and entered with no problems. Westons are collecting the usual full name, email and address. I have to wait till May 2011 to see if I’ve won a pedal car.

This on-pack promotion is for  Rankin Selection – a range of breads made by Irwin’s to Paul Rankin’s recipes. The prize is 10 luxury weekends for 2 people in Belfast with dinner at Paul Rankin’s Cayenne restaurant. Entry is at rankinselection.com and it’s a No Purchase Necessary promotion. They use an irritating scrolling form for no apparent reason, but at least there’s no Flash. This is clearly a data gathering exercise with name, address, email and age being collected. Closing date for entries is 10th December 2010.

Exciting day for Beatles and iTunes fans as The Beatles are finally included on the iTunes Store and Ping. The philosophical and experimental nature of The Beatles was a big influence on a young Steve Jobs, who named Apple after The Beatles’ Apple Corps company.

Walkers have a promotion on all their crisp packets to win £10 if you can guess where and when it will rain. This sounds easy, especially at this time of year. I was going to buy 4 packets of crisps in our local Spar for 50p each, but I noticed that they had a promotion where you could buy 2 x 6-packs for £2. I didn’t really want 12 packets of crisps but the maths forced me into it. Continue reading ‘Win £10 every day it rains with Walkers Crisps’

Tango have an on-pack promotion to win 365 ‘recovery kits’ comprising a mini fridge, 32″ TV, Blu-Ray player, Sound system, iPod Shuffle and shades. It’s a combined SMS entry/web entry mechanic, which is good to see. What isn’t clear until I enter is that the promotion is an Instant Win. I go the web route and make my way to tango.co.uk and find a link on there to take me to the competition URL kingtango.tango.co.uk. I wonder why they couldn’t have just printed the correct URL to start with? Continue reading ‘Win Recovery Kits with Tango’

Giovanni Rana Pasta is promoting a No Purchase Necessary Free Prize Draw on their packs to win a trip to Verona. They call it a Facebook competition, but actually, it has nothing to do with Facebook. The URL is a complete misnomer and I wonder what the logic was to name it like that. It would have made much more sense to host the competition on Facebook itself and make entry dependent on ‘Liking’ the page.

The entry mechanic itself is in 3 steps. Step 1 is to agree to the T&Cs. Step 2 is to click a Facebook Like button. Ony 242 people had clicked it when I entered. This step is actually completely optional, and clicking it doesn’t from part of the T&Cs. If you just click ‘continue’, you can move straight to Step 3, which is to enter your email address. This field has a really irritating piece of code attached to it that deletes the contents of the field whenever you click on it. So if you make a mistake, you have to re-type your email again. If the number of ‘Likes’ is indicative of the number of people that have entered the promotion, not many people have entered so far.

Despite the inconsistencies, I like the simplicity of this entry mechanic, but I wonder how they’ll enforce the ‘one entry per person’ rule, given that there’s no way that they can identify this from an email address.

Levi Roots’ Reggae Reggae Sauce has an on-pack marketing promotion to “Win Levi’s Reggae Reggae Bus, plus thousands of ‘Flava of Jamaica’ prizes!”  I love the Instant Win Prizes: 50 Oil-Drum BBQ’s, 500 Hammocks, 2,500 Cookbooks full of Reggae Reggae Sauce recipes, and 250 Levi iPods with ReggaeReggaeSauce stripes. This is an ‘everyone wins’ promotion, as every entrant gets to download a track from Levi Roots’ ‘Red Hot’ album. The Prize Draw winner gets a Camper Van. Continue reading ‘Win a Reggae Bus with Levi Roots Reggae Reggae Sauce’