7UP – Win a Polaroid Two

A tie-in with 7UP has the Polaroid Two camera/printer combo being given away every hour between 12pm and 7pm until 27 Sept 2010. The on-pack instructions say ‘Submit the last 4 digits from this barcode to 7up.co.uk‘, but these instructions aren’t correct, as the entry mechanic is hosted on the 7UP Simple Pleasures microsite. Unlike its parent site, the microsite works perfectly without Flash, making it much more accessible to mobile users. Seems like they’ve missed a trick not having SMS entry though, as 7UP seems targeted at people on the move. Who’s going to take their empty, sticky can home to their computer?

After entering the last 4 digits of the barcode, you then have to enter your details. The designers have decided to use a very unusual format, and collect this information in a sentence, rather than in a standard form. This doesn’t work at all and probably has usability and accessibility issues. I received an email half an hour after I entered telling me I hadn’t won but to check out their contests on Facebook. How could I resist?

There are two 7UP pages on Facebook. The official one, with 102,203 fans is facebook.com/7UP. This page is global and appears un-managed. A character called ‘Seven Upuk’ posted a message about this particular promotion on the Discussion tab, but there are no other 7UP contests on Facebook. Leaving aside the issue that brands shouldn’t create fictional profiles on Facebook, why advertise in an email that there are more contests on Facebook, when there are clearly none?