Ribena – Win Festival Tickets

Ribena has an on-pack promotion to win festival tickets and music. It’s simple enough but misses a trick in not using mobile. The instructions say “Simply enter the 4-digit code on the reverse of this label at www.ribena.co.uk to find out if you’ve won.”

Two mistakes immediately: firstly, any product that is sold to be consumed outside needs a mobile promotion route. Nobody will be bringing their empty Ribena bottle home just to enter the promotion. Sure, some keen people will either make a note of their code or stash the label and enter when they get home, but the web is the second best channel for this this promotion. It should have been mobile all the way. The second mistake is small but basically, there’s no need to have “www.” in your domain name. Where space is at a premium, and you’re dealing with people’s memories, you need to make the URL as short and memorable as possible. As it happens, ribena.co.uk works perfectly.

The site redirects to ribena.co.uk/summer-soundtrack and I enter my code. Clearly, this is a data gathering exercise as I’m then asked to enter my name, email, date of birth and full address. I also have to answer a couple of marketing questions about how often I drink cold drinks, how often I drink Ribena, and the ages of my children.

Ribena is a fruit-based drink produced by GlaxoSmithKline.