Sweeping Changes- What Not To Do When Creating a Contest or Sweepstakes

Some of you will remember that a few weeks back I ran an online contest/promotion for Career and Corporate Cool(TM) called Back To Cool. The promo was incredibly successful, so much so that I seem to have inspired others who are inclined to self market to blithely push forward with their own sweeps and schemes.

Well, the alarm bells they are a'ringing and here are just some of the reasons why. While it may appear that I just came up with a fun idea and then gave away a lot of stuff, the reality is that it was a promotion that took weeks to build and involved more back end work than you can imagine- oh, and it wasn't just me putting it together. As president of GTK Marketing Group and Partner Up Promotions I am fortunate to have not only the experience and resources to create and implement mass cross platform promotions, but to also have staff to work with me and back me up on the sticky issues.

I'd originally posted some of this information on a message board that I frequent, but at the urging of a friend, I will post it here as well. If you don't feel like reading through what's involved, take this one lesson to heart. It's always cool to enthusiastically promote your work- be it a book or a bakery. What's not cool is to move forward with any promotion without researching your responsibilities and obligations - you could potentially be opening yourself up to a world of pain if not potential lawsuits.

As a marketer by trade, I know about the necessity to dot every I and cross every T when creating a promo- huge or teeny. For instance, Rules and Regulations need to be drawn up for every single contest, and if you plan on doing giveaways in different states/limiting certain states, you'll also need to have separate rules and regs created - logically, you'll have more than one set of rules and regs for your contest, perhaps a master list, one short one that appears in print and an exhortation to view the full list. If you're planning on running an online promo, at the very least you'll have to work with your attorney/team/partner/sweepstakes management company to establish start and end times, time zones, accepted methods of entry, duplication of entry, follow up, and more minutiae. If you're working on any contest at all, you need to asses age, Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), eligibility, values, tax responsibilities, sponsors, use of logos, permissions, trademarks,language, press releases, substitutions and more headaches than you can fathom. In fact, to put it into perspective, there are entire corporations and legal teams set up to deal with rules and regulations- this is a pricy undertaking for a reason- it will save you money in the long term.

You have no idea how many disgruntled contest entrants go on to sue companies because they attempted to enter a contest and received a busy signal or bounced email, because they enter a contest at midnight on the West Coast when it's already over on the East Coast- though it wasn't specified in the rules and regs. There are accusations of racism, sexism, ageism and more. It can cost you a small fortune if you try to skimp on the crucial details.

Now, you've gotten a really basic idea of the technical details and while I'm certain you're thinking outside of the box, it's always a better idea to work with a professional marketing team to analyze your desired outcome, targeted demographic, value proposition and more. They'll then work through every angle of the creative, ideation and sponsor/partnership solicitation - again, protecting both you and your partners from long term potentially awkward if not costly issues.

Again, if you want to give away signed copies of your book on your website- go for it, but if you're considering something more 'official' I cannot stress enough how important it is to do it the right way.

Stay cool!
Rachel
Feeling cooler already? Read Career and Corporate Cool (TM) now or visit the website