Every now and then we like to delve into the online news archives and see if there are any interesting articles that might interest compers. And for this round there are definitely a few articles which we think are well worth a read. These include an influencer coming under fire from Advertising Standards, a competition winner who got more that she wanted from her prize and an indicator that those raffle sites attract a lot more interest than you may think.
Molly Mae-Hague Gets Rapped By ASA
If you’re a fan of Love Island then you’ll probably know about Molly-Mae Hague. We aren’t fans so had no idea who she is/was. What do know is that the “influencer” has fallen fould of ASA rules again. According to The BBC Hague ran an “£8,000 online prize draw that failed to follow the rules for such competitions”. Complaints were made to advertising watchdog who found that the Love Island star couldn’t “provide evidence the winners had been randomly and fairly picked”. The giveaway in question ran in September and was to celebrate Hague reaching an impressive one million subscribers on her Youtube Channel. To enter the competition users had to like, tag and subscribe to social media channels.
The competition post attracted almost 1.2million likes and 3 million comments. However complainants to ASA suggested that not all entrants were included in the draw. ASA found inconsistencies in Hague’s explanation of the winner selection process and upheld the complaints. Hopefully this result will encourage other influencers to run their giveaways fairly however is it a win for compers and competitions? Not really because all ASA have said is “don’t do it again Ms Hague”. There are no penalties for the promoter and no redrawing of the original giveaway. Whilst appearing as an ASA stat is seen as not a good thing we kind of think that influencers may actually see it as fertiliser for more publicity.
Competitions As A Career
Whilst some make a career out of social media, one well known person in comping circles has made competitions a career (The Mirror. It’s probably quite safe to say that Di Coke is an influencer for comping or perhaps even an ambassador? Di’s blog at Superlucky continues to go from strength to strength and she also fronts a number of Facebook groups too. What we like about Di is that she is always raising issues that effect compers. Whilst The Mirror article focuses on Di’s comping success we think that blogs such as Baileys 157/3000 Hamper Prizes is more worthwhile reading. Not every comper is a fan of Di, but it is useful to have someone willing to fight the comper’s corner. We tried to do it with some degree of success with Automated Entry Services but we’re not cut out for that X-Ray/Watchdog kind of thing. Di is better positioned as firstly she’s entering competitions but also lives and breathes comping. Whilst we’d love all our users to make Loquax their first port of call it is worth checking out Di’s blog regularly especially for information about the latest scams to look out for!
Itching For A Prize
One thing that won’t be on Di’s scam list is problem prizes! Student Sophie Gorringe is reported by The Sun to have won a problem prize. According to the report Sophie won a clothes bundle from Boohoo via a Twitter competition. However after trying on her new clothes she developed a painful red rash which she said could only have arisen from the prizes. Boohoo have offered to refund her if the items are returned. Receiving a prize that doesn’t turn out as you’d expect should be treated in a similar way as buying a product. If it’s faulty or there’s a problem with a prize you receive then you should try and get back in touch with the promoter. This isn’t always possible though especially if you don’t know the origin of the prize or if it’s sent via a third party. Going onto social media and into the press however should – in our view anyway – be a last resort.
Raffles Are Big Business
We end our little round-up with raffles – we’ll do a win a house update next week! Raffle sites popped up everywhere last year and we still see new launches in 2021. Not every raffle site is successful but one, Win This Competitions, seems to be doing alright according to a Business Live article. According to the report the site is “reaching three million people a month and giving away nearly 100 prizes”. Out of the many raffle sites we reviewed last year Win This Competitions actually came out quite well. We liked their transparency and their promise to “never extend a the competition period or offer a lower prize pot”. This does seem slightly insane as for example they’re currently giving away a Focus ST-3 or £12.3K in a competition that costs £7.99 a ticket. At time of writing 615 tickets have sold so just under £5000 in revenue. The draw is at 8pm on 5th March (just over 24 hours to go) so they’ll need to sell a few more tickets to break even. We guess they’re taking this approach with the long term aim of building their audience. It would seem that Win It Competitions are going to need a lot more than three million visis a month to generate those sales though.