Gary Needs A P But Walkers Have An ASA Investigation

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) are investigating the current Walkers prize promotion. According to reports in The Grocer complaints have been made by entrants that some letters are not being generated. Without these letters it’s therefore impossible to win some of the holiday prizes on offer. The article includes a screenshot of source code which allegedly shows that some letters are not generated. The Walkers Spell & Go competition was launched earlier in the year and included a TV advert starring Gary Lineker. A hidden letter is in the advert, although we never figured it out (unless it is actually P). To get other letters, entrants needed to purchase packets of crisps. These letters were then entered into the Spell & Go website.

Win A Holiday

If you got the right combination of letters to spell destinations then you won a 4 star, 7 night holiday for 4 people. According to the website there are 20,000 lastminute.com holidays to be won. The holidays available are split into Groups A and B with A being Worldwide destinations and B being destinations in Europe. The Mirror, who have picked up on the story via The Grocer, reports that letters “C, D and K, are never generated” which would mean it’s impossible to win any of the holidays in the Group A set of destinations as outlined in the Spell & Go terms. Among the destinations listed are New York, Marrakech and Hong Kong. In fact all the Group A destinations contain the letter ‘K’.

Nothing Underhand

In the Group B destinations the letters C and D are prevalent – Nice, Amsterdam, Crete, Bordeaux and Munich are among the places you could win a holiday to, provided you had the right letters of course.

Walkers however claim that there’s nothing underhand going on – and in June they tweeted that people are winning their prizes.

If the above video is correct – and people have won – then that surely refutes the suggestion that some letters are being held back. Furthermore with an on pack promotion, not every packet will be registered so Mr J Bloggs could be munching on a packet of cheese & onion and not caring that the letter K code he has is the key to a prize holiday!

Unhappy Crisp Eating People

However a quick look at the #spellandgo tag search on Twitter and you’ll find lots of unhappy crisp eating people who are waiting on getting a C, D or K! Mind you given the estimated odds of locating these letters it’s perhaps not a surprise. The key to the investigation will therefore be whether Walkers have done all they can to ensure that the promotion is fair and that it’s possible to win the prizes advertised. It’ll be interesting to see ASA’s findings on this particular promotion and we’ll be keeping an eye out for the report.

More Links

Walkers investigated over crisp holiday competition (The Mirror)
Walkers Spell & Go (Super Lucky)
Walkers Spell & Go competition investigated over ‘missing’ letters (The Grocer