Voting competitions on Facebook could be in for a bumpy ride over the next few months after the launch of a new group calling for the social network to ban voting competitions. And the group already has a feather in it’s cap when Ryvita announced a change to it’s competition after encouragement from compers. Help Ban voting competitions on facebook! was set up “to get a petition together to get facebook to change their terms and conditions and STOP voting competitions on facebook and all the cheating, upset and bad publicity for companies that goes along with it all”!
Cheating Allegations
The group has arisen following a number of voting competition issues such as the cheating allegations during the Flip Video UK Facebook competition. The idea to raise awareness of voting competitions and how they can fall apart, often to the detriment of the brand, is a good one. In our opinion, Facebook won’t act upon this. Firstly they probably aren’t interested and secondly they don’t implement their own promotional rules at a basic level. For example it’s against TOC to run a competition for “likes”, yet there are plenty of examples day to day of this happening. Far better then to use the group and associated comping content such as Are Voting, Facebook and Twitter Competitions Out of Control? and How Do People Get Votes to Win Voting Competitions? to educate promoters that a voting competition isn’t always the best idea.
It’s Already Working
Ryvita announced a weekly recipe competition that offered weekly prizes and an overall prize of £1000. The winning recipes would be those that achieved the most likes. After comments from compers the company have changed the mechanics of the promotion: “Thank you for your feedback. We have taken it on board and decide to change the competition. We have now instated a panel of 5 judges who will pick the 10 best recipes each week for 8 weeks. The 80 winners will then go into a random prize draw to win the £1000 of Sainsbury’s shopping vouchers”. This is a much better approach and Ryvita should be applauded for taking a quick decision. For these reasons alone we’d encourage compers to enter the Liven up Your Lunch Box competition! The overall grand prize isn’t bad either!
We’ll be keeping an eye out to see whether more promoters can be convinced to look at alternative ways of running their competitions!