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August 26, 2002 - Strategy Magazine
Special Report: Premiums & Incentives

A winner every time
Fantasy prizes and brand-boosting themes are making contests the ultimate incentive

by Terry Poulton
page 19

"Wow!" That's the jaw-drop response any marketer should be going for when concocting the kind of breakthrough contests that are fast becoming a key element in promotional strategies. In fact, some argue that contests are actually edging out some of the more routine premiums and incentives programs.

"There will always be people who enthusiastically clip coupons," says Josh Cobden, VP of Toronto-based Environics Communications. "But the elusive young adults with money, [whom] so many marketers are trying to reach, are bombarded by offers of every kind. So to get them to stop and take notice, the message and the offer have to capture their imagination by being truly innovative."

And that's why "contests are the fastest growing part of the marketing discipline," says Tony Chapman, president of Toronto's Capital C Communications. "They have the ability to excite consumers, excite a sales force, sell incredible volume and build brand equity - and that's the sweet spot every marketer dreams about."

Lisa Leach agrees. As VP of sales and client services at Marco Sales & Incentives of Paris, Ont., she says she's seeing such "a significant move toward [running] contests, especially in the past 18 months," that her company is now working on more than 500 of them annually.

All this makes sense to Claire Rosenzweig. As president of the New York City-based Promotion Marketing Association (PMA), she characterizes sweepstakes-style contests as "a very dynamic and effective promotional tool...that creates excitement and anticipation around a brand."

According to Rosenzweig's data, Internet-based efforts are the fastest-proliferating facet of contests - increasing by 18% over the past year. "This doesn't surprise me," she says, "because that one-to-one online interaction between the consumer and the brand is so effective. Everybody loves to win and, with interactive [contests], there's the potential for doing so instantly."

So what does it take to prompt big wows, drooling consumers and jet-propelled brand awareness? Big bucks or big imagination, together with fantasy prizes that can't be bought in any store.

Big bucks

In the lotsa loot category, excitement was a dead-bang certainty when HGTV dangled the chance to win, and help design, a fully furnished $900,000 dream home. Or when Labatt offered a top-of-the-line cottage. Or when Hallmark and Weall & Cullen celebrated this Mother's Day with a contest whose winner's back yard was personally designed by gardening guru Mark Cullen. And wild enthusiasm will be a given this November, when KFC's Chicken Scratch II contest awards a whopping $1 million each to its top five winners.

Big imagination

But big budgets are by no means the only way to create big wows, as attested to in the round-up of cool contests on page 20.

Dunlop Tires, for example, managed to prompt a phenomenal flood of media hits with its controversial "Tired of Your Name" contest this spring, even though the prize was a measly $25,000, to be shared by an initially undetermined number of winners. In the end, four Canadians whose surname is "Dunlop" won $6,250 each by legally changing their names to "Dunlop-Tire."

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