How to Really Annoy a Comper – Run a Fake Competition for an IPad

(This post is for fellow competition enthusiasts, and also for people who might want to be careful about who they do business with. If these companies run marketing campaigns like this, how do they run their business as a whole?)

Ok…deep breath.

So, how do you really annoy a comper? Like this:

Step 1, set up a competition for an iPad, asking people to like and share posts on a Facebook page in order to qualify for a chance to win. A boring but standard request.

Step 2, announce a winner who has not done either of these things. Compers love this. They love it so much they clap their hands together in delight and squeeeeal…well..actually they don’t. Many begin to take screen shots of pages as evidence of underhand behaviour and tell their friends. The comping community sticks together and has a very well defined sense of what is right and fair. Run an unfair comp at your peril! We have talons! And some of us have PMT.

Step 3, forget to mention that the winner has the same surname as the person who runs the SEO company, who is in turn running the marketing campaign for the estate agents. These two are Facebook friends and can be seen to be linked socially. Again, compers love this and take great pleasure in congratulating the winner…..except again, they don’t. They post upset status updates on the offending page, they post screen shots and outline evidence to back up what they are saying. The winner is not genuine, he is a very smug friend of the marketing department who has not been on Facebook since 2012, who suddenly returns on the one day he happens to win an iPad! Now isn’t that a coincidence?

Step 4, block and delete delete comments from people who challenge the competition’s integrity. A great way to draw suspicion, intrigue and to really p*ss off people.

Step 5, get all uppity and and then sulkily offer to redraw a winner for the iPad because of all the ‘disgusting and inflammatory’ criticism – not because the original winner was seen to be a fraud or anything….

Step 6 , do a ‘live’ draw which consists of someone picking a small folded up piece of paper out of a small tupperware pot. The pot should look to have about 60 names in it, despite there being over 400 competition entrants. Just to really annoy the already really annoyed competition entrants.

Step 7, draw the name of someone who is again socially linked by Facebook to someone who works for the SEO marketing company. Show the name to the camera as proof, the name was randomly drawn. Honest. Presume the other competition entrants are all stupid. Surely they won’t realise that you either substituted the name when your hand went off camera, or that you simply wrote the same name on all 60 pieces of paper. They’ll fall for that won’t they?

Step 8, when challenged take down your Facebook page and run for cover.

Step 9, when the SEO marketing Facebook page is challenged too, close that page too and stick your fingers in your ears and go ‘la-la-la-la-laaaa.’

Step 10, stare blankly at a very pointed question aimed at your marketing company on Twitter and wonder whether you should close that account too.

I’m presuming Step 11 will involve all parties sitting there sweating and wondering when it’s safe to poke their noses out from behind the social media sofa and start doing business again online.

A fellow friend and comper is in the process of reporting them to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which is all they deserve.

This was an actual competition run by an actual estate agents on Facebook today in conjunction with an actual SEO marketing company. Without naming names…

I’ll leave you to do the detective work. ;O)

I think this blog post from Di Coke will probably do most of the leg work though, both of these companies have been well and truly caught out. Check out Diane’s fabulous, accurate, well informed comping page for more info: HERE entitled ‘”Hey boss, how about we run a fake competition to win an iPad?’