From The Contest Queen

Tonight was to be my first blog talk radio show in its regular time slot of every other Monday at 9:00pm ET. At 7:00pm I discovered my guest, Brian Makse, wasn’t able to make the show. I scrambled to get another guest, but to no avail.

So at 9:00pm I went on the air, alone. I thought I could have a free-for-all show and just answer random contest questions. With the Memorial Day long weekend in the U.S., I had one listener. After 10 minutes of my rambling on, I stopped the show and deleted the archive.

I learned not only do I need to assume no one will be listening ensuring I have enough questions prepared so my guest and I can talk for an hour, I need to be prepared to talk for an hour, alone.

Tune in again on Monday June 9th when my guest will be Patti Osterheld, the new editor of SweepSheet. I promise you’ll never hear dead air again.

One of my favourite Law of Attraction books is Ask and it is Given by Esther and Jerry Hicks. In it they talk about the flow of life and equate it to a river. What most of us do is put our boat into the river, face upstream and paddle very hard. They suggest letting go of the oars and “going with the flow”. I did that yesterday.

I had an appointment downtown Toronto at 7:30am. Since it take just over an hour without a lot of traffic to get downtown from my house I left at 6:15am. I turned on the radio. The music station I was listening to did not air the news before I got on the highway. I got to the edge of the next town and came to a grinding halt. I thought, “Oh no.” I switched to the all news radio station. There had been an truck roll-over. The road was down to one lane. I slowly made my way to the next exit. I called ahead and let them know I was going to be late.

I had now been on the road an hour. I made my way slowly through town. Seems everyone else had the same idea. I felt like turning back but ignored the thought. I forged ahead. I kept trying to find a better route, to no avail. At one point I even had the thought, “Every decision I am making this morning is a bad one.” I felt as if I was paddling upstream. Pushing against the world and it was pushing back, hard.

I finally made it past the accident scene, got gas and a cup of tea. I felt better and got back on the highway. I was now three towns from my home and almost to the Toronto border. The traffic came to another grinding halt. It was now 8:15am.  “That’s it!” I got off at the next exit, cancelled my appointment, and got back on the highway going the other way. I was going home. I had had enough.

Immediately I began to feel better. I had literally turned around, going with the flow (of traffic), instead of fighting against it.

I believe in the past my day would have just gotten worse, but because I turned around, my day got better.

Have you ever felt as if the world is against you? Have you ever felt as if you have to push hard against the world to get where you want to go? Next time stop, think about what you are doing, let go of the oars and go with the flow.

I have never had this happen to me (us) before. Almost every win we have had in May has a musical theme.

It began with meeting the Barenaked Ladies, followed by tickets to see Doc Walker and the Ann Murray Duets CD. Yesterday, my husband won the trip to Montreal to see the band Sam Roberts (via his cellphone - get texting if you have not started!). Today, I won tickets to see R.E.M. and a song download.

What an interesting winning streak. And the month isn’t over!

I heard back from Handel Productions, the company that produced the documentary, Winning for a Living. They have chosen not to make the film available on DVD, nor with they offering it for sale to American media as it has a Canadian focus.

It has been re-run on the Doc Zone and it may possibly be seen on the Documentary Channel.

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More and more companies are looking for a way to “cut through the clutter”, so they either bombard us with their product message or they use a new medium (social marketing), such as Facebook.

Contest Finder is a new application on Facebook that has partnered with Adooga to bring contests and sweepstakes right to your Facebook account. Since so many people log on to Facebook every day, it is such an easy way to find new promotions.

Don’t have a Facebook account yet? Why not sign-up, it’s FREE!

I had an interesting conversation the other day with Johnny Lucas, the Editor-in-Chief of Driven Magazine. (Driven is a life-style publication targeted to affluent urban men. It is distributed to some Globe & Mail subscribers and in Air Canada airport lounges.)

They have chosen to run a contest on their website giving away ten pairs of Maui Jim sunglasses valued at $200 per pair. Entrants must answer a survey to gain an entry into the contest. Even though they would love to limit the entrants to their magazines target market, they follow Canadian promotional law and open the contest to all.

This is the marketer’s dilemma. How does a company ensure they reach their target market, while at the same time complying with proper marketing practices and regulations?

There are four solutions to this dilemma:

1. Hire a promotional marketing company. They have the expertise to run promotions properly and legally. This solution may not be for all as some smaller companies may not have the funds within their marketing budget to hire such a firm.
2. Run the promotion, analyse the information collected, then tailor the next promotion based on the data collected from the first. This solution involves a lot trial-and-error, plus time which the marketer may not have.
3. Run simple promotions promoting your sponsors and not worrying about if your target market had been reached. That may sound counterproductive, but they don’t know who their next customers may be. I can’t afford an expensive car today, but I might be able to tomorrow, so then I would be in their target demographic. Plus, they don’t know who I know. Word-of-mouth and social marketing have been steadily growing and I just may influence their next customer.
4. Do not run any promotions. (I don’t like this solution at all!)

I am interested to see which choice for future promotions Driven Magazine makes after their current contest is over.

What a long day we had. My friend Janet and I drove to the United States. (About a 2 1/2 hour drive from my home to the border.) Had lunch and arrived at The UPS Store just as the truck had finished unloading. Unpacked, signed, stuffed and sealed 250+ books into envelopes. (I lost count!) Then off to the USPS to manually stamp each one. Five hours later we took a well deserved break at Target, had a quick bite to eat and headed home.

It took twelve months longer to research, write, edited, re-edit and print the American Edition than I originally thought. It felt so good to finally ship the first batch of books out.

What fun we had last night! We arrived at Chapters at 6:00pm to a crowd of about 200 kids and 100 adults. The Events Manager for Indigo Books and Music met us. When I introduced myself he smiled and said, “Of course you won!” (He was the one that arranged for my two book signings at Chapters/Indigo and remembered me.)

We were lead to a seating area about a foot from the stage and waited until the band arrived. Ten minutes before the show we were ushered into a backroom, got to meet the Barenaked Ladies and had a professional photographer take our picture with the band.

We then retook our seats on the floor and they played a 30 minute concert singing several songs of their new kid’s CD Snack Time including; 789 (free MP3 download on site) and an old favourite, One Week.

Afterwards we were first in line to get an autographed book and CD set. I think Nicole already wore it out playing it over and over today.

I am very excited because tomorrow we are going to meet the Barenaked Ladies!

As I have been very busy with the launch of the American Edition of my book, my entries slowed down to a trickle. One Friday I decided I needed to catch up on all my email. Open one at a time and take action upon each one. Many e-newsletters had contest links in them. When I went to the Kidding Around Toronto website, I noticed there were several daily entry contests that I had not entered. The one to meet the Barenaked Ladies was ending that day. I thought, “Darn! I missed the whole thing.” Then I thought, “What kind of a Contest Queen am I if I am not going to throw at least one entry into the hat. It only takes one to win.” So, I entered myself once and my husband once.

The next night Craig and I had a rare date night. We snuggled on the couch watching a movie. Afterward, Craig went to his computer to check his email one last time before we went to bed. He discovered a congratulatory email stating he had won the Grand Prize. I danced around the bathroom for a good 15 minutes while I got ready for bed.

Tomorrow we are going to their CD signing at Chapters. We get a copy of their new CD Snack Time, we get front row seats and an opportunity to take photos with them. I really like the fine print in the rules: All adults must be accompanied by a child.

Remember, it only takes one to win!

The Complete Guide To Prize Contests, Sweepstakes and How To Win Them by Selma Glasser was published in 1980.  What an interesting book.  It’s focus is on contests.  She teaches you how to win by writing all types of verse including; couplets, quatrains, limericks along with naming, caption and slogan contests.

Selma offers up some cute examples:

This book is what contestors need
To help their entries take the lead.

You needn’t be so very wise
To snare a handsome contest prize.
You only need to take a look
At winning lessons in this book.

What I really liked is she gave us a bit more history on the hobby.

We can look back on years of prize give-aways in the United States since 1900.  Of course, there had been some contests-more literary than commercial-in this country before the present century began, but they were too rare to be recorded here.  Even in 1900, contesting was a comparatively unknown hobby, with few followers and with awards amounting to only $15,000.

By 1910, newspaper files show that $500,000 in prizes were offered, and there were about 100,000 contest fans.  Within ten years the number of prize-seekers had grown to a million, mostly attracted by newspaper and magazine contests.

By 1930, national commercial advertisers had become convinced that prize contests offered a fertile field for promoting the sales of their products.  During that decade, their ever-increasing offers of cash and merchandise brought the number of entrants to nearly 12 million, and the total value of prizes for the ten-year span soared past the $100-million mark.

Selma also wrote one chapter on recipe contests and one chapter on sweepstakes.  The book is very detailed and I felt like a D student in English class.  While reading I was quietly happy the hobby moved to sweepstakes, because I don’t think I would win a single prize entering contests of yesteryear.