Steve on... Instant Win competitions

The instant win is a relative newcomer on the comping scene. As a youngster, one of my favourite books was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and how I wished that companies really would hide golden tickets in their products! Alas, as this particular kind of promotion has multiplied and become increasingly contrived over recent years, the reality of the instant win (or ‘instant lose’ as some compers prefer to call them!) rarely provides a happy ending. Many ‘real’ compers avoid them, some genuinely despise them, and it’s not difficult to see why. The odds of winning anything worthwhile are usually outlandish. The number of prizes that “can” be won usually bears no resemblance whatsoever to the number that actually are claimed. And the physical act of actually finding a winning message printed on the inside of a packet, bottom of a can, or buried amongst various foodstuffs (or worse!) is messy at best – and sometimes downright degrading!

Having said all of that, I actually like instant wins! I’ve won thousands of ‘instant’ prizes, most of them of limited use admittedly, but for me the thrill of the chase and trying to ‘crack the code’ of a particular promotion gives me as much pleasure as trying to fashion an unbeatable tiebreaker. When I contributed to a discussion on the subject on Chatterbox, explaining some of my theories, it led to the whole ‘science’ of trying to beat instant win promoters at their own game being christened “doing a Smid” (Smid being my Chatterbox user name). None of what I do is rocket science, it’s more to inject a bit of fun into my supermarket visits than anything else, but sometimes I do actually “strike gold” and stumble across a sure-fire method of spotting a winning pack. Even if the outcome is not so certain, there are things you can do to swing the odds in your favour (albeit ever so slightly) whenever you buy an instant win pack.

The Chatterbox discussion started with a question about a Kenco promotion, where you were warned that winning jars didn’t contain real coffee. And this leads nicely on to the major key to unlocking “Winstant Success”. Instant wins where a promoter has to make or print a totally different ‘winning’ batch and then somehow slip them in with the ‘normal’ (i.e. losing!) products are always worth a close check at the supermarket. The clue often lies in the label or packaging. A slightly different cut or colour shade if it was printed at a different time maybe, or a different batch code. I’ve had many wins in the past just by choosing an item with a different batch code or best before date to the rest. This isn’t foolproof of course, because different batches can obviously get mixed up on supermarket shelves. But some past examples have included Ribena (every winning carton had the same flaw in the printing of the ‘best before’ date and stood out a mile to the trained eye!), Riva biscuits (winning batch codes started with ‘3’, losers with ‘1’ or ‘2’), Viscount biscuits (winning packs all had the same batch code), Tuc biscuits (winning packs had batch codes stamped on them in a completely different font), and my favourite – Wet Wipes – whose winning wrappers had a ‘W’ after the batch code, and the losers ‘L’! More recently, the winning numbers in a Gulp milkshake promotion were printed on neck collars in a totally different font. Throw in the promotional labels that can easily be seen through, and crisp bags with increasingly bulky winning inserts that can easily be felt through the bag (by those of us inclined to do that sort of thing, of course!), and close examination of goods on supermarket shelves will always improve your instant win chances.

In fact, I sometimes think that promoters deliberately build in these flaws to keep us compers smiling. Those of us ‘in on the trick’ will be happy, thinking that we’re at an advantage. But the number of prizes issued is no different of course, so it won’t cost the promoters any more. In fact, the more winning packs we find, the more we’ll buy so in a perverse way it might actually benefit the promoters! Look at the last couple of Felix and Winalot instant wins, for example. Promotional cans “just happened” to have a clear white strip running around the top of the label. The winning message on the back of the label “just happened” to be printed directly underneath this white strip. Possibly accidental first time around, but same design on the second promotion? Make up your own mind! Conspiracy theory maybe, but I’ve seen so many ‘giveaway’ batch codes, transparent wrappers, see-through scratchcards etc. over the years I can’t help but wonder. Then again, perhaps promoters really are just slapdash and careless!

The big tell-tale clues as to whether batch codes, best before dates etc. might give the game away may lie in the revised pack design when a promotion appears. If an exact best before date suddenly just becomes a month and year, or a batch code that previously appeared on the top of a pack is suddenly relegated to a hidden area at the bottom, ask yourself why. I’ve seen winning packs that have had no codings on at all simply because they haven’t been through the normal production line, so just look for ANY possible clue. It’s often a good investment to buy a promotional pack at the start of a new competition anyway, probably a loser but never mind, just to get your bearings as to where messages etc. appear on the backs of labels and the like. This way you can sometimes ‘get your eye in’, even if it’s just knowing where you can see the ‘Y’ of ‘SORRY’ through the label or something like that. Then, when you come across a label that doesn’t have that ‘Y’ in the same place, it’s worth buying! Experimentation is the key.

And here are some other ideas. Invest in a powerful halogen lamp for all those scratchcard games where, for example, you have to scratch off the ‘correct’ few panels from those on the card. Many of these cards are very poorly manufactured, and a strong lamp will soon pay for itself many times over. If an item includes a time of manufacture on the packaging, only ever select one that’s been timed during office hours. A security manager or other company bigwig will probably witness the issue of really big prizes, and chances are they won’t do it in the middle of the night! Never buy a promotional pack at the very start of the competition, as it’s a fair guess that the major prizes won’t be released straight away. And if ever you are lucky enough to come across a winning pack, note down the batch code, time of manufacture etc. EXACTLY and think seriously about going back to the shop and buying up the rest of the batch containing the same coding. It’s amazing how often winning packs appear en masse, seemingly having not been shuffled up at all!

A word of warning. Don’t rush to the supermarket having read this article, thinking that you’ve discovered the Holy Grail! The odds of finding a winning pack in any instant win promotion are small, even if you know exactly what you’re looking for. Never underestimate the number of packs that a popular product sells during the course of a promotion – in the USA, where it’s a legal requirement to print the winning odds on an instant win pack, I’ve seen odds of 125,000,000-1 and more stated. So you’re still looking for a needle in a very large haystack, even though you may know exactly what the needle looks like!

Finally, if all else fails there’s often a ‘No Purchase Necessary’ route available. And I think you can even try to weight this in your favour too. I always apply towards the end of a promotion, when all of the promotional packs have gone from the shelves. Promoters by then will have a clearer idea of how many prizes have been claimed, and may prefer to award the remainder rather than being left with a warehouse full of merchandise or – worse still – having to explain to irate customers why there were so few winners.

However you choose to approach it, good luck in your quest for winstant success. But most importantly – have fun!

A quick look at many ‘instant win’ promotions that have run since this article was originally written show a new trend. No straightforward win or lose messages, but complex codes that need some extra effort to resubmit via text or web. We compers are at an advantage with this new generation of promotion, since most members of the general public are unwilling or unable to jump through the increasing number of hoops that promoters put in our way. But we must still display some care with these newer games. Will every code that’s entered go into a draw, with all prizes being given away? Or have ‘winning’ codes been pre-determined, and prizes only paid out if and when a winning code is returned? Take 2005’s ‘iPod Every 5 Minutes’ promotion on Walkers Crisps as an example. This was a straightforward, honest draw, with all codes having an equal chance at the time of entry and all 9,000-odd prizes being awarded. But under the present law, it would have been perfectly legal for Walkers to have decided on 9,000 winning codes beforehand, and only award prizes when those particular codes, out of the hundreds of millions in play, were redeemed. Worse still they could even have pre-selected a specific winning code for each 5-minute draw, and only paid out if that code was entered at its allotted time. Again, all perfectly legal. Such a tactic would have reduced Walkers 9,000 iPod payout to, most likely, none at all – but this interpretation of the rules is starting to creep in, so always be careful. If the comp blurb tells us that prizes “will” or “must” be won, then it’s most likely OK. But if prizes only “can” be won, or are available “to” be won, then think twice. And if the value of a prize pool seems ridiculously high, perhaps sometimes running into the millions, alarm bells should again start ringing. Remember the old adage – if something seems too good to be true, then it most likely is!

As comping fashions change, technology improves, and sales promotion techniques become ever more scientific, it’s impossible to know how relevant the original Smidding article above, or even this update, will be in another few years time. I was reading just the other day that one of the most popular new gadgets in Japan, for example, is a mobile phone with a barcode reader that can be used to instantly enter competitions, print coupons and the like. Comping will always be with us in one form or another, indeed some people reading this might even be jumping for joy at the thought of instant wins biting the dust. We can never know what’s around the corner in this great, diverse hobby of ours. Which is one of the reasons why we love it so much!