April 2018 - American Sweepstakes

JuJu Smith-Schuster shows off his moves for the Pizza Hut NFL Draft Doorbell Dance Video Sweepstakes

Tomorrow, 4/26, if the first round of the NFL draft which runs till 4/28. If you are a fan of the Cleveland Browns, the NY Giants or, like me, the Buffalo Bills, this draft season is a big one for our teams. There is so much speculation on who’s going to draft who and who is going to trade to get an earlier pick. Cleveland didn’t win a game last season, so they have first pick and the Giants are second. The Bills really need to draft a quarterback and there are four really good QB players up for grabs this year, so we’re anxious to see what they do.

Pizza Hut is getting in on the action this week since they now have the official sponsorship with the NFL. They picked up the day after previous sponsor, Papa John’s announced it was dropping its affiliation last February. Pizza Hut has recruited Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster to take part in their campaign. The player is featured in the ad shown below demonstrating the “Doorbell Dance”, the moves he makes when the doorbell rings celebrating the arrival of a Pizza Hut delivery. Pizza Hut is using this to generate buzz by calling on others to submit their best doorbell dances for a chance to win a trip to an NFL regular season game of their choice.

The Pizza Hut Doorbell Dance Video Sweepstakes invites participants to post an original video of themselves doing a “doorbell dance”, a dance you may do when your doorbell rings and your pizza arrives, and also include the hashtags #PizzaHutHut and #sweepstakes in their post to receive one entry. All entries must be posted to Instagram by 11:59 pm on 4/28. Participants may also receive an entry without posting a video by submitting their information on a 3 x 5 card through the mail. A random drawing at the end of the sweepstakes will determine one winner who will receive a trip for them and a guest to a 2018 NFL football game of their choice on or before Sunday, December 30, 2018.

Pizza Hut is also running what they are calling the “Pi Pick” promotion. This will be the 78th pick of the draft which will be the fourteenth selection in the third round off the draft. The Pi Pick player will receive a year’s worth of free pizza and a pizza party in their honor in the new hometown team that selects him. The Pi Pick will also receive other additional perks from Pizza Hut, including retro brand swag, gift cards for teammates, and more.

At the actual draft Pizza Hut will be hosting an event outside the Cowboys’ Arlington, Texas, stadium where fans can showcase and record doorbell dances, compete in a delivery shuttle obstacle course and sample pizza in a lounge. On social media, they will be giving away pizzas on a random basis, and promoting a special deal good during the Draft (two medium pizzas, an order of wings and bread sticks starting at $19.99).

“One of the things we love about Pizza Hut is that as a new partner, they are committed to bringing even more excitement and entertainment to the NFL draft, one of the marquee events on the NFL calendar,” NFL Partnerships, Sponsorship and Consumer Products Senior Vice President Renie Anderson, said in a release. “Pizza Hut wants to leverage the draft as a national platform to bring more value to the home watching experience, and we are thrilled to see them activating in new and unique ways.”

So us fans in New York will finally have a better idea of what this upcoming 2018 season will look like after this week. However, we’ve made some top picks before that didn’t work out. So you never know!

Hashtags combined with an online form provide two methods of entry for these contests

I wrote this post last week about the NatureSweet Spring Sweepstakes that will be awarding three winners with a Yeti® Cooler Prize Pack. All they have to do is fill out the entry form and submit a photo that shows them, their friends, or their family enjoying tomatoes. They can just upload the photo on the entry form or they have the option to post the photo on Instagram and copy and past the Instagram URL address in the field on the entry form to enter that way. I explained in this post that we used the ShortStack application to build the entry form and collect all the entrant’s data and their photos.

I had also mentioned that we would be starting a couple of new promotions using the ShortStack application that not only allows people to enter and submit their photos from an entry form, but it also allows them to post their photos from either their Instagram or Twitter account using the promotion’s hashtag. It then pulls those into the campaign as entries and posts them on the contest web page. Here are the two promotions we are running for a new client, Dannmar Equipment, who provide automotive equipment to garages.

The first promotion is called the Garage Equipment Supply Contest. Participants are invited to upload a photo of their garage for a chance to win a garage makeover. Three grand prize winners, three second prize winners and three third prize winners will all receive gift cards to the Garage Equipment Supply Store. Total of all the gifts cards amounts to $15,000. There are three different entry periods that will run from now till the end of 2018 and each period will have three winners. A panel of judges will review all the photos submitted at the end of each period to determine the winners which will be based on the following criteria, brand awareness 50% and relevance to the contest theme 50%.

The second promotion is for another one of the sponsor’s brands and is called the MaxJax Contest. Similar to the GES contest, participants are invited to upload a photo of their garage for a chance to win a MaxJax, which is an auto lift valued at $2,000. Again there are three different entry periods that will run from now till the end of 2018 and each period will have a grand prize winner and a first prize winner. A panel of judges will review all the photos submitted at the end of each period to determine the winners and they will use the same criteria as in the GES contest.

So what is unique about these two promotions is that they both have the two methods of entry, the online entry form and the Instagram and Twitter posts. The Garage Equipment Supply Contest participants must use the #GESUSACONTEST hashtag and the MaxJaxContest uses #MaxJaxContest hashtag. All entries from either method go into one database and all the photos can be viewed in one photo gallery that is on each of the contest pages. Since these both just started we don’t have any real entries as of yet.

We hope to be doing more of these types of promotions, so if you would like more details on how to set up a promotion utilizing the Shortstack application, please feel free to contact me. It’s a great tool and it also includes a great support team.

Entrants are invited to upload a photo showing how much they enjoy tomatoes for a chance to win in the NatureSweet Spring Sweepstakes

NatureSweet Tomatoes just kicked off their second sweepstakes that they are running this year with us. They are a new client that we will be working with throughout 2018. The NatureSweet Spring Sweepstakes is offering the chance for three grand prize winners to each receive a Yeti ® Cooler Prize Pack which has a value of $500.

NatureSweet is inviting people to enter online by visiting NatureSweetSweeps.com, filling out the form and submitting a photo that shows them, their friends, or their family enjoying tomatoes. Entrants also have the option of posting their photo to their Instagram account first and then including the Instagram URL address of the posted photo in the proper field on the entry form. The sweepstakes runs till May 21 when we will then conduct the random drawing to determine the three lucky winners.

We are again using the Shortstack Application to build the entry form and collect all the entrant’s data and the photos. All of Shortstack’s entry pages are mobile friendly from the start with Shortstack’s “One Campaign for any screen” design philosophy. They added some new features to the platform last year that make adding CSS coding very easy for those of us that don’t have much programming experience. If you would like more details on how to set up a promotion utilizing the Shortstack platform, please feel free to contact me. It’s a great tool and it also includes a great support team. We will soon be using the application to create a campaign that allows for hashtag entries and pulls in the posted photos from either Instagram or Twitter. So look for that post soon.

NatureSweet started off the year with their Snacking for the Big Game Sweepstakes which coincided with the NFL’s kickoff of the road to the Super Bowl They are promoting this new sweepstakes similar to their first sweepstakes, in various grocery stores with point of sale pieces that match the graphic above.

Since this Spring Sweepstakes just launched this week we don’t see any photos posted yet. We’ve given our client’s team accessibility to the campaign so that they can approve or disapprove the photo to be posted on the site. I recall my very first photo upload sweepstakes about 8 years ago that we did which didn’t have this capability where photos were automatically posted. You would not believe what some people posted. So no inappropriate photos with tomatoes will be seen here!

Build Your Bahamas Weekend Getaway with Chubbies and Nassau Paradise Island Sweepstakes

Slide, Scratch & Win Instant Win Game

The Concept 2 Model D Rower Sweepstakes

Spot the Typo Contest

New website, AllTheFitness.com, runs sweepstakes to gain new members

We recently started working with a new online company, AllTheFitness.com, that is utilizing a sweepstakes to help launch their business. They just kicked off the sweepstakes that we are administering at the end of March. They are inviting people to sign up to become an AllTheFitness.com VIP member which will automatically earn them five entries into each monthly sweepstakes drawing. The membership costs $2,95 per month and it provides members with exclusive content that includes fitness and nutrition guides. They will also have access to discounts and special offers that AllTheFitness.com will be offering with various partners just for their members. These offers will cover everything from fitness apparel, gear, equipment and more.

The sweepstakes is giving away three Concept 2 Model D Rowers, one per month at the end of April, May and June. As the sweepstakes administrators, we will randomly draw a winner about 5 days after each registration period ends. The first period runs through April 30, the second runs May 1 through May 31 and the third runs June 1 through June 30. Besides earning the five entries for each month they are a member, they may also receive bonus entries for making purchases on the AllTheFitness.com website and also by referring friends. So the company is hoping that this sweepstakes will help get the word out about their membership program. Here below is a video they created which is on YouTube and is also featured in online ads they are running.

If you’re wondering if the no purchase necessary rule for sweepstakes in the United States applies, yes it does. Anytime that you run a sweepstakes which is asking for purchase in order to gain an entry you have to offer what we call an A.M.O.E, alternate means of entry. The AMOE is explained in the full official rules which are posted on the website. For this sweepstakes we have included a mail-in address that people can mail in an envelope including their contact information. They are only allowed one entry per envelope, but in this case can send in up to 140 envelopes per registration period which is the maximum amount of entries anyone can receive. Right now we have received quite a few mail-in entries for the first period.

The Concept 2 Model D Rowers each have a retail value of $900. So that’s a pretty nice incentive to try out the membership. Members can cancel at any time and their initial five entries will still be good for that period’s drawing. So I wish AllTheFitness.com good luck in reaching their goal and either way we’ll have three lucky winners by early July.