Here’s one Holiday promotion that caught my eye this season. It is the “Go Get Gifted” Contest from Jet Blue that invited travelers to enter for a chance to literally become a holiday gift and surprise their families and friends on Christmas Eve. Jet Blue is selecting five winners of this contest and turning them into holiday gifts by gift-wrapping them from head to toe and them flying them home to surprise their family members.

To enter the contest people had to visit the contest website at www.jetblue.com/gogetgifted and follow the directions to complete and submit the online registration form along with their written explanation of “why you’d make the flyest gift”. Written portion of entry had to be in English and not exceed 280 characters. Jet Blue was accepting entries up till December 12, so that period has ended.  A panel of judges reviewed all the entries and chose the five winners from the following Judging Criteria: 50% overall creativity of entry: 25% how well the entry illustrates why you’d make the “flyest” gift; and 25% appropriateness of the entry to be used in connection with the JetBlue brand.

A 30-second spot from MullenLowe shows a family having dinner with one of the family members wrapped up in holiday paper (because of the rule to not open presents until Christmas morning.) A 6-second spot shows the mummified-with-giftwrap family member banging his (her?) head against the front door as a muffled “Mom!” is uttered from beneath the paper. Another 6-second spot shows the gift-wrapped person stealing a bow from another package beneath the Christmas tree.

An earlier article from Marketing Daily stated that the contest received more than 153,000 enteries at that time. “It’s easy to get wrapped up in holiday shopping, but we know that sometimes the perfect present is your presence,” Heather Berko, manager, advertising & content, JetBlue, was quoted as saying in the Marketing Daily artclie. “That’s why we created Go Get Gifted, to help customers give their loved ones the best gift this year: themselves.”

The prize consists of a JetBlue round-trip flight for two departing on Christmas Eve from a JetBlue airport nearest the winner’s location to the “home” destination chosen by the winner to anywhere JetBlue flies, plus ground transportation to winner’s “home”. Return flights will be scheduled on the winner’s choice of December 27, 30 or 31. Upon arrival at home destination, winner and travel companion may be wrapped as a “gift” for delivery. Winners can choose how they would like to be gift wrapped, including wrapping paper print and bow style.

Both my daughters will be flying home for Christmas soon. Both on the Sunday before Christmas, 12/23. So I’m really looking forward to having them home for a couple of days. The best present a parent could ask for! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all. I hope you’ll be able to share the holidays with your loved ones.

As of late this year we are excited to announce that we are working with Walmart Stores USA and administering their quarterly sweepstakes. The current sweepstakes running started in November and runs till January 31, 2019. Each quarterly sweepstakes awards five Grand Prize winners who each $1,000 in Walmart Gift Cards and 750 First Prize winners who each a $100 Walmart Gift Card. The total prize pool for each quarter is $80,000!

During each Sweepstakes Period entrants who make a purchase at any Walmart store will receive a survey invitation on their cash register receipt in which they may complete the online Customer Satisfaction Survey and entry form to receive one entry into the Sweepstakes. Each entrant must log onto www.survey.walmart.com within one week from the cash register receipt date and enter the unique code found on their cash register receipt. Once that is done they then complete the survey and they then may be prompted to also complete the entry form to receive one entry into the Sweepstakes. Also those that make a purchase online at Walmart.com will also receive a survey invite via email and go through the same process to complete the survey and entry form to receive a entry into the Sweepstakes.

There are also two ways to enter without making a purchase. One is online by completing an entry form that does not require having to answer the survey. The other method is by mailing in a post card with the entrants contact information to a PO Box address that we supply that is listed in the official rules. Regardless of the entry method used to enter the Sweepstakes, there is a limit of 78 entries per Entrant for the entire Sweepstakes Period.

At the end of each quarterly Sweepstakes Period we receive a list from Walmart of all the online entries and combine then with the mail-in entries that we receive to do the drawings. The five grand prize winners of the $1,000 Walmart gift cards each will be contacted and sent forms that they need to fill out and return to us since there are tax implications. The Federal Government does require that any prize $600 or more in value is taxable and that we need to send each winner a 1099 form in the amount of the prize that they must file with their taxes. The 750 First Prize winners will each receive their $100 gift card in the mail sent to the address that they included on their entry form or mail-in entry.

We are just finishing up awarding all the prizes for the Walmart Quarter 3, August – October sweepstakes and have many happy winners who will be able to purchase Christmas presents at Walmart with their gift cards. We are very much looking forward to working with the Walmart team in the next year and hopefully beyond that.