The Marketing Leaders - The Forgetten Area of Corporate Governance

Many regard the UK as having the most liberal legal regime for sales promotion in Europe, yet as a result is this regime taken too much for granted? TML explores the issues…

Many of our Continental cousins have to register their promotions with the authorities, obtain licences, pay taxes or make contributions to charity in order to run the sort of instant win or prize draw mechanics that we all take for granted in the UK.

However many British companies take too liberal an attitude and fail to follow even the most basic of industry rules or the Code as monitored by the ASA. If your company runs an instant win promotion, do you obtain “an independent audit statement to ensure that the prize winners have been distributed fairly and in accordance with the laws of chance? For your next prize draw, who gets to pick the winner – the chairman’s secretary, or someone truly independent and are the judges of that competition truly competent and independent.

It is unfortunate that there appears to be a pattern of ignorance, complacency, buck passing and blatant flouting of best practice. Clients believe that the correct implementation of their promotions is the responsibility of their agencies, however the. Agencies often either don't know, say clients don't care or they run things themselves {badly} to save money.

A survey by the ASA found that a quarter of on pack promotions failed to meet even most basic of requirements – and this is reflected in growing public cynicism that is likely to reduce the propensity of entering poorly run promotions. Promoters such as Kit Kat and BIC have found that making simple slips can cost a lot in bad publicity and reputation.

Top tips for promotional survival

Use professionals - use an agency that is a member of the MCCA or ISP.
Get the concept checked out independently – you cannot run a prize draw if you are charging people to buy the product, for a competition you must have a reasonable level of skill and state the criteria for judging etc.
Get the terms and conditions checked carefully and rechecked – we have seen lots of mistakes caused by poorly worded rules.
If you are running a prize draw – ensure that the draw is done by a properly independent body.
Independent means “independent of the promoter and their intermediaries” so not your agency, not your secretary, and they must be competent in the field that they are judging.
Instant wins are a recipe for a promotional nightmare. Use an independent verification company such as PromoVeritas to ensure that only the correct number are printed, that they cannot easily be copied and that they are distributed securely and randomly.
As most instant wins require you to buy the product to “look behind the label etc” they are technically lotteries. The only legal get out is to provide a No Purchase Necessary route, normally via mail, but you must ensure that it is correctly set up and administered so that it offers an equal chance of winning and that this is again independently supervised. It may be a pain but it is the law.

Disasters ready to happen. Recent real horror stories include:

• “This competition closes on 31st September”,
• A tiebreak asking you to “Complete in more than 15 words” ,
• “This prize draw will be drawn by a representative of [Client name]”
• or competitions requiring a purchase but with just the merest hint of skill eg “Where do the oranges in Sainsburys Florida orange juice come from” - implying the selection of the final winner would be via a draw, making it an illegal lottery as a purchase was necessary to enter.
• Or the instant win promotion where the client left the winning packs with the factory manager to insert into the production run, and he “forgot”.

Jeremy is a professional marketer with an extensive career that has involved many of the leading companies in the UK as well as being a speaker of great knowledge and enthusiasm.

His client experience includes Brand Manager at Kraft where developed and launched Kenco Freeze Dried – now one of the UK’s most successful beverage brands. He then joined the UK’s leading food retailer, Tesco, as Category Marketing Manager, where he was responsible for the development of the Healthy Eating brand, NPD and various store-wide promotions and initiatives.

Later Jeremy joined BT to run their product and retail marketing before establishing the Affinity Marketing Department and creating and launching BT TalkTime - the use of minutes as a promotional currency. He followed this with a move to Coca-Cola as European Promotions Director, where he was involved in the coordination of plans for Euro2000, the Olympics and Internet projects including Coke Auction.

His last client side position was as Group Marketing Communications Director for COLT Telecom, before setting up in 2002, PromoVeritas Ltd as the UK’s only independent promotional verification service. It provides a judging and security service to the likes of P & G, Coca Cola, Unilever, McVities, Pernod-Ricard, Budweiser and Kraft as well as marketing consultancy work for clients such as Barclays Bank, Premier Foods and NTN Communications.



		The Forgetten Area of Corporate Governance - Promotional Implementation
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