I’ve been the unfortunate winner of a recent Twitter contest, hosted by a promotions group for a major restaurant chain. When I say unfortunate, I mean that I won and I went to pick up the tickets at the box office and they weren’t there. I was very upset at the time but after some thought, I’ve put together a few points where the promotion can fail and I hope it serves as a learning example for everyone.

1. Ending submission, choosing winners, and notifying winners on a Friday. I should have left this point for last because it was the largest fault of the pack. But I’m sure we can see why you shouldn’t end submission, choose a winner, and notify the winner on a Friday, let alone, the Friday before the concert (which was on Sunday). I was notified of winning at approximately 11am on Friday through Twitter. Point of Failure #1: Not everyone has their “mention” or “direct message” notifications turn on in their Twitter account. They just happened to click on the link on my Twitter page to go to my personal website and see my email address. Point of Failure #2: They gave the winners until 3pm to reply to them. That’s only 4 hours for me! If I had not replied (maybe I took a half day to spend it fixing my car) they would have given the tickets to someone else. So after 3pm, they left 2 hours for the new winner to reply. I figure the people at Cundari left work at 5pm.
2. Twitter is not anonymous. Point of Failure #3: As mentioned before, anyone can go to my Twitter page, click on the link and go to my personal page to see my name and email address. If they show up at the box office and say my name, they could have gotten the tickets. That’s if the box office decided not to check ID.
3. Delivery of tickets. I wont call this a point of failure because they mentioned that the tickets were hand delivered, thus eliminating the need for a courier company to lose the tickets.
4. Support (In case of emergency) phone number. Point of Failure #4: I had no way to report any problems. After the box office did a thorough search for the tickets, I was standing there with no one to contact, only just to leave. Should there not have been representative at the show to contact? Understandably, for a smaller promotion where only a few tickets are given away, there will be no support. But making sure the tickets get to winner ahead of time is paramount.

So you can see, there are many points of failure when ending a promotion so close to the event. On a side note, the promotions company has compensated me, but the concert I would have went to would have been better!