Is it complex? Yes. Is it worth it? Yes again. Running a global prize promotion may be challenging, but if it’s well-executed it can deliver worldwide exposure, consolidate your market position and even help you break into new markets. There is one major caveat though – you need to know what you’re doing.
1 Terms and conditions
If you think terms and conditions are important when you’re running a prize promotion in the UK, they’re doubly – no, trebly, even quadruply (if that’s a word) – crucial when you’re running a prize promotion in multiple countries. To be honest, I could just put ‘terms and conditions’ down five times, because they really are that vital. Why? Because they will be different, sometimes quite radically different, for each of the countries where you’re running the promotion. In some countries, like Australia for instance, they can even vary from state to state.
2 Expertise
There’s no point in being coy about it, Prizeology has the expertise to run global promotions. We’ve done it before, so we know the pitfalls – and believe me, there a quite a few. Clearly, we’re not the only specialist around, but take my advice and make sure you work with an agency which has the right resources and experience; an agency which knows, for example, just how stringent the Italian competition authority can be (in 2017 it fined Samsung €3.1 million for an unfair prize promotion).
3 Translation
This might seem obvious, but details of the promotion, including how to enter and the terms and conditions, will need to be available in all local languages. Unfortunately, if you don’t happen to be Polish yourself, please don’t get your uncle’s next-door neighbour’s wife who’s Polish to do it. You need to be sure that all the collateral for your global promotion says what you think it says, so use reliable translators who specialise in marketing and legal translation.
4 Planning
Anybody who tells you they can put together a global promotion in ten minutes isn’t being straight with you. The logistics are bound to be complicated, you may have to use different mechanics or even offer different prizes in different countries, and in some jurisdictions you will need to apply for a license to run what would be a fairly straightforward prize draw elsewhere. All this takes careful planning and time, so make sure you start the process well in advance of when you want the promotion to land.
5 Flexibility
In Northern Ireland, the purchase price of a product is considered an entry fee for a promotion, so free entry must mean free entry. In the Netherlands, a total prize pool can’t be worth more than €100,000. Italy doesn’t permit multi-territory prize promotions. These are just a few examples of the issues you can face with a global prize promotion, but none of them are insurmountable and there are legitimate ways around them all. However, they do illustrate that it’s essential to maintain a flexible mindset: your promotion may not end up being identical in all the details in all countries, but it can still be consistent and make an impact around the globe.
As you might have gathered, Prizeology has the resources and experience to run global prize promotions and competitions. If world domination is your goal for 2019, do get in touch via hello@prizeology.com
Sarah Burns is Prizeology’s Chief Prizeologist.
