If you live in the UK, it seems that the answer to that question is ‘not as easily as you would think’.

118 118, one of the UK’s leading directory assistance suppliers (or in non-corporate speak, the place you call or website you visit if you want to find someone’s phone number of address), ran a promotion recently in which the company gave away £118 to random callers. The problem was of the 288 winners, 89 refused to accept the money.

The promotion worked like this: anyone who called the service between certain times was entered into a draw to win the money. The winners were then called back by 118 118 and told that they’d won. But the problem, it seems, was that people had to give their name and address in order to receive the check in the post - and at least 89 people were afraid they were being scammed. 118 118 had run adverts for the promotion on commercial radio stations, but still people weren’t prepared to give out their details.

Looking at reader’s comments on the related article in the Guardian newspaper, it becomes fairly clear that this fear - and lack of trust of strange callers asking for information - is fairly common in the UK. (Someone also points out that considering the service provided by 118 118, they wouldn’t need to ring in order to get the name and address of someone.) But surely, the promotion by 118 118 is also to blame.

In his book 10 Ways to Screw up an Ad Campaign, Barry H. Cohen gives seven promotion commandments:

1. Thou shalt create a sense of urgency.
2. Thou shalt offer a highly motivating prize or incentive.
3. Thou shalt create a belief that the prize is winnable.
4. Thou shalt have a promotion with a natural tie-in to thy business.
5. Thou shalt create a promotion with a strong appeal to prospects that fits thy customer profile.
6. Thou shalt provide ease of entry or access to the promotion.
7. Thou shalt back up the promotion with high-profile advertising to get the word out.

Llok at 118 118’s promotion and it could be argued that they scored a ‘hit’ on six of these. But the natural tie-in with the business was weak: simply having the amount of money the same as the phone number is lacks imagination, and does nothing interesting to promote the company or service. (It’s actually very similar to the free shop concept but in the free shop, people don’t have to give away any personal details - they are simply told when they get to the til.)

So what makes a good promotion? Here’s one I like - and although it may not score a perfect 7 with Mr. Cohen, it’s a lot of fun:

The Gingerizer (may be able to spot our very own Fiona Tod in there).

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 3:03 pm by Dan Elloway and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.