Limit a giveaway to an area.

GarIT

Is it possible to limit a giveaway to an area. Would it be seen as discrimination?

I've worked for a company running their facebook page and while the company only operates in Dublin I have been giving laptops, iPads, VIP concert tickets and mp3 players to people as far away as Cork and Donegal.

Would it be wrong to specify that a competition is only open to residents of Lenster?

nuac

Just confine these gifts to Legal Discussion posters on boards.ie. No problems then

coylemj

GarIT wrote: »

Is it possible to limit a giveaway to an area. Would it be seen as discrimination?

By any definition of the word, it is discrimination. I think what you're really asking is - is it legal to do so?

GarIT wrote: »

Would it be wrong to specify that a competition is only open to residents of Lenster?

No, it happens all the time. There are criteria for discrimination which are illegal, they include discrimination based on gender, race, sexual orientation, membership of the travelling community and religion. As your criteria doesn't coincide with any of those, what you are doing is perfectly legal.

Nightclubs often have lower age limits e.g. over 23s only, travel companies offer discounts to the over 50s, hairdressers and dry cleaners offer OAP discounts Monday to Thursday. Discrimination happens a lot more often than you'd think and the vast majority of it is legal.

Sure doesn't Larry Gogan invite entrants to his quiz every day by asking for contestants from Co. xxxx. If your proposed discrimination was illegal, poor Larry would be doing time at this stage.

Victor

GarIT wrote: »

Would it be wrong to specify that a competition is only open to residents of Lenster?

Specifying it is one thing - enforcing it is another matter, people using their cousin's address and the like.

Be careful not to restrict the competition to paying customers - it might then be construed as a paying lottery, for which you would need a licence.

GarIT

Victor wrote: »

Specifying it is one thing - enforcing it is another matter, people using their cousin's address and the like.

Be careful not to restrict the competition to paying customers - it might then be construed as a paying lottery, for which you would need a licence.

I suppose, thats not too bad though. Its better than giving a laptop to someone in Cork who will never have any reason to be a customer. (Nothing about people from Cork but everyone that wins seems to be from Cork)

We only really want likes from the area around our shops. So say if we were giving a laptop away when we reach 10,000 likes if we said it only applies to residents of Lenster it would stop most people on the west coast liking the page just for the competitions. We have already managed to block anyone outside of Ireland seeing the page.

All the competitions have always been based on likes or just periodiocally and not restricted in any way.

We also had a cleaver idea without actually saying it to restrict it basically to Dublin, we are probably going to run a competition where people have to take a picture of themselves with an ad for the company, the thing is the only place we will advertise for that time is with dublin bus.

coylemj

You mention 'likes' so I assume we're talking Facebook in which case this might be of interest....

Facebook 'likes' and adverts' value doubted

A BBC investigation suggests companies are wasting large sums of money on adverts to gain "likes" from Facebook members who have no real interest in their products.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-18813237

Farcear

A very interesting commercial decision to block your Facebook page to non-Irish users.

It probably does deal with a lot of the problems highlight in that BBC article.

Victor

One thing you could do is have people collect the prize from your store.

GarIT

I saw the article from the BBC but its still worth it for us. That's why I am trying to close the competitions to anyone outside of our area.

If it costs us a laptop that we can get for €200 to get 5,000 likes, if 1 in every 1,000 likes converted to a customer we would be in profit.

We have always made people collect from the store.

slimjimmc

GarIT wrote: »

I suppose, thats not too bad though. Its better than giving a laptop to someone in Cork who will never have any reason to be a customer. (Nothing about people from Cork but everyone that wins seems to be from Cork)

We only really want likes from the area around our shops. So say if we were giving a laptop away when we reach 10,000 likes if we said it only applies to residents of Lenster it would stop most people on the west coast liking the page just for the competitions. We have already managed to block anyone outside of Ireland seeing the page.

All the competitions have always been based on likes or just periodiocally and not restricted in any way.

We also had a cleaver idea without actually saying it to restrict it basically to Dublin, we are probably going to run a competition where people have to take a picture of themselves with an ad for the company, the thing is the only place we will advertise for that time is with dublin bus.

Limiting it to Leinster won't achieve your marketing objective, I guess there's as much chance of a Cork resident becoming a customer as a Leinster resident. And quite a few Leinster residents don't visit Dublin often. If you want footfall then advertise the giveaway nationwide but stipulate that people need to go into the shops to enter the competition.

coylemj

slimjimmc wrote: »

And quite a few Leinster residents don't visit Dublin often.

And probably even fewer of them visit Facebook regularly. The only activity that I can see on FB is parents showing off the latest snaps of their children and 18-29 years olds showing photos of themselves at parties or on holidays, usually half or completely p1ssed drunk. By now a significant % of the population is just bored with FB.

OP, I suspect you have a vested interest in this shop plugging itself on FB since I figure you're providing some IT consultancy based around FB but if you want my advice I think using 'likes' on FB is a complete waste of time. By any standards I'd be described as a gadget junkie but I only visit Facebook about once a month or so and I completely ignore every commercial promo I come across.

Even Zuckerberg admits that they simply cannot exploit the mobile platforms since the screen space is too small so people who only use FB on smartphones are completely out of reach for advertisers.

slimjimmc wrote: »

If you want footfall then advertise the giveaway nationwide but stipulate that people need to go into the shops to enter the competition.

That's really not going to achieve much, he'd be better off advertising in local newspapers if getting bodies in the door is the objective.

Victor

Getting off-topic, but one thing you could look at is mixing up the mid- to high-end prizes with smaller prizes that you can give away more frequently and include vouchers in the mix. Vouchers mean people have to buy something.