PLEASE - No More Stupid Mistakes

It appears that Tourism Whitsundays will have to redraw some of its prizes in its recent competition due to someone within TW giving out instructions contrary to the Official Rules.

TW  have had a chequered past when it comes to running competitions on the internet, and it seems they haven't learnt from their past experiences:

• Tourism Whitsundays competition turns into a farce
• It just gets worse
• Recent Tourism Whitsundays Competition

The current promotion by Tourism Whitsundays is the "Twelve Days of Christmas" - which incidentally runs for 16 days. It seems for six of those days, the competition losers have a right for a redraw on every draw that has been drawn between now and December 7, due to Tourism Whitsundays failing to abide by its own Official Rules, again.

Now, this blog is a bit of a stickler for making people who run online competitions from this region to abide by the rules. Competitions should be run by responsible organizations, by responsible people who are not impaired by drugs and/or alcohol, and strictly within the conditions they have set themselves earlier. A small mistake can turn into a big deal. Repeating the same small mistakes is stupidity.

"Bending the Rules" or "Changing the Goalposts" halfway during the promotion is not on. However, we have seen it happen again and again with TW competitions run on Facebook

In the rules section for this latest competition, Rule 2 states:

2. Method of entry: Entrants agree to be bound by these terms and conditions. To enter, entrants must respond to the question or challenge given in the specified time frame. Where the question is a question of fact, the answer must be correct. Where the question or challenge is a creative answer, a random winner will be drawn.
Entrants may submit more than one answer, but only the correct answer will be entered into the draw. Multiple entries are not required. An entrant may only win one of the prizes. Entrants must ‘like’ the Whitsundays facebook page (www.facebook.com/WhitsundaysQLD) in order to be eligible to enter. (extracted from Tourism Whitsundays 12 Days of Christmas Sweepstakes 'Official Rules' page).

On December 8 however, the person representing Tourism Whitsundays has encouraged people to break Rule 2 and said:

"You can enter every day Jasmine, even if you've already won a prize." - Tourism Whitsundays

The implications of TW's post saying it is OK for previous winners to re enter into the competition, has unbalanced the fairness of all draws and prizes since then. For example, would someone else have won the prize if the previous prize winners had not entered, as their chances would have increased?

Therefore, all prizes and draws since December 7 should be invalid  and redrawn with only the allowed people entering the competition, as per the Official Rules, otherwise all results for the rest of this competition from December 7 will be invalid and liable to be challenged by anyone who has entered the competition.

These repeated, stupid, silly mistakes are made by a person or persons who should not have these responsibilities, and it also shows continued poor supervision, execution and management of TW's brand awareness and its perception to the world.

It will be interesting to find who is actually running these competitions - should give them a TW Marketing Award.

Tourism Whitsundays - Marketing:
Tourism Whitsundays Marketing Service Manager - Danielle Seymour
Tourism Whitsundays Marketing Executive - Nicolette Romais
Marketing Communications Co-ordinator - Christina Unterwurzacher
2010 Tourism Marketing Award - Kelli Medford (also a director of Tourism Whitsundays)