Earlier this year I received a subscription to Ipsy - I liked it a lot. Every time a bag arrived in the mail it felt like Christmas morning. The shiny pink bubble wrap- the excitement and surprise of what would be inside. This month I got an extra unexpected surprise with my bag- participation in social media marketing for Ipsy.
Upon receiving my subscription I sat down at my kitchen table and dumped the contents of the package out. I turned them over, reading, inspecting, testing. And then I reached into the bag to find one last thing- a flyer urging me to share my "Glambag" on Instagram in order to potentially win a full year subscription. In my excitement with all of the products and wrapping laid out before me I thought, why not? I snapped a photo, added the competition hashtags and posted the photo.Competitions are easy to participate in. The risks of competing are low and the effort required is minimal- snap a photo, add some tags and hashtags- and you're done. The potential pay off I would assume in most cases is something worth that amount of public action. In some cases (like this one) the prize may be a physical product but in other cases the prize could potentially be just acknowledgment and notoriety.
The hashtags in competitions group you, they get you noticed. They bring you into a conversation making you feel relevant or involved. But at the same time every ounce of effort put into this post is a bolster to the reputation of the host company. It's not about you- not at all. It's a scheme to utilize your interest and optimism to target your friends. Are we okay with this? If we look at it that way- are we willing to act as personalized ads that target the people you actually know and care about?
I thought about this when making my post just for a second. I felt a momentary twinge of shame- embarrassment at the ease with which their marketing team was using me. I assume that I'm not alone in this feeling. Why would we utilize the public platform which we have built up to represent ourselves on in order to promote a product or service that barely matters to us? Why would we openly help a company target our friends? Is it that we actually do care about the company and believe in their product or business or have we grown to overlook posts like this and their implications?
Do you like the product and would recommend it to friends if it came up in normal conversation? If so, there's no need for shame-embarrassment. Although there should be awareness that you are publicly linking yourself (and implicitly your endorsement) to their product and that it is out there on the Internet.
ReplyDeleteYou may also want to give the sweepstakes rules a look through. Many online contests do not conform to your state's laws, or at least be in a grey area. Based on contest format, "no purchase necessary" laws may apply - and requiring someone to like something or post a picture may be considered to have a monetary value associated with it. This article has some good pointers for anyone considering running an online contest:
http://adage.com/article/guest-columnists/online-sweepstakes-legal/149206/
When I enter contests like this one I think about the chances of me winning, and how I am being used by the company to promote their product. At the same time though I am very interested and hopeful that I will be a potential winner of the product. With this in mind, I also think about how good the product/service is and would I ever recommend this company to family or friends. It really comes down to personal values and how we, as consumers, are being used by companies to promote their products/services for free. Personally, depending on the contest, I do not mind promoting a product that I really like and respect.
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