Every morning I watch the Today show, I just love Karl and Lisa and it occurred to me that I want to be an ‘I wake up with today’ instant cash winner, off to the Today website I go to register and I stumble across a wonderful competitions page and the Holden IQ test took my fancy. Usually I am extremely skeptical of entering competitions for brands, being in the industry and having set up many of competitions for particular brands I know the gist of how these things work and what the motive behind these competitions are. But this one seemed like my cup of tea… play an interactive challenge, share with your friends and you could win a Holden!
So I don’t have to answer a million questions about my demographics?
And there is no “tell us in 100 words or less” mechanic?
Hell yea I’ll enter this for the slim to none chance to win a car, because I’ll take it as an educational experience for what seems to be a great use of digital and social media for a competition to win a decent prize, being a car!
I wish I was writing this blog to praise how great my consumer experience was with this competition but frankly what was potentially a great concept has been overshadowed by a technical fault in their registration process: ANNOYING!
The home page – fancy flash looking thing isn’t it.. http://www.holdeniq.com.au/
Then I click on the register to win link, I assume you need to register before you start the test in order to qualify to win right?
How cool I can just register but clicking on the facebook link: (why do I think this is cool?)
- Easy for me as the engaging consumer to register (there is nothing more that I hate than entering lengthy registration questions)
- It means I can share my experience with all my friends on facebook, which is pretty cool
- It mean that Holden as a brand gets extended exposure to all my friends on facebook
From a combined strategic and execution perspective all the boxes seem to be getting ticked (mind you I am still on the homepage!)
Then disaster strikes..
As you can just see in the bottom left had corner the ‘done’ alert. I have clicked on the facebook link, confirmed my email as requested and then … nothing…
I can’t click back to see what happened, I refresh and still, according to Mozilla, the function is ‘done’ but clearly my registration is not ‘done’.
“Mehh a little annoying but maybe if I complete the test then register it will work? right?” WRONG!
I complete the HoldenIQ test (which to be honest was quite fun and took about 10mins, max) but then I go to register my result and share with my friends but still can’t seem to dam register!
Had I been an entrant that is not in this field of work I probably would have been annoyed and left when my registration didn’t work the first time but being in this line of work I complete the problem solving process:
- Maybe it’s because I’m in Mozilla (not that lack of browser support, outside of explorer would be an excuse I would accept anyway)
- Explorer, nope still didn’t work
- Different computer? still the same issue!
- Try registering by actually entering my details rather than using facebook connect
FAIL FAIL FAIL
So I challenge you to try the IQ test and register for the competition, if it works well that’s just dandy and I hope you actually enjoyed the experience and perhaps can even comment with your opinion on the use of this engaging digital competition in a highly competitive motor vehicle industry. I certainly think that the prize is valuable enough for the consumer to justify spending a few minutes engaging with the Holden brand. Also I never received my result, is it my actual IQ?
However, if the error is replicated for other entrants it makes me wonder how does a company such a Holden allow a site and competition to go live without extensive testing, and ongoing testing?
I notice the competition has been running since the 25th October so surely someone is reporting on number of entries which makes me wonder if this is just a recent error?
Either way, what I thought was going to be a great competition entry experience resulting in a tweet on this great competition I just entered in that nicely integrates digital, competition, social media and engagement actually resulted in about 45minutes of my time entering, problem solving and blog posting about a dam competition in which I am not even in the freaking running for wining!!!!
You know what annoys me even more, Holden have engaged (enraged?) me, I have written a blog about it and I will tweet about it and tell my colleagues about the experience I had…. which ultimately means Holden have left and impact on me and I will spread the word about this competition, in one way or another. The power of new media will never cease to intrigue me!
