Yesterday, Air France Romania announced on their Facebook fan-page the following:
First paragraph says: “Competition: Take your vintage Air France luggage, get on board the Super Jumbo A380 and go to New York with the friendliest Air France pilots. What do you have to do in order to win one of these prizes?”
The mechanism? Post something on our wall, mentioning @Air France Romania (tagging their page) and say why would you like to go to New York. Who gets the most likes on their status by tomorrow (today) – Saturday 19.03.2011, 14:00 wins.
Nobody likes “like” contests on Facebook in Romania (and probably not only here). They are against Facebook terms and conditions, they make you befriend people you don’t want to, just so they will like your stupid post – and most of them make you like a fan-page in order to participate. We all have participated once or twice in such things and decided not to do so in the future.
But considering the big prize (a trip to New York) and the fact that the competition was ending in less than 20hours – I decided to give it a shot. What kind of message would get me as many likes as possibles without begging, spamming, etc. Together with some close friends we decided to build a message that would give back something to anybody who liked it. So we just created a suggestive picture with me and the Statue of Liberty and posted a message (following Air France rules) that mentioned a couple of New York landmarks and the fact that i could “video-shop” for anybody that would want a movie with their picture and a famous landmark or a pebble from the Empire State Building, or whatever memorabilia they would want me to bring back from NY.
Being such short-notice and being able to post my thing on my own wall where the only things OK about this story. They actually reconsidered and realized that if people posted on the wall of their fan-page they will get some extra fans – so now they accept both kinds of posts (personal wall, fan-page wall).
Right now I have 58 likes and the competition ends in 1 hour. Oh wait, they just announced (via iPhone ;) ) that they will keep it open until Monday 10:00. Oh wait, they are not giving away a trip to New York – but only a vintage luggage, a toy plane and some “cute” fluffed bear dressed as a pilot. Ha?
#FAIL #FAIL #FAIL
I am not upset for not wining something that could have not been won. I just think we should not let brands and companies get away with such sleazy behavior and unprofessional attitude.
Anyway – just wanted to say a big thank you to everybody who liked my try and for all your interesting thoughts on what you would like to get from New York. I promise that first time I get there on my own I will try to do as many of those requests as possible just as an experiment to discover NY through your wishes.
In conclusion (very well put by Ioana):
- think twice about the benefits of over promising behavior
- get a social media consultant!
Later edit: It was brought to my attention that Air France posted the prizes on their Facebook wall, just before the announcement in the screenshot above. Ok – verified. I apologize then for a small part of this article but most of the points are still standing. How come so many thought that they are really offering a tript to NY? How come they did not deny this (and there were some questions) until Saturday noon?
