Sweepstakes and Contests continue in our marketing toolkit because the brand achieves the goal to get large groups of people to act in prescribed manner. My perspective is sweepstakes and contests are like heroin, it is a short term fix. A brand spends money (for prizes, media, and creative), gets excitement for brief period; then the euphoria dies down, until the next contest.
What brands usually want and how they achieve it is still disjointed. Brands say they want long term, solid relationships with customers. Contests are not the type of achievement you should be putting in your trophy case. Brands that use a lot of contests create one positive relationship for the winner and nothing for the thousands of participants. How many of us have entered a contest, lost, then felt more positive about the brand hosting the contest? The only people that come back for seconds to a brand for the next contest, are the truly desperate consumers (want something for free) and small children (don’t know any better).
Sweepstakes and Contests do have a purpose – i.e., build awareness, but too often can be panacea for lack of a customer relationship and just a quick way to build your email list or twitter followers.