The Worst Onboarding for a Contest in Earth’s History for the Best Possible Cause

You can’t even stare at the wall in front of you while using the john at a baseball game anymore without some sort of branded contest slapping you in the face. While this has become a common occurrence through digital media channels to gain engagement and leads, you still have to weigh if dropping your phone in a small pool of piss is worth the two free hot dogs and Coke you may or may not win. On the bright side, you just won 38 emails a day about a bunch of products and services that have absolutely nothing to do with your lifestyle.

Contests used for marketing and lead-gen have changed over the years, adapting to new social networks and demographic changes, but the key factor to an engaging contest has not.

You make it easy, fast, and a prize the consumer actually wants to win, not just what you want to give away.

Divona fragrances has a fantastic aspect behind the brand model. Every time you make a purchase of one of their products, they use a portion to create care packages for women going through very difficult times. They’ve partnered with other social-good brands as well to expand this reach and empowerment for women.

“My personal experience with domestic abuse was the biggest motivator behind creating DIVONA, a perfume line that not only empowers you but also empowers many women across the globe,” said Mylene Paquin, Co-Founder of DIVONA.

I love every part of what they’re doing behind this product because it’s creating and nurturing the “pay it forward” type of mentality the world needs so much more of.

On the other hand, this contest is setup like someone force fed the blood of the Kali Ma from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom down the entire marketing teams throats. Everyone had to have lost their free will to think for themselves by going all in on a contest with 9872398573 steps to enter.

Here’s the map for the seven hour journey to Crappy Contestville

You hop on your bike and start peddling down the road on this majestic day. The breeze has just the right amount of crisp cool to it and flips your hair around while you just smile like a fool enjoying the gift of nature.

You notice a friendly looking woman to your right waving and motioning for you to take a break and look inside this door real quick. “There’s FREE stuff in here!” she says and motions to you some more.

It’s a lazy day and you realize there’s no harm in looking at all the “free stuff” this woman is talking about. Plus, she looks like she has a lot of friends and people probably care about the things she has to say!

As soon as you walk through the door, she starts telling you about her start-up idea of making fragrances that smell like you were just at the beach. You bring up the fact that the whole thing sounds like the plot to a Seinfeld episode but she ignores your concerns and immediately asks you to back her idea if you want the free things inside.

She exclaims, “It’s only a dollar or more!”

Well you have a dollar and if you can get free things, which aren't actually free anymore since you’re paying for them, what’s the harm.

“Or more!” she announces again.

“I’ll stick with the one.” you reply with a side smile.

She grabs your hand and takes you to a table with a pile of forms and a pen.

“You need to sign up before you give me the money! That way I can send you great ideas from a whole bunch of other people too!”

The thought of never having inbox zero again for the rest of your life makes you a little uneasy but you’re getting some free perfume so totally worth it! The forms are easy enough to fill out and you hand over your dollar.

The woman begins laughing to herself and points at more forms.

“You need to add all your credit card information first silly! I can’t just take a single paper dollar from you like this is 1986!”

At this point you start debating if the time you’re spending filling out forms is really worth some unknown fragrance at the end of the tunnel and it’s starting to ruin your plans for the day.

You’ve come this far so one more step shouldn't take much more time.

“Now I need you to take a picture of the form you just filled out that has already been processed where the information is readily available to someone and mail it to me.”

“Fuck you lady.”

The process

Just so you know, there was another step that also had bullet points so it was really like four more steps. Also there were mentions of following and commenting on a SEPARATE Instagram post so she knew that you entered. I’m guessing that’s just in case the first Kickstarter form failed, the payment form server got hit by lightning, the screenshot was corrupt, she accidentally dropped both her laptop and phone off the end of a pier, and the Pittsburgh Penguins win the Stanley Cup.

Makes sense.

The whole contest journey looks like you’re personally trying to solve the JFK assassination while graphing a double helix structure on top of it.

It’s not rocket surgery knowing your audience and potential leads time are valuable to them. If you’re not showing how you value it in something as simple as a giveaway, how do you expect the consumer find out? They sure as hell aren't going to spend another hour navigating your media channels like some sort of half ass escape room.

Brand advocates come as fast as brand antagonists and that starts with their first exposure to your content. An easy experience with a generous payoff gets lots of mentions and shares but so does trying to solve cancer for a free pencil.