Picture this.  Open your mailbox (as you do), and get greeted by a strange looking parcel.  Usually from a distribution company that you don’t recognise.  You open it up – curiosity, and find either a book, DVD, Blu Ray, piece of jewellery ….. Or something that you don’t ever remember ordering.

Chances are you’ve been sent a ‘ghost prize’.  And, it’s happening more than you might think.

Why would you be sent a prize in this way?  The answer is that with thousands of online competitions in the market at any time, people tend to flick through and enter them without giving much thought to the outcome.  With so much competition between the competition's market (no pun intended) companies will often offer hundreds,  sometimes thousands of runner up prizes.

As well  as making the overall prize pool bigger, many online contest sites offer their members a sort function of ‘number of prizes’.  So, the more prizes on offer, the higher the campaign will rank.

For the promoter, offering large numbers of prizes can be a dual edged sword.  Sending out hundreds of prizes is expensive, and every action adds to the total bill.  Often, the prize is simply sent ‘as is’, with no note or clue as to the origin of the special parcel.

The promoter figures that the lucky recipient will automatically remember where and when the entrant filled in their details.

Sending ghost press is not only lazy marketing, it’s ineffective.  Prize winners take on an almost vital role.  Think of how good service translates in terms of goodwill.  The old rule of thumb is that a happy customer will tell one person, the unhappy customer will tell ten.  With prizes, the winning feeling takes on an almost entirely new dimension.

The winner may or may not decide to send a thank you note to the promoter ….. Okay …. Very rarely, but it does happen.  What they will do is immediately taken on bragging rights, and get straight onto Facebook and Twitter to tell the world about their wins.  Ten people?  Forget it.  Prize winners tend to have a healthy social network, it goes with the territory.

That little prize winners, which may have cost a few dollars to mail out, becomes an incredibly worthwhile marketing tool.

If the winner doesn’t know where they won, the prize is simply a novelty value.  Value? Nil.