Don’t Run a Sweepstakes to Motivate Performance!

If you have very limited budgets and want to motivate a large audience, don’t think that a sweepstakes will really change behavior. It won’t, so save your money.

For years I have worked with clients who wanted to take small budgets, and stretch them over a large universe of participants, thinking they were going to motivate them to improve their performance. A recent example was a plumbing products manufacturer that wanted to motivate in-store plumbing department salespeople of a leading home improvement company. Now, this company had an average of 5 salespeople per department in over 2200 stores nationally....over 11,000 participants...and she had a $35,000 budget to motivate them to put up displays, take a picture of the display, and send it in for an entry into a sweepstakes! She actually thought that a sweepstakes for $5 and $10 gift cards was going to motivate these folks. She was absolutely right about one thing, gift cards are a great award for sales and marketing programs, but that was about all she was right about.

This was the tail end of a national ad campaign to launch this product. I told her to save the money. To start with, no one changes their performance for a 1 in 10 chance to receive a $10 gift card...that is frankly ludicrous to think that they would. You might have received the attention of someone if the winner received 10-$3500 prizes, but even then the vast majority would look at the promotion as a very slim chance to win and not be bothered. If they put the displays up at all, they’d do it because their boss told them to. Otherwise, the promo kits would sit in the warehouse to be tossed in the trash a month later. I told her she would get more promotional appeal if she gave the money to charity on behalf of the stores that participated. At least that way something good would have been done with it.

So who won? Well, let’s just say that the advertising specialty compnany that sold her $35000 worth of hats, t- shirts and pens was certainly happy with that sale at 40% commission! If you see any folks around with a hat or tee shirt that promotes a particular brand and model of plumbing fixture, I guess they were happy too!

So Be Well, Be Happy too, and Hug someone today!