No love from the Quaker Man :-(
Feb 28, 2009 Contest
So I found out that I didn’t win the Quaker Contest. I lost by 12 uploaded pictures. And while I’m tempted to throw some guilt at the dozen or so people who told me they wanted to do it but didn’t/couldn’t/forgot, the winner had her Quaker day after me, so she probably did the same thing I did: tried to figure out who was in the lead and made sure to beat them (me). If I had gotten a dozen more, maybe she would have gotten even more. So, whatever. I’m not bitter.
I am a little annoyed, though, that I found out I lost from checking Quaker’s Facebook page, and not from getting some kind of acknowledgment from Quaker, thanking me for being in the contest and letting me know who won. I think that somewhere in there was a good idea for a contest, but if Quaker ever decides to do something like this again, I have a few suggestions:
- Have all of the bloggers participate on the same day, so that it’s a true competition, and not just each blogger trying to do better than the last person.
- Don’t make it all-or-nothing. At least have a few top prizes.
- Let the bloggers have a little fun with it – the rules were annoying and hard to understand.
- Show the bloggers some love. I’m a nice person, but I also thought that there would be something in this for me – some kind of well-publicized post or press release, maybe, thanking the bloggers for participating and giving their blogs a little promotion.
If I had really understood how the competition was going to work beforehand, I probably wouldn’t have participated. A bunch of other bloggers I know were approached and they all turned it down. I, on the other hand, ran with it and gave up more than a day just for the contest, annoyed all of my friends, and in the end got nothing for it, not even an email telling me whether or not I had won.
But, like I’ve been saying all along, at least some charity somewhere will get the $5K, and that’s a good thing. Quaker was also going to give up to one million bowls of oatmeal to charity – one bowl for each person who went to Quaker’s Facebook page and entered a Quaker UPC code. Tomorrow’s the last day, and there are less than 6,000 bowls filled so far. That’s too bad, but I’m not all that surprised. I hope that in the interest of charity and good will, Quaker decides to give the million bowls anyway.
So, thanks to every one of you who tried to help me win the contest. Thanks also to my friend Melanie for Tweeting the contest. If anybody else promoted it, please let me know and I’ll link to you.
Do the right thing, Quaker, and give that million bowls!
Originally posted on Selfish Mom
Tags: Contest, Quaker Oats
