The blogosphere is alive with the sound of controversy over a recent contest sponsored by Chrysler.
The “Blogger Faceoff” contest involved five “mommy bloggers” posting on the topic “How do you keep the kids occupied on road trips?” Readers then voted for their favorite post, and the blogger who received the most votes would win an iPad2 or a trip to New York City.
But controversy ignited over the voting rules.
The official rules stated: “Limit one (1) vote per person, per category, per day. Votes garnered by using multiple email addresses or any other device or artifice to vote multiple times will be disqualified.”
However, Ignite Social Media, the company that ran the contest for Chrysler, apparently informed the bloggers that the rules actually allowed one vote per person, per category, per day, per computer.
The bloggers informed readers as much, and the contest continued until a reader of one of the blogs made a rude comment about one of the other bloggers. The defamed blogger then accused the first blogger of violating the voting rules and cheating.
Ignite responded by disqualifying the blogger who was accused of cheating. Controversy erupted because the blogger hadn’t been the one to insult her competitor and because the company disqualified her entirely, not just the votes for her entry, as set forth in the official rules. The other bloggers, who also encouraged their fans to vote via different IP addresses or browsers multiple times per day, were not disqualified.
As the story snowballed, Ignite tried to placate the masses. Ignite’s president, Jim Tobin, responded to the controversy by saying that the company “did the only thing we could do given the rules and the situation. Having said that, it’s clear that our promotion, which was designed to be fun for all of the bloggers participating, has clearly not been fun for some of them.”
Tobin then proposed to provide each of the bloggers with either an iPad2 or a $500 gift card to donate to the educational cause(s) of their choice.
“Hopefully this will make up for some of the more unfortunate drama,” Tobin wrote.
Why it matters: The drama provides a lesson to companies considering engaging in a social media-based contest about the power of bloggers and the potential for controversy. The official rules form the contract between the players and the contest sponsor and if properly written give the sponsor the necessary protection if things go wrong and the latitude to make adjustments as necessary. Sponsors should draft rules carefully and enforce them as written. When they deviate or do not apply the rules uniformly to all contestants or create the impression that preferential treatment has been given, problems like this arise. In the era of social media, everyone has a forum and the word of alleged “impropriety” quickly spreads.
