We were sent an anonymous tip last night that supposedly outted a well-known review blogger for unethical behavior.
It was a screenshot of email correspondence where the blogger explains how she’ll pretend to ‘randomly select’ a winner for the contest, but actually plans to give the item to a friend who could use the item.
For a variety of reasons we’ve opted not to share the identity of the review blogger. The issue raises some questions we’d like to propose:
- Are giveaway selections always random? How can we be sure?
- Is it fair for the selection process to fall on the blogger’s shoulders?
- How can bloggers guard against accusations of rigging giveaways?
- What should a blogger do when accusations arise?
Perhaps PR agencies and companies that routinely sponsor giveaways ought to take more initiative and proactively curtail potential favoritism and abuse by selecting the winners themselves.
Having a third party choose winners (particularly for expensive contests) would also protect the bloggers’ credibility and prevent charges of bad behavior.
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I had a sort-of-similar issue on a giveaway I did, where I asked people to tell a funny story from their lives and chose my favorites — very scientific! — as winners.
When I announced the winners, several readers wrote to tell me that they’d heard one of the stories before, raising doubts, to put it mildly, about that winner’s claim.
I agonized over what to do. Should I call this reader and winner a liar, and award her prize to someone else? I finally decided to give her the prize anyway, because it was a funny story and had made me laugh, AND had added value to the giveaway, creating good content for the sponsor. (My own aversion to confrontation surely had nothing to do with it!) The whole thing freaked me out, and I haven’t done a giveaway since.
Tell you what – I hereby offer my random selection services as an unbiased third party. Send me your list of entrants, and I’ll randomly select one. I promise to neither retain nor use your entrants’ information for any other purpose.
You can rely on me not to care who wins and not to throw the game.
An entirely untapped market potential – you could sell your services as the “third party random selector of giveaways”, lol.
Heck, I’ll do it for just a link. I’m riddled with impartiality and won’t be undersold!
A third party would surely work! I’d be glad to assist with drawings! Oh, and whomever the ‘well known reviewer’ is should be ashamed!!!
I can’t express how many levels this violates of ethics…and if you have the information, you’re ethically bound to let the companies who participated with product know (since you now know) and the person who passed it on..well they’re just as guilty as the first..Its sad indeed…Mommies..get your acts together…this is yet ANOTHER reason you have no real credibility! I”M SHOCKED< DISMAYED>AND Well..you know the rest!
I only did a few giveaways on my site. It was fun to pick winners, but it was also nerve racking. I assigned each comment a number and then used the random integer site to pick a winner. Sometimes my closest friends won and I was worried that I would be viewed as impartial.
This reminiscent of the game show fraud perpetrated back in the 1950s concerning the $64,000 Question show. (See Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_$64,000_Question#The_scandal). This ended up resulting in criminal charges. For the example you cite, I wouldn’t be surprised if a RICO statute violation was found for committing fraud using the Internet.
The one time I did a (lame) giveaway (with a gift certificate I BOUGHT MYSELF to encourage comments) I had my dog pick the winners and I videotaped it. I was actually friends IRL with a lot of the people who commented, and I didn’t want to be accused of showing favoritism, so I wrote all of the names out on tissues and let my golden retriever choose. It was fair, and awesomely hilarious. She ended up picking a friend of mine, but at least it was random… I think. I suppose she could have rigged the whole thing.
Also? As much as I’d love to say “I’m shocked”, I’m not. You know when you drop your business cards in those fish bowls at conferences? Most times they comb through the cards and pick out specific people as winners (like the ones who have a popular platform to praise the company on, or someone that they want to do business with). I’m not saying it’s right, because I think it’s pretty damn unethical, but it’s not surprising.
PS: Good call not naming the blogger. You’re staying classy while still bringing up an interesting issue, which I have mad respect for.
Great point, Ally. Bloggers aren’t the only culprits – because at the end of the day companies are looking for maximum exposure.
I enjoy entering blog giveaways. It’s really sad if some bloggers are rigging them. I personally would love to know who this person is so I don’t waste my time entering their giveaways anymore.
I’ve heard of this issue and it bothers me that some people can spoil it all for everyone and make many of us look bad. As someone who has run giveaways on multiple sites from both the PR and blogger end, I just hope it’s not as prevalent as this post would make me believe.
A friend once asked me if I could rig it so she won a contest and I said very seriously “ABSOLUTELY NOT!” I don’t believe in God, but I DO believe in Karma, and that kind of crap would have the Karma gods raining down hate for years to come. Sometimes I WISH I could choose the winner because I can tell from certain comments that some people need the product worse than others, but no matter what, Random.org picks my winners and nobody else.
Rigged drawings, or the perception of bias, is a huge problem. I stopped doing giveaways because of the perception problem, but also looked into the idea of a service to ensure fairness. While many people feel comfort with Random.org, the truth is you can keep refreshing Random.org to land on the number you want it to, so best practice has to become using a third party. Random.org had a verified draw service (http://www.random.org/draws/pricing/) that should be used at the minimum. Companies should insist on this, and should pay for it.
I’m sure it definitely happens. When we used to do giveaways at SafeMama, we’d ask the other to pick a number. Now that we have random.org, we use that as the number selector. There are many times where I’d love to keep an item for myself, but I’d run out of room very quickly, and end up like my great aunt, who has a basement full of crap that her kids are going to have to wade through when she dies.
So, my short answer is, I use random.org to select winners. I should put a snapshot of the winning number, but I often get lazy or it’s at the end of the day and I’m tired.
I coordinate giveaways on a monthly basis; so we handle a lot of prizing fulfillment on behalf of our Bloggers. There are times that we see the same name coming up over and over again, though we cannot know whether they are avid contest entrants or if it is abuse.
Whether it’s something as small as a DVD or as large as a Airline Ticket – keeping things legit is essential.
We always take the time to recommend using Random.org – it’s easy and keeps things ethical.
I use random.org for all giveaways. I would rather have a checks and balance approach if someone questioned who won one of my giveaways and how I chose the winner. I always keep a record of the entry by number of entry and name of winner.
I personally use Random.org for each and every giveaway on my blog. Not only would my conscience not let me rig a giveaway (why would anyone want to?), but who has the time for it? Not me.
I am all for a third party picking winners on blog giveaways. I think it is a wonderful idea. Now how can we do that?
As far as bloggers guarding against accusations of rigging giveaways? I don’t think there is a way until a 3rd party system is implemented. I guess we just have to go on the trust of our readers.
I also enter giveaways, and it really is disturbing to think that after all of the time and effort that goes into entering, it could be a huge waste of time if a blogger is going to pick who they want anyway.
I was getting ready to comment, but your comment is exactly what I would have said (but yours is probably worded much better than mine would have been) so I will just concur wholeheartedly.
I enter a lot of contests. I don’t even want to know how much time I have wasted if this accusation is true!
And I also use random.org. It seems like the only fair thing to do…but I guess unethical people with no conscious could press the button until they got a # of a person they liked? I wouldn’t be able to live with myself…and nothing is worth that!
I use random.org, but would LOVE if the sponsors chose the winner. I actually hate when people I am better friends with or bigger bloggers win, because I don’t want people to think I am cheating.
I am not a blogger but do enter contests by bloggers. I feel random.org is very fair and I hope all use it. It takes ALOT of time to enter, and honestly most of us keep following and do read the blogs as well.
Have I ever felt it was rigged? Every now and again, yes. I never enter contests where someone ‘picks’ their favorite (subjective) nor when it becomes a popularity contest. The other thing that has me pulling my hair out right now are bloggers giving extra entries for voting for them in a contest (dont get me going on that one)
My only comment is I hope there is such a thing as Karma and it bites them in the behind.
On a side note, I do realize whom the mystery blogger is, and have won there.
That is really sad!
I’ve won many contests so I know most bloggers are ethical. I use random.org for our contests. I only post the winners for the big contests then email them too. The book winners (since there are so many) only get emailed.
It doesn’t matter who/where/what/why/when the giveaway is being done. There will always be people “in charge” who don’t follow the rules and pick however those rules state they should. That isn’t to say there aren’t plenty of people “in charge” who DO follow the rules. It’s just like anything else in life, some folks play by the rules, some do not.
I have been doing giveaways for years and generally my selection is random (unless it’s a skill based contests, etc). While I don’t use random.org (I just don’t like it nor feel the need to use it), I have my own very random way of selecting my winners.
On my blog, sometimes I “know” the winners as frequent readers of my blog, fellow bloggers, etc., sometimes I am clueless as to who they are. It’s irrelevant – if they followed the entry rules – everyone has a chance to win.
I’m so disenchanted with running giveaways. I rarely do them anymore. I love all my readers and hate that only one or a select few can be winners while everyone else is left out in the cold. If I do the rare giveaway, it’s more than likely a product I picked and paid for myself.
I also rarely participate in giveaways because I feel its a time waster.
I enter a lot of blog giveaways and wonder how often that happens!
Having a 3rd party do the selection sounds like a fair idea.
Yikes, that’s not very fair, nor legal. In the past, when I’ve had to do drawings, I’ve used http://www.random.org/. It costs about $5 (USD) and you just upload the email addresses (or twitter handles) of entrants, say how many winners it should pick and it emails you the names of the winners. The awesome thing is that the service “makes a record of the drawing on the RANDOM.ORG site, sends you an email confirmation” and “Winners and losers in your drawing can go to RANDOM.ORG and verify the result for at least five years.” Thereby proving the method you used to choose a winner is legit:)
We’ve used random.org to generate winning numbers ever since we started doing giveaways.
We do so many giveaways that we have to pay an assistant to draw and notify winners… and of course she uses random.org to select the winners.
Personally, I think most drawings from most sites are likely fair. Everyone I talk to uses random.org to select numbers. I don’t tend to worry about it much.
Apparently I’m following Susan around here…
I agree with her anyway, I think your ‘outted’ blogger in the story is severely in the minority.
I think a bigger question is about the gigantic AMOUNT of giveaways going on? Now that’s a story.. like total giveaway burnout, bloggers and readers eh?
It’s so interesting to hear bloggers, seasoned and total newbies, get frustrated because even their loyal readers don’t enter their giveaway.. well why is that I always ask them??
I don’t do a lot of giveaways because when I do I get very very low turnout! So, it’s not even worth it. I have given away what I thought were a couple of really good items too… like a $25 iTunes gift card, and I think I had only single digit entries on that one! And I have actually hounded some friends to enter my giveaways before because I had no entries. LOL!!! However, I never take the time to do the giveaway memes or anything like that. Maybe I will the next time.
Oh, and after that long explanation above… I will say.. I have yet to have enough entries on anything to need random.org. I’ve been just waiting to use it. So fars, numbers have been so low that I just close my eyes and point at the screen on the comments area, or have my daughter come by and pick a name out of a hat.
I get great blog traffic! I guess my folks just don’t like giveaways! It totally could be giveaway burnout too!
I agree — total sweeps fatigue.
I’ve been doing far fewer because where I used to get several hundred entries posting the giveaways on one site, now I have to work a lot harder to promote. And since I get paid to consult and write (not on my site–our editorial content is *never* paid), it is hard to justify taking time away from work to promote a giveaway that readers are less interested in now. If I think a giveaway provides something unique or very exciting for our readers, I will still do it.
I use random.org and honestly would not care if a company does it. WHile I love giving my readers a chance to win prizes contests are more work than I would like. If I have close friends that enter I sometimes re-choose a winner and give them my friends my review copy instead. I honestly doubt that it is common but I hardly enter contests so I would not know. I said it before blogging is like living – you will blog ethically if you live ethically!
Networking Witches pulls their winners using Random.Org. I could not and will not deviate from that. I would not want someone to screw me like that and I refuse to do it to someone else.
Basically this is not playing nice in the sandbox. It seems a generation has not been taught ethics or manners.
I have a feeling a lot of people do this, I would never because I wouldn’t want it done to me! Whoever did this should be ashamed of themselves! Its great that you didn’t announce them, but I would LOVE to know who. I spend MY quality time entering giveaways! I would like a free 3rd party to pick. I’m not going to pay for it though, because I can ethically do it myself.
Ya know-I have to break it to you.. being in the radio industry for the past 15 years-YES. it IS rigged.
In radio-I don’t care what you say…….. that’s how it is.
I would NEVER give it to a ‘prize pig’. You give it to NEW people turned onto your station…
But.. I NEVER told you that. =)
I too use random.org. I also am not all that surprised by this post.
Love AllyB’s novel random selection by the dog, video taped too! I’ve just learned about random.org and will start using it. I just usually pick a number from cut-up pieces of paper.
Thanks! It was ridiculous, but fun. If you’re interested, you can see it here: http://www.allybspeakin.com/2009/06/winner.html
LOL! I did just one giveaway, and only several people entered. I did something similar- I had my baby reach in and pull out a name written on a piece of cardboard.
I had to redo it many times to get a good video, so the first name pulled out may or may not have been the winner. Sometimes my baby pulled out more than one. Other times she didn’t want to give me the card so half the video is me prying it out of her hands. Sometimes the time ran out and the winner’s name didn’t make it on video at all. So the first video that came out perfectly, I made that the winner.
I hope it’s considered fair.
I use Random.org. I would have no problem with the company randomly selecting the winner. I suspect companies do not want to do it because they do not want to have to run everything past their legal departments. They provide prizing for these blog giveaways in part because that way they bypass a lot of red tape. We’re getting to the point with the giveaways that, like 5M4M, we’ll probably be passing off the administration to an intern. Running the giveaways take up time and that amount of time seems to be increasing as it is more work to promote them now and also to follow up.
I’ve heard of not only bloggers rigging their giveaways, but making FAKE ones! They’ll make a post with all these great items (with intentions of keeping the stuff for themselves) get comments and subscriptions up and award it to a fake reader!
I use random.org and post a screen shot of the number on my blog.
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