2012: You lose some…

by Di · Published 01/01/2013 · Updated 11/06/2019

To follow my winning tales of 2012, this is a quick round up of my favourite photo and video entries that DIDN’T win a prize. I spent lots of time and effort on these so it’s nice to share them again. And even though they weren’t winners, we always look back and appreciate the fun we had making them!

At the end of 2011 I blogged about a fabulous competition Kitoko/ASP Hair were running to win a new car. To enter you had to email a photo of you and write up to 20 words why you loved Kitoko. LOADS of SuperLucky readers entered this one and there were some super entries (see their album here). I did two – a superhero shot and a recreation of the classic still from ‘Psycho’. My friend Carmy had come round for dinner and was a little bemused when we asked her to join me in the bathroom for a photo shoot…

“Advanced Hair Therapy works like a dream. But when it runs out – I just want to SCREAM!”

“My secret weapon in the shower? Kitoko – the ultimate superpower!”

When I told my husband about the Yorkshire Tea video competition to win a tea tasting day and overnight stay in Harrogate, he immediately decided we should do a remake of the scene in Homeland where Brody realises Carrie has been spying on him – because she knows he drinks Yorkshire Gold tea! The brief was to show how much you love Yorkshire Gold tea… as usual, once Rob got involved, the film got far more complicated than I would like (I even had to sketch a storyboard!)

Alas, we weren’t one of the three prizewinners, but they did send us a year’s supply of Yorkshire Gold as a consolation…

When I heard about the Europcar Caraoke competition in Summer, I knew it was worth a go. The top prize of a car was judged from the 30 videos with the most votes, but there were random spot prizes awarded throughout the promotion – and actually they received a surprisingly low number of entries. I recorded three entries with my mates Laura & Lisa, and they both won spot prizes – but my tuneless (you have been warned – turn the volume down!) version of ‘Relight my Fire’ didn’t win a sausage, although it was loads of fun recording it!

In Summer I entered a competition featured in the Loughborough Echo to recreate a local landmark from food – this was to win a trip to Cornwall. Ry and I spent ages stacking cheese and crackers (and – erm – cabbage) to recreate the Loughborough Carillon. We didn’t win, and missed the newspaper with the results in so never got to see the winning entry (we were eating cheese and crackers for some days afterwards!)

More fun with food was had for the Topfruit lunchbox competition – they gave away three iPad prizes to the best lunchboxes. Ours were inspired by Japanese characters – everything has a face in Japan!

Ocado launched a super generous video competition in Autumn to win £5200 of Ocado vouchers – to enter, you had to make a video recreating your worst trip to the supermarket. This competition had loads of entries – we rushed to get ours done before our holiday, so were a bit annoyed when Ocado decided to extend the closing date by a month. In fact, a lot of promoters have done this in 2012 – and it’s not acceptable unless there’s a VERY good reason: ‘We’ve not had enough entries’ or ‘But it’s been so popular…’ are NOT good reasons! If a promoter DOES extend the closing date, they must contact every entrant to make them aware – and this is rarely done! If you do feel annoyed by a change of closing date then you can contact the ASA about it – the promoter isn’t likely to risk it again.

Pepsi hosted a wonderful generous and daft competition in the run up to Christmas – 12 daily prizes of £1000 to be awarded at random to one person who successfully completed their daily photo challenge on Twitter. The entry numbers were very low, especially for the dares that required more than a couple of people in the photo! Day 7 was to dress up as a swan by some water – this was a challenge I couldn’t resist, but incredibly there were more than 30 entries that day! I only managed to enter on two other days but was delighted to see five of my Facebook friends pick up £1000 prizes with their photos. Some people were annoyed that the entries weren’t judged, but I thought it was a nice change to see a random draw as it gave everyone a fair chance of winning even if they didn’t have time to put in hours of effort! I really hope more big names like Pepsi consider running creative comps in 2013.