Clara’s SuperLucky Story

These are all lovely wishes, and it all came true for me – through comping – and I’m so grateful for that!

It all started in the beginning of January 2011 when I received a letter from the agency of Jamie Cullum. I’ve been entering the advent calendar on his official website and I was lucky enough to win an opportunity to participate the live recording of his BBC2 radio show – wow, I was really chuffed! By then Í had been entering competitions on woman’s magazine sites, like Marie Claire and Elle, but I have never actually won anything before. You know – when you read the winning e-mail, starting with Congratulations! – it just gives you a really unique feeling, a rush of total excitement!

I discovered Facebook comping in March, when a friend of mine won a Caribbean holiday with Kuoni. I’ve started to find new fan pages with daily/weekly/monthly or one-off competitions and soon I got addicted to entering competitions! I made a little wishlist for the things I’d love to win, and it was really nice when I could achieve 1 or 2 wins – just great!

There are so many different types of competitions and all compers have their special favourites:

Judged tiebreaker competitions
As English is not my first language, it gives me extra pleasure when I win in tiebreaker competitions, like the one with Kettle Chips. They were looking for “your favourite Kettle chips moment”. The prizes where really nice and I was so glad when I was informed that my answer was chosen as a winner on one of the weeks – I got a lovely Mulberry purse, something I couldn’t have afforded, so you can imagine how happy I was! 

There was a similar competition with Boots – they were asking for tips in different categories – they liked mine on hair care and I won a nice big goodie bag. Or do you remember the competition on DKNY Jeans? They were looking for creative answers why you want to win any of the items from a selection of outfits. The answer was limited to 160 characters and open worldwide, but hey, I got lucky again and received a nice white summer dress and jeans cropped jacket.

Creative competitions 
They need a bit of effort and creativity. Most people are not bothered with this type but the prizes are mostly bigger and with a unique idea and some IT skills – you can easily bag a guaranteed win. Di from SuperLucky has inspired me to think out of the box and enter more creative comps – thanks for that! I love fashion and quality items, so when Ri2k has announced to give away a leather tote, I really wanted to win it. They were asking the fans to upload a photo onto their fan page of a shoe they’d pair with the bag – their favourite would win the prize. I wanted to do something different from the other entrants, so I put together a few outfits from my wardrobe and took a picture of those. A few weeks later I won that lovely bag and now the proud owner of it.

Random prize draws 

Just a tip: before I enter any of these comps, I always check how many fans the page already have…the smaller the fan community, the better chances of winning!

And there are those dreaded voting competitions as well 
I left this for last, because to be honest – we’ve all tried it and most of us have ended up with a bad experience, it’s not something we like to remember. Voting comps can be very heated, there is more opportunity for cheating and they need a lot of effort to win. When the fan page of Emma Bridgewater announced a new personalised mug competition, I got really excited! EB has been my favorite pottery brand for yonks and I own several of her mug designs – mostly presents from my husband. They don’t come cheap so I entered the comp – only to find out later that it was a voting one. As I’ve had some experience with this type, I asked them to change the rules of the promotion to random or judged, but they stayed with the original Terms and Conditions, so I started a little campaign among my friends to try and get enough votes to win. Those 3 weeks were one of the most agonising and worrying periods of my life. It might sound silly, but checking the results every hour, and with another team heavily competing, I couldn’t rest, and after a time I really wanted to win after putting so much effort in. With the help of many people I won in the end and I am so glad because I’m giving all these personalised mugs to the volunteers I’m working with in a non-profit organisation. 

It’s such a pleasure when I can present a loved one with a nice gift that I’ve won through comping. My niece likes me very much for the skin care products I pass onto her and winning a few lovely prizes certainly made our Christmas much easier this year, something I’m very happy for.

Comping might be very time-consuming but if you set some goals and put some effort into creative competitions – it might be very rewarding and could fulfill some long overdue dreams as well! 