The ten best prize promotions of 2022

As we come to the end of 2022, it’s time to look back at the year’s prize promotions – as usual, I asked SuperLucky readers and the members of my Lucky Learners Facebook group for their opinion on this year’s comping hits and misses!

So, here’s our top ten prize promotions of 2022. This year’s list includes prize draws, photo comps, text comps, apps and instant wins. Interestingly, many promoters who have made regular appearances on my annual lists are missing this time round – Mars, Pringles and Doritos didn’t come up with anything original enough this year, I’m afraid. Fingers crossed for 2023!

Some of the top ten were chosen for the huge prize fund, some because they were lots of fun, and others because there was such a good chance of winning a prize! How many of these comps did you win a prize in? I managed 7/10 this time.

Although it was too late to include in the top ten, but I must mention the Mastercard £1million giveaway. They awarded a £1,000 bonus to a thousand card users a few days before Christmas, in an easy to enter prize draw where you earned an entry for every purchase you made using your card. Super generous!

1. Amazon Prime Day Sweepstakes

Amazon’s fabulous Prime Day Sweepstakes promotion made thousands of winners happy this summer, so there was never any doubt it would be at the top of this year’s list. Entries in the prize draw were earnt every time a purchase was made from a registered small business on Amazon, but shoppers had to opt in first. Each £1 spent was a draw entry, with prizes ranging from £50 up to £5000 Amazon credit. Each entrant could win a prize of each value, which saw some SuperLucky readers with several wins and over a thousand pounds worth of prizes. With a prize fund of £1.6million and 15,620 prizes this promotion was super generous!

Reader feedback:
“Amazon was euphoric! I did purchase a few things I needed, and I ended up with £900 on the first round. It was amazing to see all the wins come in, and then later the mop-up draw was also wild!”
“My winnings have pretty much paid for Christmas this year”
“It made me realise about the smaller sellers and now I shop that way more via Amazon”

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2. Half Time for Oman

Visit Oman took the opportunity to promote their country as the ideal holiday destination during the FIFA World Cup. During the half time break in the final World Cup match of each game day, they shared a post on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram and invited entrants to leave a comment. The following day, two winners were chosen for each match on the previous day to win a week long half board holiday to Muscat – that was 8 holiday winners a day for the Group stage, and 128 holidays in total by the end of the tournament. Dedicated to entering every single day, dozens of SuperLucky readers got lucky and are on their way to Oman in 2023 (including me, thanks to my friend Susannah who has invited me as her +1!)  

Reader feedback: “Half Time For Oman had generous prizes and lots of winners”

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3. Tesco & Bonne Maman TTW

Tesco run lots of Text-To-Win (TTW) promotions and they often have a generous prize fund, although we’ve never seen one with quite as many prizes as this year’s Bonne Maman promo! Entrants had to buy any Bonne Maman product at Tesco, then send a text entry and upload a photo of the receipt. In total across 21 prize draws, Tesco gave away 1,470 Bonne Maman Advent Calendars to lucky winners. Tesco TTWs are always standard rate texts (usually costing around 15p) – most are free entry, but some require a purchase and you can check out a list of current Tesco text promotions here.

Reader feedback: “Bonne Maman was a fantastic promotion with 70 winners each day.”

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4. Brewdog Access All Areas

Dedicated compers love a winning moments promotion that they can enter for free every day – especially one with loads of prizes, and Brewdog’s Access All Areas promotion ticked all the boxes. There were 13,410 instant win prizes ranging from Beer for a year to t-shirts and glasses, and participants could win multiple times. Giving away beer flights, bar tabs and pints encouraged a lot of winners to venture into their local Brewdog Pub for the first time too, so it was savvy marketing!

Reader feedback: “An easy entry daily instant win with lots of prizes”

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5. Strongbow Refreshing Moments

In Summer Strongbow launched their Refreshing Moments competition in venues and supermarkets. They asked buyers to snap a photo of their refreshing moment with Strongbow – either in a bar/pub or with a can. Photos had to be uploaded to the website (for a change, there was no requirement to share on social media!) and winners were drawn at random. Over 6 weeks there were ten winners chosen in total, each one winning a massive £10,000 cash! Plus ten runners up each week received a Polaroid GO bundle. The only downside to this competition? The six week entry period – because in December 2022, over 3 months after the closing date, promo packs are still lingering in the shops! Most brands would have included a late entry prize draw to allow for this situation.

Reader feedback: “Huge cash prizes in return for drinking cider – what’s not to like?” 

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6. Robinsons Big Fruit Hunt

Robinsons used augmented reality for their Big Fruit Hunt instant win – entrants registered the unique code from their bottle of squash, then could play the game to collect virtual fruits in AR. Although the main promotion was an algorithmic instant win (thumbs down from me!), they also had store-specific promotions if you bought your bottle of squash in Asda, Tesco and Sainsbury’s, with all prizes guaranteed to be won. Prizes were excellent and included family adventures, Go Ape vouchers, toys, CenterParcs holidays, theme park tickets and more. I found a golden strawberry for the Tesco winning moments promotion, and won a £100 Go Ape voucher!

Reader feedback: “A quirky way of running a purchase-necessary instant win – although I did find myself awake at 4am trying to find giant strawberries in my bedroom!”

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7. Nestlé Win Back to School Bundles

Nestlé promotions are always popular with SuperLucky readers – they have lots of prizes to be won, and winners need to show a proof of purchase to claim their prizes. This year they ran a promotion to win Crayola Bundles – with a massive 1,430 winners! Entrants had to purchase Shreddies, Cheerios, Nesquik or Golden Nuggets, then upload a photo of the receipt to the competition website (this QUF – qualifier up front – format is definitely a favoured entry method for purchase-necessary promotions). There were weekly prize draws and each prize contained eleven different Crayola products. Great Christmas gifts for the family!

Reader feedback: “There were hundreds of winners every week, and the prize itself was so much better than I’d hoped, with a variety of contents for artists of all ages”

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8. Coca-Cola Christmas

Coca-Cola now use their app to run most of the promotions advertised on-pack, and have used it to host several free and purchase-necessary promotions this year. The current promotions are all free to enter, but you have to play games on the app to earn ‘gems’ which you then redeem for instant win and prize draw entries. Some of the games can be frustrating, but the gems you earn can be used in any of the brand instant win or prize draws so just keep playing the games you’re better at! This year’s favourite promotion among compers is Coke Christmas, running until January 2023 and with 3,197 vouchers to be won. Even if you don’t win a £10 or £20 food delivery voucher instantly, you’ll still be in the draw for one of 133 x £200 Love2Shop vouchers every week! For a promotion that’s free to enter, it’s a generous prize fund. Find out more in my guide to the Coca-Cola app.

Reader feedback: “The Fanta Halloween driving game drove me mad, but there are so many prizes to be won I can’t resist playing the games on the Coke app every day!”

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9. KP Everyone In

Maybe it’s the introduction of new HFSS regulations to reduce promotion of unhealthy foods in stores, but it seems a lot of crisp, chocolate and fizzy drink brands opted for the ‘free entry’ route with their comps this year. KP advertised a fabulous on-pack instant win to promote The Hundred in the summer with daily free entry to win 195 x £100 cash prizes and 4,950 cricket sets, plus tickets to The Hundred Finals Day.

Reader feedback: “The prize cricket set was a great way to get more people playing cricket in the summer, and ours came on several camping trips!”

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10. Jet2 Late Summer Social

I can’t complete the top ten without including a judged creative competition, as these are my absolute favourite! Jet2 invited winners to join them on a Late Summer Social in the Costa Brava, asking entrants to submit a written and/or video entry explaining why they wanted to win. Each entrant had to select an itinerary and opt to take up to 5 guests with them, then entries were judged and winners chosen until Jet2 filled the 180 available seats on the planes. The winners had a brilliant weekend of excursions and entertainment, with special guest Denise Van Outen, and Pixie Lott performing at the gala dinner. Jet2 are generous with their prizes, and I hope they will do something similar for 2023!

Reader feedback: “Our whole family had a fantastic time in Spain – an experience they will never forget!”

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Near misses…

There were lots of other fantastic prize draws and competitions that didn’t quite make it onto the 2022 list…

• Although hundreds of SuperLucky readers won vouchers and loved the Walkers Easyjet hourly entry promotion, many others told me they found it “ridiculously stressful” so I couldn’t include it on the top ten list. I can assume they won’t be too chuffed about the imminent £250 an hour instant win promotion either! I think a winning moments promotion with one or two entries allowed daily is probably preferable to most compers who work during the day.
• LG gave away 50 tech bundles worth £3,000 each to entrants who purchased a pair of ear buds in their purchase necessary draw which closed in January – a pricey qualifier, but fabulous prizes for the winners!
• Beyond Meat gave away 160 Weber Traveler Grills in their summer prize draw – SuperLucky readers were delighted to see a big purchase-necessary promotion on vegan food, but they should have been stricter about asking winners for correctly dated receipts!
• This year Mars ran SupportHER and 2ChancesToWin, with the usual instant win format – but winners have reported issues getting their local supermarkets to accept the prize vouchers.
• Get Match Ready with Pepsi, Walkers Max and Doritos was back again for 2022, with lots of cash prizes and tickets to the Women’s Euro Finals awarded, but winners were disappointed that they couldn’t choose the match so many tickets went unused.
• Virgin Red gave away 100 cruises in an easy prize draw on the Virgin Red app
• KitKat gave away fifteen fabulous £10,000 road trips in their Dream Road Trip promotion, but we would have liked some smaller instant win prizes too!
• The Inch’s Cider promotion required entrants to take a photo of a bottle of cider to enter the instant win – it was popular with SuperLucky readers due to the unusual prizes of 2,755 Patch Plants vouchers, but the website was regularly down for maintenance and closed early.
• McVities ran some super promotions in partnership with Britain’s Got Talent this year, and I loved the life size cardboard Mini they put into ASDA stores to promote their car competition!
• Nivea’s Mothers Day purchase-necessary promotions had thousands of bouquets to be won.
• Vimto ran a fun treasure hunt, sharing location clues for their £1,000 winning bottles on Instagram stories so fans could find them in the shops.
• EE ran a fun TikTok challenge to recreate Glastonbury Festival at home, with 5 prizes of Glasto tickets (I was a lucky winner!)

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…and the WORST competition of 2022?

It’s two for the price of one this year, as Lidl ran the Stamp Card Draw promotion in both January and October 2022. It wasn’t easy to enter – make four separate transactions at Lidl for £10 or more, scanning your Lidl Plus app each time, and then submit your completed digital ‘stamp card’ to enter the draw. The Stamp Card Draw promised thousands of prizes: 5,400 in the first promo and 5,320 in the second promo. However, Lidl couldn’t produce a complete winners list, and across various comping forums we only heard of three winners (I’ve even tweeted to see if we can track down any more!). Usually in a promotion that requires multiple purchases and entry via a mobile app, with prizes restricted to one per person, we would expect a decent percentage of the winners to be compers, so something definitely doesn’t seem right. It’s safe to say that most SuperLucky readers will be avoiding future Lidl promotions!

But which other comps got a thumbs down?

• Trek Win 185 Fitbits is almost exactly the same as last year’s misleading instant win promotion, so we can expect hardly any prizes to be awarded.
• 7Up‘s Win Uber Eats vouchers had lots of winners, but wasn’t popular because “the process of using the prize voucher was so frustrating”.
• And although Ribena‘s Hasbro Games promotion had a huge number of prizes, it was “handled badly” and “they decided to change the T’s and C’s part way through.”

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And that’s it for my list of 2022’s best and worst prize promotions! Leave a comment to let me know which were your top comps this year – did you win a prize in any of the ones I’ve mentioned here?