Nescafe Hungary’s Facebook page has been filled with complaints following a competition entry, which received over 40 thousand ‘likes’ on Facebook being banned.
The entry for the competition, which asked people to send an idea for a project, was created by someone who wanted to use the prize money to help his 11 year old disabled brother.
Entries needed at least 20 ‘likes’ on Facebook to be considered, before being put to a team of judges.
The entrant had posted 9gag, a humour based publishing community, asking for 3,000 likes. He received over 46,000, but then posted saying that he has been banned from the competition.
Readers began posting about the disqualification, before turning to Facebook and Twitter to further highlight their feelings.
Nescafe posted on its Facebook page: “Dear All,
“Regarding the rules: in the first round of the game you had to upload your project and satisfy the minimum requirements - meaning collecting 20 likes in order to be short listed. (So in the first round, not the high number of likes was the basis of the decision!) Then the jury subjectively assessed them and chose 30 to go to the second round. In the second round there will be five winner...s, out of them three will be chosen by the jury and two of them are those who collected the most likes. Refers to the rules of the game, not the ones who collected the most likes get the chance to be shortlisted. Those who were not selected to the shortlist are not banned, but only 30 them were selected for the second round (at the basis of the decision was not the high number of the likes, but a subjective assessment of the jury.).”
One of the 1,464 comments in response to this was: “Come on Nescafe, you really did mishandled this. Maybe you didn't expect that an entry would gather an army of 47k votes. When you realized it, perhaps you thought that that entry wasn't as good as some others, so you decided not to select it as a finalist. By your rules, that's totally fine, since the 30 finalists are chosen subjectively by your jury.
“BUT, why did you have to delete his entry as if it never happened? That's just insulting. That dude brought you 47k potential/existing customers. This guy brought visibility to your company to Forty-seven-effing-thousand people. The least you could've done is thank him even though his entry wasn't selected, or even give him a consolation price for his hard work gathering all these people. Everyone would've been happy, and you would have maintained your image.”
Nescafe has now attempted to clarify its decision with a statement.
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They didn't mentioned 9gag anywhere..
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You are wrong, 9gag.com isn't his blog, actually 9gag.com isn't a blog, is a web page, a community and we helped he ;)
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I was proud to be a part of this. Corporations are used to doing what they like. 9gag effectively held nescafe to ransom, and punished it for being unfair. The consolation options they offered aren't that great, but at least it's something. Onward, 9gag army!
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Y U NO referrer 9gag.com ?
Brace yourself the 9gag army is coming!
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9GAG UNITE!
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Dear Drum Editors,
A really good article on this incident about a PR catastrophe by Nescafe. However, I think you are going to make quite a huge journalist blunder by just saying 9GAG to be an ordinary blog. This is a website that can unite 40k+ people for a simple cause as helping a disable kid. This is a site that has brought millions of views to those every so popular viral videos made by your ad agencies. This is a site that has an unbelievable social power. Calling them just another blog, or even worse, as someone elses blog may just spark something amongst the 9gag army, and seriously - this is something The Drum should not be looking forward to.
Just a friendly note :)
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Brace yourselves... The 9Gag rage is coming...
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I understand that you are incapable of getting informed while you write an article for the online media, however, stop referring to as his blog since 9gag is a website/community/group!
www.9gag.com http://www.facebook.com/9gags
I don't think your website wants the same "publicity" as Nescafe.
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Hello everyone, I'm from Nestlé and wanted to share with you all some more information as well as clarification about the voting and judging process for the Nescafé 3in1 Effect. We have looked into this carefully and can confirm that the rules of the competition were followed fairly and we have been in direct contact with János Szolnoki and have been able to reassure him that no guidelines were broken. For those who want to understand a little more about what happened, here is the detail. We at Nescafé created this competition with the aim of financially supporting project ideas and were delighted to receive 637 applications. All entries were considered by a judging panel and a shortlist of 30 project ideas were selected – these included an ambulance for children and a shelter programme for homeless people. The judging was based on a broad range of criteria, not only based on the number of ’likes’ received (a minimum of only 20 likes was required). No personal circumstances had any bearing on the judges’ final decision. We are looking forward to the rest of the competition and helping the winning entry achieve its goal with a donation of 5 million HUF.
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Apologies all you 9Gag-ers. We have now corrected the story.
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@thedrum Very decent of you. Thank you.
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Using Likes as a competition entry mechanic is against Facebook rules anyway. Nestle seem to love a social media blunder.
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This is why The Face Book will never work. They really should have sent out a direct mail piece, maybe something with a nice spot UV for stand out?
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