"They Call it Contest Crack"
(National Post, December 2006)
By Liz Clayton
There are people who believe in luck, and people who believe in perseverance. And then there are the people who spend at least an hour a day entering every contest they can find. Those people believe in both.
Leagues of — it's fair to call them obsessed — contest junkies inhabit Toronto and its outskirts. They're trolling the aisles of the LCBO glassy-eyed, looking for entry slips, waiting for the next big win. They're at home — or at work — reloading contest Web pages over and over to increase their chances. And now and again, they visit one of the three local clubs to exchange tips and tales of woe with their fellow contestants.
Though individuals have been entering contests since before the dawn of the ping-pong-ball cage, it is only recently that people have organized formally around the cause of scoring as much free stuff as possible. In the GTA, much of its legitimacy comes from the hand of Carolyn Wilman, the self-dubbed" contest queen," a former marketing professional who has "contested" daily since a layoff five years ago, and runs the online resource contestqueen.com. In March, she self-published the how-to book You Can't Win if You Don't Enter.
Wilman hadn't considered extending her hobby into a real-world social setting until August, when she entered a contest through the Toronto Sun to win lunch with Bret "The Hitman" Harte. Runners-up won passes to the Molson Grand Prix and were required to wrestle each other - Wilman ended up wrestling a fellow contest junkie, and, while being handily defeated, had the epiphany that Toronto was ready for contest clubs.
Wilman, an Ajax wife and mother of one who wins between five and 10 contests a month, says the clubs attract a certain kind of person - those addicted to the thrill of getting something for nothing. "People like me want that feeling all the time. I guess that's why some people drink and some people smoke. Me, I enter. I call it 'contest crack.' To me, contests are a free form of gambling. I'm too cheap to go to a casino, but I still win stuff, and it doesn't cost me anything," she says.
Contestors enter for prizes small to large-in the past month alone Wilman has won an Almay makeup basket from Town Shoes, five sets of movie passes from various newspapers, 25 photo prints from McDonald's, an UNO prize pack from YTV, two tubes of mascara, and $12 at her bowling alley. Her largest win was an $11,000 trip for four people to New York City (a contest in which she entered her niece, who did not take her along.)
Bonnie Staring, an Etobicoke writer, finds community among people who "get it" at the T.O. Wanna Winners club (they pronounce it "Tijuana" — it sounds more exotic).
" You can't really talk to your husband too often about it or your friends and family. They start rolling their eyes and looking at the door," she says. "If you're not into it, people only want to know about the win."
The club's monthly meetings include food and friendship- and the occasional multimedia presentation on how to enhance entering skills.
Kim Patrick — who recently won three-day trip to Sweden to see Iron Maiden, though she is not really a fan — gave a presentation to the group on RoboForm, auto form-filling software that can speed up online entering.
Products like RoboForm are contentious in the contesting community, where many think they slant the playing field.
" Some people talk about same-sex marriage as being a crucial political subject — for us, it's the whole form-filling software thing," said Staring.
" There are some organizations that are set up to enter contests on your behalf," she adds, "but why would you do that? That's like paying somebody to go on your holiday for you."
Companies which sponsor contests have mixed feelings about the hardcore enterers whose livelihood thrives on their promotions.
" There are some people who are not fond of professional contestors, because they believe they taint the whole industry," says John Findlay of Launchfire, an interactive promotions company that helps companies hold contests as marketing tools.
" I believe if your contest platform is well designed, you can still get value out of professional contesters. The professional contester still buys products; they're still a consumer; they still have an income," said
Findlay.
Many companies see contests as an excellent way to get consumers to do their data entry for them, tracking the success of a particular promotion through customer response.
The Canadian contesting trend has taken enough hold that it's even spawned a new word. Though contest addicts in the United States call themselves" sweepers" — derived from "sweepstakes" - Wilman coined the spelling" contestor" and had it entered in Merriam-Webster's dictionary. (Though she
has yet to win a free copy of the dictionary itself.)
And though a belief in the ability to win — some call it positive thinking, others luck - is essential to fuelling the passion to enter, at the end of the day, it's dedication (Staring and her husband once ate 39 packages of hot dogs over three months in an effort to win a Volkswagen Beetle) that really gets contestors into the spirit of the chase. Many enter regularly to win things they don't even want.
" I'm an ex-ballot-box junkie," confessed Staring. "If I saw a ballot box, I'd fill out my name and just jam it in there. Until I won fishing lures. And it struck me that maybe I should actually read what the contest is for."
Though Wilman has also won items she has no use for — two tubs of deck sealant for a deck she does not have — she prefers to regift or share her winnings unlike others who may turn the items around on eBay for a profit.
And of Patrick, the RoboForm demonstrator who found herself flown to Sweden for an Iron Maiden concert in a plane piloted by Bruce Dickinson, the band's lead singer?
" I definitely did feel a little bad that, had somebody that was a huge fan won, it would have meant a lot more to them, because it was definitely a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But for me, it's also a once-in-a-lifetime experience to get a free trip to Europe. Somebody had to win." She considered ditching the concert and just enjoying her brief stay in Scandanavia — but the record company sent along a representative, and Patrick felt too guilty to shirk.
Though stories are told of people who've gotten away with such things (like a woman in the United States who won a Super Bowl trip and skipped the game), Staring believes the majority of people would play along.
" I think most people, out of guilt, would go," said Staring. "I don't think Canadians would do something like that."