APMA chairman admits tech-based competitions face hacking problem after Jeep issues
The fallout from Jeep’s ‘World’s most Remote Dealership’ is continuing with the chairman of the Australasian Promotional Marketing Association (APMA) warning the brand will be damaged by the chaotic handling of the competition.
David Lo sympathised with Jeep and its agencies Cummins & Partners and Wonder, who created the competition, insisting they “did not set out to frustrate people”, but admitted the increasing reliance on technology to run competitions was creating dangers for the industry.
His comments came as unconfirmed reports emerged of angry scenes erupting in dealerships, with sales staff threatening to call the police in one incident before ejecting one disgruntled member of the public.
Lo said: “I preface this all from every agency’s perspective by saying ‘there but for the grace of God’. Jeep, Cummins and Wonder here have been victims of their own success. They did not set up this competition to frustrate people.
“Nothing is perfect, we live in an imperfect world and there will always be problems. In this instance the client has not been ripped off and no-one suffered any degree of loss other than frustration which is unfortunate.
“Jeep could look at it and say we appear to have a bug here, we’re not going to award any prizes and we will run it again when we fix the bug. The real damage here is to the brand and reputation, which is unfortunate.”
He said websites have been created where people are “sharing flaws in terms and conditions around competitions and how people can defraud the system”.
“There are people who make their livings from competitions and are making tens of thousands of dollars every year doing so,” he said.
“We ran a competition before Christmas giving away a piece of hardware, and we prepared ourselves to be attacked by hackers, but what we got was on a completely different level. It was like something out of a movie.
“More and more we need to be careful, it’s getting more complicated the more technology there is involved, it makes it more vulnerable.
“We have caught people red handed cheating, but the clients have been reluctant to do anything about it, and then we have caught people again three months later pulling the same tricks.”
One commenter on Mumbrella’s story yesterday, purporting to be a Jeep salesman, said they had had to escort one man from the premises who was angrily protesting about the competition, while other dealerships spoken to by Mumbrella said they had received phone calls about the campaign, which dealers were not directly involved in organising.
The ACCC said it is aware of consumer concerns relating to the Jeep ‘Remote Dealership’ promotion.
The watchdog said Australian Consumer Law prohibits businesses from making false, misleading or deceptive representations and concerns may arise where consumers are misled into error from representations used as part of the promotion of products or services.
It added that whether the activities of a business raise concerns under these provisions depends on the circumstances of each case.
In making any assessment as to what action it would take, the ACCC would have regard to the elements set out in its Compliance and Enforcement Policy.
Jeep Australia said it was currently working on responses to issues posed by customers, and declined to answer questions at the time of publication.
Alex Hayes and Steve Jones
Sure they did not set out to frustrate but if something is a S*#T idea from the start and badly executed whose fault is that?
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CLIENT: Fiat Chrysler Group
Chief Executive Officer – Veronica Johns
Director of Marketing– Mark McCraith
Senior Advertising Manager– Ashlin Moore
AGENCY: cummins&partners
Executive Creative Director– Jim Ingram
Executive Creative Director– Ben Couzens
Copywriter– Chris Ellis
Art Director– Aaron Lipson
Agency Producer – Jess Thompson
Group Account Director– Magdalina Triantafyllidis
Account Director– Rosie Bean
TV Production – Nice Bike
Media Agency – Maxus
Digital Agency – Digital Dialogue
Activation Agency – Wonder
I’m not sure Wonder should be copping the brunt of this. They probably only built the remotely-located dealership. This was a job under the purview of Cummins and Partners. They were more than prepared to take most of the credit when this thing was launched. They should have taken their brand custodianship a bit more seriously. According to these credits posted on the Mumbrella launch story, Digital Dialogue would appear to be the makers of the app.
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Prize pigs are not a new phenomenon, they’ve been around as long as the concept of competitions.
The prize pig problem has nothing to do with the increasing reliance on technology. Back in the day I remember receiving huge percentages of snail mail entries from a small pool of people who used different names but curiously had the same handwriting and lived in the same suburbs.
Also I didn’t know about or participate in this Jeep campaign, but from the Mumbrella stories I’ve read it certainly doesn’t sound to me like this competition was “hacked”.
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Talk about insider trading !!!!! How come we all didn’t get the number to ring before the draw ???? The very poor attempt to confuse those with prior knowledge was absolutely pathetic, why not just change the phone number ??? Your integrity is stuffed !!!!
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Talk about insider trading !!!!! How come we all didn’t get the number to ring before the draw ???? The very poor attempt to confuse those with prior knowledge was absolutely pathetic, why not just change the phone number ??? Your integrity is absolutely stuffed !!!!
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I didn’t receive the phone number on the app either very disappointing jeep
I can understand the frustration across social media even though the odds of winning were low, leaked phone numbers, no number showing on the app denied what seems to be the vast majority of participants a fair go
Imagine if lotto didn’t show the last number to everyone or leaked the winning number ????
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We all understood that it was a promotion and that we wanted to be in it to at least TRY and win the opportunity to buy a Jeep for $10K. Like Peter Cowan, they should have changed the phone number prior to 9.00am start time. If they were unable to change the number, UNDER THE TERMS AND CONDITIONS (21) they had the right to cancel, terminate, modify or SUSPEND the promotion. Even though T&C’s 21 there was UNAUTHORISED INTERVENTION to say the least. If not TECHNICAL FAILURE and POSSIBLE FRAUD they should have suspended the promotion and advise that it would be set for a new date due to TECHNICAL FAILURE as some people were aware of the number prior to the commencement time.(We would have respected that decision) AND the PROMOTERS ETC were aware of that and didn’t bother to change the number to give everyone a more fair chance. THAT IS UNBELIEVABLE (And gave those people *Insider Trading* who were aware of the number a MASSIVE advantage) So most likely ALL the winners knew the number prior to even the closing time to register,
SO they the WINNERS WOULD HAVE KNOWN THAT THIS WAS AN UNAUTHORISED INTERVENTION OR FRAUDULENT – TO HAVE KNOWN THE PHONE NUMBER. If this is true then they should be able to prove at what time did EACH AND EVERY WINNER’s call was received and IF THEY HAD TRIED EVEN ONCE BEFORE 9am that they did not like every other person have to wait for the app to give then the location and phone number! They are rewarding possibly 10 CHEATERS!
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All set to have a go for it. Got the dealership address, then got the distance and direction from our place. Then didn’t get the phone number!! The app said we would get the phone number, but we didn’t. If it looks like a scam and sounds like a scam….I reckon we’ve been scammed.
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Maybe the screw up was intentional to get more media hits on the brand?
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Great idea, poorly executed due to hacking. I sympathise with Jeep, their staff and agencies – all of them. Jeep’s marketing over the last 3 years has been outstanding. Their sales results have been outstanding. More than any other auto -marketer they seem to understand the value of media. I hope Jeep finds a way out of this ‘mess’, because this industry needs more marketers with their drive and vision.
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Haha, the compers are even commenting and venting on here…
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