It's Really Only a Purple World

On Give-a-ways and Sponsors and Winners...

I don't know how many people who follow and read this blog have blogs themselves that also conduct give-a-ways as well as work with sponsors. Those of you who do will understand what I am saying and those of you who don't might get some insight into the whole process.

I recently completed a review on this blog of Yoplait Whips! and conducted a give-a-way of a Summer Cool Down Gift bag. This was won by a person named " Jacque" and I received this message vis email from her today:

"Hi!
A few days ago, I got the yoplait cool down gift bag. The bag is bigger then what I thought! There's lots of room in it. The kids love the pop molds and the spoons! Thanks again! Jacque"

This event was sponsored by MyBlogSpark.com in partnership with Yoplait and was done professionally and with no problems. When Jacque won she was sent a winning notice and responded to that notice with her information, which was then forwarded to MyBlogSpark.com. They handled the fulfillment end and everyone was happy: Yoplait gained some new fans, I increased my presence in the blogosphere,

Contrast that to this email from another blog that I actually won a fifty dollar gift certificate for the Kara Janx website( she was on Project Runway a while ago) which was handled in an unprofessional manner ( not the blog, but the sponsor, Kara Janx)

"Dear Kara Janx Winners on Styleforfree.com,

We received an email yesterday from a Kara Janx $50 gift certificate winner which expressed sincere displeasure with her actual physical "gift certificate" that ended up resembling more like a 50% off coupon.

We're writing to you today to express firsthand that no one could be more unhappy about how this giveaway was fulfilled by Kara Janx herself than those of us at Styleforfree.com.

Over the past 5+ years we've run hundreds of amazing giveaways on the site and have had the extreme privilege of awarding tens of thousands of dollars in prizes to great winners like yourself. A number of these giveaways have been of legitimate gift certificates and the sponsors issuing those gift certificates are fully aware that a gift certificate is that and not an opportunity to hand out a 20% or 50% off coupon.

Only at the end of the Kara Janx giveaway, not less than 4 "Rules of Redemption", making it impossible to actually receive a true prize, were articulated to ourselves and the winners. We found this to be incredibly disheartening especially given we'd promoted Kara's brand for free for a over a month on our site and elsewhere. We expressed our concerns to Kara as she had not stated such restrictions before or anytime during the actual promotion. Kara proceeded to explain that this was our fault, and in reality the part we quickly learned was our fault was that we didn't know enough to ask about such restrictions in advance because we've honestly never dealt with a situation like this before. We issuing gift certificates in such a manner could give Kara a bad name...she proceeded to go on and on about how her name was pristine (being that she dresses Julia Roberts and was on Project Runway and all). She then went so far as to send copies of our correspondence to her husband who proceeded to send Judy a lovely email from his company's workplace while she was on vacation calling her an "F*in Tool" (because she was fighting for your rights). I then talked to Kara personally and we thought the best solution was to send the winners physical gift certificates via snail mail. She agreed, went on about how she was going to make a beautiful presentation out of them, etc... and due to yesterday's email from a winner who's received hers, it's obvious that nothing could be further from the truth.

Both Judy and I want you to know we fought tooth and nail to try and make these prizes legitimate and worthwhile because the only people we care about are * you *. The economy has presented hard times for everyone, including ourselves. Though we'd really like to try & make up for this in any small way that we can by offering an exclusive giveaway only to Kara Janx winners.

Lastly, I'd like to note that while talking to Kara she expressed that if ~anyone~ had any issues at all they should feel free to phone her directly ~anytime~. The email address she checks is info@karajanx.com and her phone #'s are 917-520-6322 (w) and 646-246-3760 (c). We also warmly invite you to post your grievances about this giveaway in this section of our Forums: http://styleforfree.com/styletalk/viewforum.php?f=14 because the winner who wrote us yesterday is 150% correct...."The tackiness of this whole thing is kind of appalling, especially for a theoretically couture operation" and we honestly couldn't agree more.

Thanks so much for hearing us out and please rest assured we've learned a great deal and will make sure future gift certificate giveaways on Styleforfree.com do not go down like this ever again. Our #1 concern is you and you alone and we can't thank each of you enough for your support and understanding."

Does this post make more sense now?

Remember, dear readers, that when you enter a giveaway on a blog, the fulfillment of that giveaway is only as good as the sponsor the blogger is working with!

or

MyBlogSpark and Yoplait = Good

Kara Janx = Bad

Is anyone out there still interested in purchasing items from her website or clothing line?

Let me know what you think!