Compliance
Contest Laws by State
Before you run a promotion in the United States, you might want to check sweepstakes or contest laws by state. Some states have more vigorous laws regulating sweepstakes and contests and you can’t claim you didn’t know what you didn’t know after the fact – there may be big fines for non-compliance. Here is a sampling of states that have strict laws regarding promotions: Florida: In Florida you must register and bond any sweepstakes where a cumulative total of prizes is over $5,000 and the winners are determined by chance in a random drawing. This must be done at … Continue reading
Taming Your #Sweeps with an Approved Instagram Tracker
Once upon a time, Instagram had no need for an Instagram tracker to gather your promotion entries. People did whatever they wanted because there were no promotion guidelines. It was like the wild, wild west in promotion land: no rules applied. Brands did whatever they wanted. Hashtags were untamed and unfiltered, and people wildly tagged anyone and everyone in their posts for fun. Until the law came to town to clean Instagram up. #TheresANewSheriffInTown Instagram quietly formalized their promotion guidelines and their process for allowing you to search and gather posts by hashtag over the past few years. Here is … Continue reading
Can the Official Rules Be Changed After the Promotion Has Started?
Fae Savignano, EVP, wrote this post dealing with a questions we often get from our clients: Can the Official Rules be changed after the promotion has started? All promotions, such as contests, sweepstakes, instant win games, etc. must have an appropriate set of Official Rules that will govern the promotion. These “Official Rules” are referred to as the contract between the sponsor of the promotion and the entrant. And to further qualify this statement, as each entrant enters the promotion they are asked to accept the Official Rules and therefore agree to be bound by them. The rules will clearly … Continue reading
A Message to Our Clients About GDPR Compliance
UPDATED MAY 25, 2018 On May 25, 2018, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) went into effect. Although the regulation is coming out of the European Union (EU), it has implications worldwide. This regulation replaced the 1995 Data Protection Directive and is intended to protect individuals’ right to privacy. This regulation impacts your business if you collect, process, or store information regarding residents of the European Union – and this includes residents even if they are outside the EU. Marden-Kane’s core focus is the administration and management of sweepstakes, contests and instant win game promotions both domestically and internationally. We understand … Continue reading
Promotional Marketing Predictions for 2018
It’s time to see how we fared on our promotional marketing predictions for 2017, and to make our 2018 predictions. For 2017 here is what we predicted for promotional marketing: 1. Social sweepstakes and contests will become the primary method of entry over online web forms. Results: In 2017 we did almost the same number of social sweepstakes and contests as we did traditional web-based sweepstakes and contests. In 2016 we did less than a third the amount of social versus traditional. Social contests and sweepstakes are a cost effective, fast to market alternative that companies on a budget … Continue reading
Planning a PyeongChang 2018 Olympics Promotion? Check The Guidelines First.
Update: See our updated guidelines for the Tokyo Summer Olympics. The next Winter Olympic Games will be in PyeongChang, South Korea, from Friday, February 9, 2018 to Sunday, February 25, 2018. This may seem like a great reason to run a promotion, but you might want to think again. The U.S. Olympic Committee (USOC), in tandem with the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have already lined up sponsors of the games. If you are not a Worldwide Sponsor already, like Coca-Cola, Alibaba Group, Atos, Bridgestone, Dow, General Electric, Intel, Omega, Panasonic, Proctor & Gamble, Samsung, Toyota and VISA are, or a … Continue reading
What is Contest Indemnification?
What is contest indemnification and why do you need it? The dictionary definition of “indemnification” is defined as the noun for form of indemnify, and “indemnify” means that you compensate (someone) for harm or loss or secure (someone) against legal responsibility for their actions. In the contest world, indemnification can take two forms, prize indemnification and general contest indemnification. Prize indemnification is when you offer a large prize in your promotion, such as a million dollar cash prize, but the chances of someone actually winning it are very low because the bar is so high and the odds are … Continue reading
3 Tips for a Big Football Sweepstakes Score
Football season is back! Time for tailgating and weekend fun watching the pee-wee, high school, college and professional games. You might think that it would be a great time to promote your business by giving away game tickets or running a football sweepstakes. And it is! People love winning free tickets or team merchandise, especially autographed items or trips to big games. However, there are three questions to ask before you run that promotion. Will your promotion violate copyright or trademark laws? You can’t mention the Super Bowl or NFL properties covered by copyright protection as prizes or part … Continue reading
Sweepstakes Void in Florida and New York
One question we hear frequently: Why are so many sweepstakes void in Florida and New York? The answer is simple: some states require registration and bonding. Many companies either don’t want to deal with that requirement, don’t want to spend the extra money, or they have run out of time to file. We have written other posts about the registration requirements for Florida, New York and Rhode Island, as well as how to bond your promotion, but do all sweepstakes really need all that? Here is a simple checklist to see if your promotion needs to be registered: Does … Continue reading
Running a Swiss Contest: Swiss-US Privacy Shield Required
Marden-Kane, Inc. became listed with the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework on April 18, 2017, becoming the first promotional marketing company to meet Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield requirements after applications were opened on April 12, 2017. The Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework was designed by the U.S. Department of Commerce and the Swiss Administration to provide companies a way to comply with data protection requirements when transferring personal data from Switzerland to the United States. The Swiss Government announced the approval of the Swiss-U.S. Privacy Shield Framework in January of 2017. For more information you can go to the Swiss Federal Council or … Continue reading
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