How to score an own goal in ice hockey - the Cardiff Devils 'Shirt Off His Back' prize "draw"

I went to see the Cardiff Devils play last night. They drubbed the Coventry Blaze 8-0. The new ice arena was a sell out. The crowd got behind the team all night and thoroughly enjoyed a well-played, good-spirited contest with only 4 players sin binned all game.

However, the talk on Twitter after a comprehensive eight goal shut out victory was all about something completely incidental to the game - the much-hyped 'Shirt Off His Back' promotion, which last night was giving away all 23 squad shirts. That's 23 chances to win, they said.

At the end of the game the winning numbers were displayed on the big screen.

Here's a close up. See if you spot anything.

How about some sequences?

Yes, that's right. The first five numbers were in sequence. Then there were another four winning tickets in sequence. Given that people tend to buy tickets in bulk (because there is a discount) it seemed very likely that one or two people were winning multiple shirts. There were some boos and I heard one guy shouting "Fix". As we left, there were people talking about the draw being dodgy.

I tweeted about my "scepticism" about the draw and soon discovered there were a lot of angry tweets from other fans about it. Words like "scam", "swindle", "cheats" and "fix" were being used. Rumours started that corporate sponsors had been guaranteed shirts, or that people connected with the club won, and that someone did indeed win five jerseys and had sold one online for £2,000 within a couple of hours. Regardless of whether the rumours were in any way true, in this environment of fake news, you could see people would be willing to believe them. The Devils official account meanwhile just retweeted happy tweets about the victory and said nothing in response to the angry comments.

This is a huge PR own goal. Reading the tweets, the people who are most annoyed about this are the really loyal fans. I admit I'm a part-timer. This was only the second game I've been to this season. But when people who have chosen to use the club's logo as their avatar or a hockey related picture to represent themselves are blisteringly critical of the club then the damage is really done.

To give you a flavour of the anger, here are some of the tweets I read last night (quoted anonymously):

“@cardiffdevils great game but utter shambles and scam for the SOHB draw...”

“Any chance of a refund? @cardiffdevils this is total garbage. Who shuffled this? Stevie wonder.”

“@cardiffdevils sohb rip off swindle! Loads in a line what draw is that! 9k potential numbers.. The great swindle”

“@cardiffdevils you should be utterly ashamed of your selves. SOHB was a fix. Total loss of respect for the club!”

Anger soon spilled over into suspicions and accusations:

“I'm no statistician but this many consecutive numbers isn't far off the first 5 lottery numbers being 1, 2, 3, 4, & 5.”

“the problem is they are more than a little fixed” 

“How much did some corporate sponsor have to pay @cardiffdevils today to guarantee 5 Jerseys in the Sohb draw? #randommyass #fix”

“and the guy who won 5 just sold the Kearney shirt for 2k”

Shirt Off His Back and the other draws the Devils operate are a way for the club to make some extra money. I don't know how important an income stream it is to them, but I hope they aren't relying on it, given the reactions of some fans:

“There will be a lot of people refusing to pay again, including us! I actually feel for whoever won 5, they've got to feel bad.”

“first time in months I bought thinking better odds!  It's a lot cheaper to buy a jersey than the ticket money I spent weekly”

“Think a statement needs to be made regarding that SOHB draw tonight @cardiffdevils you will lose a lot of buyers after that”

And for some people, it confirmed their feelings of mistrust about the draws and their decisions not to take part:

“I never buy SOHB and this is why. Not down to luck it's down the highest bidder. We are a money grabbing club now”

“And it seems I made the right decision a couple of months ago to stop buying SOHB (and 50/50) tickets.”

There were some suggestions about how the Devils could regain the trust of fans after this debacle.

“SOHB raffle would have been so good if each player had drawn their own number live on the ice at end of the game. #justsaying”

 “the draw should be on ice after chuck a puck no cheats then”

I will still go to the occasional game. It's a fun evening out and I enjoy watching ice hockey. But as quite a few other people have said, I am very unlikely to bother with these draws again. I have no problem with not winning draws that are drawn openly and fairly. But if it feels like there is no chance of winning, then I've got better things to waste my money on.

This isn't the worst PR disaster of all time and could quite easily be fixed. The club should acknowledge the anger and that the draw could have been done differently and better. There should be a commitment to greater openness and transparency for all future draws.

The bottom line is this is about reputation. Do the Devils want to be known as a club that organises a prize draw so incompetently it kills off its revenue streams by alienating its fans? The club needs to do something to rebuild trust with its supporters.

Analysing takeaway menus for marketing fails

I live in a terraced house and that makes it very easy for people to deliver leaflets. We get numerous flyers through the door every week, and, being interested in marketing communications, I usually look at them critically. I know that might seem harsh but I don't ask them to stick their material through my door. So that makes it fair game.

This takeaway menu came through the door recently. I think it makes a few mistakes.

One of the key lessons of proofreading anything is always check the headings and sub-headings. That's where I've come unstuck in the past. Ooh, "Satifaction". Right there in the tagline. From experience, I know I would feel physically sick if I'd missed that.

I hate it when I make that sort of lapse because I feel it makes me look unprofessional. But the typo isn't the worst thing about that phrase. In fact, I probably wouldn't have considered the phrase at all if it didn't have a typo, as it's essentially meaningless.

For a takeaway food outlet's slogan. I'm not sure what it's saying. It's trying to be all about the customer by saying 'your satifaction', but then it's also all about their business. First rule of marketing: WIIFM - what's in it for me? Well, what is in it for me? Why should I care about your future? Why is that going to make me choose your takeaway over the many others that post leaflets through my door? (So many others!)

WIIFM is rooted in neuroscience. We know that the sub-cortex is very me-centric. It's the place where our survival instincts are located, which is why it exerts such an influence over our decision-making. Which is why customer-centred marketing almost always works so well - it appeals to the non-conscious part of the brain that makes snap decisions. 'This is about me. This will be be good for me. I want this.' You don't even think those thoughts. The brain decides without consciously thinking about it. 'Your satisfaction is our future' doesn't appeal to that part of the brain at all. It's a nice, bland, generic promise of good service based on wanting to please you. But it doesn't appeal as much as say 'Hot food at your door when you want it' would.

Also, if we were going to be really hard on the producers of this leaflet, why does it say 'burgers' under a picture of a pizza and 'pizza' under a picture of a burger? That's just an added layer of confusion on top. Most people will know what those things are, so we could question whether they need labelling at all. But if you are going to label things then really they should be labelled correctly.

Mislabelling things like this introduces incongruity into the message that is being communicated. While this might be at a very basic level - probably below the conscious level - the decision-making part of the brain will pick up on it. Deep down humans don't like incongruity. It triggers that survival instinct again and so we subconsciously reject the things that don't fit as possibly dangerous.

Of course, food from a takeaway might be intrinsically dangerous, either in the short term with an upset tummy or in the long term with obesity problems. So, maybe this incongruity is doing us all a favour.