‘Win a boobjob’ competition backfires as public hijack it on behalf of breast cancer survivors

In order to ‘celebrate’ National Cleavage Day in South Africa (originally started by Wonderbra), night club chain Tiger Tiger is giving away a boobjob, worth R30,000 (about £1,700).

To enter the annual prize draw, people have to buy 2 Tiger shots between Thursday 13th March and Saturday the 29th March, when the winner will be announced. The Facebook event page for the giveaway helpfully says: ‘the more you drink the more entries you receive and the better your chance of winning’. Apparently, men can get involved too and nominate a lady of their choice if their name is drawn.

So far, so tacky.

However, the competition rules appear to have changed entirely, after a man named Kyle Brinkmann, whose stepmother had to had a double mastectomy, highlighted the ridiculousness of asking fathers to enter in order to win their daughters a boob job.

 

The initial misguided data capture effort detailed in the picture above have given way to the present ‘buy 2 shots’ entry requirement, potentially after Kyle posted the below on the event page:

 

His one-man campaign to donate the prize to a breast cancer survivor or transgender woman in need seems to have struck a chord, with 80 or so people adding their email addresses to the list of people supporting Kyle’s efforts, stating that they’ll donate the prize if their email address is drawn.

I’m unsure as to the terms and conditions or even the standards authority in South Africa, but in the UK, the ASA code says (here):

Before purchase or, if no purchase is required, before or at the time of entry or application, promoters must communicate all applicable significant conditions.

The fact Tiger Tiger appear to have changed the rules for entry would go against UK stipulations as it is clear their promotion had already begun – but that aside, the fact they appear to have been changed to something that nullifies Kyle’s campaign is incredibly shitty, especially since the opportunity for the chain to support the effort but still run the competition was there and would have likely been well received.

Here on PRexamples I prefer to focus on only the positive PR campaigns and although Tiger Tiger’s efforts fall within Bad PR territory (I used to write an ongoing ‘Good and Bad PR’ column here where you can see bad PR examples in spades), Kyle’s effort to turn it around is commendable. A similar competition to win $10,000 of cosmetic surgery by Zoo magazine in Australia was investigated in 2007.

Thanks to Captive Minds’ Jacques Viljoen for tweeting with this.

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