Designing and building social media infrastructure for brand campaigns demands serious engineering. Very few people realize the quantum of investments, desirable time-lines for delivery and depth of technology expertise needed for the same. Specially when brands tread into the "contest" territory and there are prizes to be won, one needs to be extremely careful and vigilant about the processes, audit mechanisms and regulations. Else, such campaigns soon degenerate into a farce and consumers abandon their enthusiastic participation with a negative perception of the sponsoring product, service or brand.

I received an email from Dr. Gaurav Chhabra, today. Gaurav was participating in an international contest run by ExchangesConnect in the USA, and he brought this to my attention. Apparently the organizers of the contest have been unable to deal with technical challenges at their end, that led to "false voting". To resolve the issue, they backed off on fulfilling the promise made to deserving winning participants; Dr. Chhabra was a winner with his video "The mudcake" in Week #1.

In full disclosure, I have met Dr. Chhabra as a contestant in a campaign run by EC, on behalf of Mitsubishi, which met with a modest success in 2009. Titled the great driving challenge (TGDC), this campaign brought together thousands of amazing couples across India who all shared a common passion for driving and long trips on the road. Gaurav was one of the finalists and he was competing to raise money for donation to Mudcake

Gaurav has been a fan of Experience Commerce ever since, and has always been extremely appreciative about our efforts to run the campaign and contest in a transparent manner. His email today reminded me of similar issues we faced while running TGDC. For those of you who are interested, please read some of our posts here, here and here, which will give you a fair idea of how we pulled up fraudsters, and managed community issue during those turbulent days, as the campaign peaked.

For those of you who are yet to see the amazing mudcake video, I urge you to take a break and watch the movie here.


and finally here is the full transcript of the email exchange, Gaurav forwarded to my attention.
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Dear ExchangesConnect Community:

Earlier this week, we posted a message about recent attempts within the community to manipulate votes for specific videos through the use of fake or duplicate member accounts. When we planned the video contest, we took time to carefully create a sophisticated voting system that would be fair for all contest entrants. We hoped this system would be difficult for individuals to manipulate, but no online voting system is perfect. Therefore, we designed methods to identify fraudulent behavior and prevent it from having a significant impact.

Unfortunately, the recent fraudulent voting activity is so pervasive that it compromises fairness in voting and determination of legitimate votes for the weekly Flip Video Voting Challenge. Therefore, we have regrettably made the difficult decision to no longer award a free Flip Video camcorder to the entrant with the most votes each week. We feel this is the only option that is fair to all contest participants, especially those who have not manipulated voting to increase their number of votes.

The ExchangesConnect community was created to promote mutual understanding and encourage cross-cultural sharing and cooperation. We strive to create an online environment where all members can share their opinions and views of the world respectfully and on equal terms. In the spirit of this goal, we encourage you to continue rating and commenting on all the videos over the next two-week voting period. These comments will be taken into careful consideration by our judges as they evaluate each contest entry. Due to the vote manipulation, the number of votes and rating for each video will not be the deciding factor in determining the Top 40 finalists for the grand prizes, though they will still be taken into consideration. We also reserve the right to disqualify the video entry of any individual member found to be tampering with the voting process or operation of the Contest, or to be acting in an unsportsmanlike or disruptive manner. Please be sure to read the full contest rules.

Sincerely,
The ExchangesConnect Team

{ The reply from Dr. Gaurav Chhabra follows.. }

Well! I don't know how your Justice system works ! In our country No innocent is ever punished by the law...even if the culprit finds an escape out of such system. I think that is the true spirit !
Of course I have no regrets for not getting the Flip Cam which I won... in the first week, but i do have regrets for the fact that I promised some Amateur film makers that I will keep the camera for their usage . And and on that front, they feel cheated and me too.

Having participated in best of India's Online contests, the technology exists to find out any possible fraudulent voting. You haven't been possible to do so either due to lack of planning or lack of enough knowledge to hold such a contest. With due respect to the spirit behind your Contest , I would like to withdraw my film 'The Mudcake' from your contest, due to the very fact that your contest needs to grow up a bit to invite genuine films and filmmakers.No offenses meant to anyone. Needless to say, its not just about a 100 $ camera , its about ethics and management of the contest.

Peace n joy,

Dr Gaurav Chhabra
Director - The Mudcake( 1st week winner )
India

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In closure, like to offer my 2 cents for brands and agencies all gungho to get on-board the social media band wagon.

IF YOU CAN'T HACK IT, DON'T TOUCH IT.