When Nissan Canada decided to give away 50 new Nissan Cubes their advertising agency Capital C thought it would be cool to have a “social media” contest and use snowboarder Leanne Pelosi as one of their three English language judges.
Contestents were to use social media to show of their “creative skills” and then a panel of judges would select 50 winners who would drive away in a brand new car. After the winners of the cars were announced on June 23, 2009 a website EncyclopediaDramatica noticed that of all the entries across Canada, three of Leanne’s friends happened to win new cars, according to a story in Marketing Magazine.
Judge Leanne Pelosi in particular has connections to at least three winners, one of whom, Jeff Keenan, was alleged by Encyclopedia Dramatica to be her boyfriend. . . While Nissan claims the two do not even reside in the same province, there is a significant, easily verifiable connection between judge and contestant. Pelosi once headed up snowboard video production company Runway Films, which listed Keenan as its primary contact. Pelosi also appeared in snowboard videos directed by Keenan.
The other two winners who Leanne knows were Robin Van Gyn, and skier Anthony Bornonowski. Then again, Leanne knows a lot of really talented people. . .
[Link: Marketing Mag via Shredbetties]
gee .. lets make a contest based on social media sites and then be shocked when people have some sort of connection to each other … they should have seen this one coming miles well maybe kilometers away
Before we jump to conclusions, I’m curious to know how many people actually entered.. and additionally, was there a rule that you’re not allowed to know the judges? Not that I’m saying it’s cool to give preference to your friends if you’ve been asked to judge a contest, but do we know that they didn’t have genuinely good entries compared to the rest? I just think we need to have all the facts before we can call scandal..
check out the articles he links for some of that info… canadaian law says:
“The Competition Act does not govern how contests are conducted in terms of the selection of the judges and the relationships between judges and contestants,” says Timothy Rissesco, senior competition law officer at the Competition Bureau. “What it says is, the selection of participants and the awarding of prizes needs to be made on the basis of skill, or on a random basis.”
There were about 7000 entries and 500 finalists – so statistically, it seems a bit off for 3 of the winners to be people Leanne knows – but she’s a super popular party girl, so who knows.
Leanne, where’s MY car??
Sounds like she should get into politics.
Also BTW Pelosi wasnt the sole judge in the contest so even if all her picks were purely based on friends or business contacts the other judges must have at least agreed that said peoples entrees were award worthy. Im going to be honest and say im not familiar in any way with the contest or its workings but this sort of thing just kinda seems to be a disaster in the making. Facebook and Twitter are all about contacting people you know. Having a contest that revolves around those sites and then being surprised that some entrants and some judges have some sort of connection is pretty naive.
Why are people making a big deal of this? so what if she had friends that entered the contest?? i would imagine that she was told to tell people to enter the contest, therefore of course her friends would enter! Like someone already wrote, there were other judges involved too, so they are picked the winners, it wasn’t just Leanne making all the decisions. i think people are just bored and like to cause drama and make a big deal out of nothing. the bottom line is that Nissan hypercube has good ambassadors to drive the cubes around, so mission accomplished.
Pelosi’s already a sponsor whore. What about this surprises anyone?
I’d be more surprised if they are still friends after she gave them that ugly little car…
Next time ……if your gonna hook me up with a nissan at least make it an X trail or something useful!!
sure, blame Canada!
ha!
Sounds pretty sketchy to me. Pelosi will do anything to come out on top.
Sounds sketchy…tis’ true Pelosi will do anything (almost) to get herself ahead.
Wow, no way, Leanne never ceases to amaze me to the depths she’ll go thinking no one will notice and as long as there is someone to deflect the blame too. ” Ohhhh I didn’t know I could give them to my friends” “Gosh that must be their fault for not being more explicit”. Whatever. Popularity is like a rope to a person in jail, you can either hang yourself with it or use it to climb over the wall and be free.
Hey Leanne, how’s it hangin’
Keenan – Boyfriend
Robyn – Runs her camp called MGT
Anthony – Best friends boyfriend.
Nahhhhh no connection.
Oh come on! I would hope my friends would get an opportunity like this and take a good advantage of it. You guys must just hate your selves, or your lives in order to be so pissed about the fact she helped her friends out.
Bummer for you..
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