On New Year’s Eve, one lucky contestant will take to the ice at Credit Union Centre in Saskatoon during the 2010 IIHF WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP for the once-in-a-lifetime chance to win $1 million and up to four new 2010 Chevrolet Equinox Crossovers.

The big event will air live nationally on December 31 during the first intermission of the World Juniors broadcast featuring Canada vs. USA.

The Chevrolet Equinox Million Dollar Shootout runs through December 6. Fans are invited to enter online at TSN.ca/Equinox.  Those who visit the site can also earn additional entries by playing the Chevrolet Equinox Shootout Game for up to 40 bonus entries per day or referring friends to the contest.

On December 10, one randomly chosen eligible entrant will be selected to participate in the Chevrolet Equinox Million Dollar Shootout and will receive a trip to Saskatoon for him/herself and five friends.  On December 31, the participant and two friends will head to centre ice during the first intermission, where they will each have 15 seconds to shoot 10 pucks at an open net (30 pucks in total).

Depending on the amount of total goals scored as a group, prizes will be awarded as follows:

- 5-9 goals – participant wins a new Chevrolet Equinox Crossover
- 10-14 goals – participant and both friends win a new Chevrolet Equinox Crossover
- 15 goals or more – participant, both friends and one randomly chosen IIHF WORLD JUNIOR CHAMPIONSHIP tournament attendee all win a new Chevrolet Equinox Crossover, for a total of four vehicles given away

Immediately following the group shots at centre ice, the participant will move back to the far blue line where he/she will have 24 seconds to shoot 20 pucks into an open net.  If the participant scores 15 or more goals within the allotted time, he/she is eligible to win $1 million in a one-time payout.  All winners are subject to confirmation of contest eligibility.

In 2008, 35-year old Darwin Head of Prince Albert, SK, became an overnight sensation when he won it all during the Chevrolet Malibu Million Dollar Shootout, netting four Chevrolet Malibus and $1 million live on TSN.

To enter, drop by a participating Esso retailer, look for the displays and enter with your Smartphone online along with a product UPC.  The site is built to accept mobile users with iPhone and Blackberry’s.

The barriers for owning a smart phone are continuously being lowered as more and more new models are coming on stream and consumer are snapping them up. Now if we could only get data plans in the country to change. Nonetheless, I think that we are on the verge of a truly distributed web. The net result I believe, is that the role and function of web sites has not necessarily diminished but rather the role and function of sites must change. Moving forward, I believe we have to think of web sites as now being value driven and where possible they should leverage smart phone applications.

The Snickers Contest is a basic first step into mobile for Snickers and if nothing else it will provide some key learning as we track user participation with the site. Hopefully, we can take some of the key learing and expand the mobile usage with more specific value driven propositions to build brand connections at point of purchase.

Here’s a contest that will sweep curling enthusiasts off their brooms. A curling getaway to Edmonton to cheer on Team Martin who are sponsored by Uncle Ben’s. The contest is open to residents of Western Canada and the Grand Prize includes a trip for two to Edmonton, December 11-13 2009 including return airfare and hotel at the Westin Edmonton, and two event passes for the Women’s and Men’s Semi-Final and the Women’s and Men’s Curling Final.

With this in mind I came across an exciting promotion for Red Bull . Red Bull is thanking its Facebook fans for pushing the brand past the 1 million followers mark by hiding free packages of Red Bull Energy Shots across the U.S. and offering them up in a nationwide scavenger hunt. The result appears to be more fans: Red Bull’s fan page currently has 1.4 million followers, and it’s gaining daily at a steady clip of at least a few thousand new fans a day.

Facebook users can enter their respective zip codes into the Red Bull Stash application on the Red Bull fan page to find clues to the nearest locations of the hidden freebies. Codes on the free packages can be entered into the application to let other scavengers know that those particular stashes have been claimed.

There’s also a section for the lucky discoverers to add pictures of their prizes, and quite a few fans have already laid claim to many of the free packages. One super fan seems to have made it a personal mission to collect as many stashes as possible.

A graphic in the application claims that only about 20% of the free packages have been stashed, so there’s still plenty of Red Bull waiting out there somewhere. This approach to dispersing free goods is certainly different from some of the other promotions we’ve seen recently, but it seems like a great interactive slant that should get people involved.

comScore: 95.5 million US uniques, up 8.9% month of month, up 31% year over year.

comScore is reporting a big jump in Facebook’s US traffic this month – nearly 9 percent to 95.5 million people. comScore also reports that Facebook is reaching 60% of the total US social network audience of 156.7 million people right now.

Nielsen issued a report today on the top U.S. web brands and Internet usage in the U.S. No surprise, Google is the #1 web brand based on unique audience.

A bit of a surprise was that in September 2009, the average U.S. Internet user spent an estimated 68 hours online (both at home and at work).

In addition to spending an average of 68 hours online, the average user visits nearly 2700 websites and averages 57 seconds per site.

For the larger web brands, users spend an average of 1 hour 53 minutes a month on Google, 3 hours 8 minutes on Yahoo and 5 hours 24 minutes on Facebook. The usage study compliments another Nielsen report issued yesterday that reported a 25% increase in online video viewing year-over-year.

How much time do you spend online each month? Is there any other medium that gets more of your attention than the Internet (music, television, etc.)?

Any comments on the new Promodem Web Site?

Let us know! Thanks.

Enter on-line for a chance to win 12 Monthly Prizes each consisting of a Limited Edition Collector Series of all 10 Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games Visa Prepaid Cards issued by Citizens Bank of Canada. Enter your name, address, city, province, postal code, email address, daytime telephone number, date of birth, and the first four digits and last four digits of your Vancouver 2010 Olympic Winter Games Visa Prepaid Card issued by Citizens Bank of Canada.

So how are things with Facebook eight months later. According to Inside Facebook, the fastest-growing group of Facebook users in August 2009 were males ages 13 to 17, whose numbers increased by 14.5%, followed by men ages 45 to 54, rising 12.8%. Among women, the highest growth was in the 45 to 54 and 55 to 65 age ranges, which were up 11.8% and 11%, respectively.

The largest block of Facebook users is still ages 18 to 25, followed by 26-to-34-year-olds and taken together, those groups made up 51% of the user population.

Facebook users have also become more female with Inside Facebook reporting that 57% of all Facebook users, or about 45.4 million people, are women.

From what we have seen from a contest participation, females generally respond to contests more so than males. Combining a contest with Facebook Connect provides a great opportunity to effectively push your contest message virally. But more on how to use Facebook Connect for contests later.

The mechanism is pretty simple. You select your departure airport served by SAS, you spin the globe to find out your destination and then the system connects to your Facebook profile to randomly pick a friend you will travel with. But the game isn’t over yet: in order to actually win the tickets you have to write a short story on why you and friend should travel together.

Using Facebook Connect gives viral marketing new face by playing with your friends for a chance to win something and as we have seen with successful online contests, using a game mechanism significantly increases contest participation by 2-3 times.

I’ll leave it up to you to toss some full frontals at the site to see what happens.