From Dec 2006:

A Brand New Home for the Holidays

 - David Shaw

The “Priceless” ad campaign by Mastercard has grown into a national phenomenon and the latest addition to the campaign might just net you a brand new home with little to no effort involved. The Mastercard Home for the Holidays contest gives you the opportunity to sign up to win a $350,000 home or one of the many daily prizes also offered.

Mastercard has done an impressive job with its “Priceless” ads and adding a contest on top of it is a move by Mastercard designed to not only create interest in a new home but connect the feeling of the holidays with the feeling you might have about Mastercard. Whether or not that move eventually works, the end result is a contest you can enter five times each day for a chance to win a new home, not a bad prize.

While this contest ran last year, the program has expanded to a two-home giveaway this year. Last year, each Mastercard purchase entered a customer into a raffle for a new home. This year, that will again be the case but a second home will be given away to an “Instant Win” customer that participates in the online game.

There are various other prizes for the online game and in exchange for your email address and some information, you get the chance to win Best Buy gift cards and enter the raffle for the second new home. After signing up, you are taken to a game screen where you are asked to open three presents. If you match all three of the presents to each other, you win.

Obviously, the chances of winning are low and through each of my five daily chances to win, I never matched even two of the presents together. However, getting a chance to win Best Buy gifts for little more than an email address is not bad at all. If you do end up signing up, don’t forget to enter the home sweepstakes. There will be a link on the contest page to do so.

What Mastercard has done is take advantage of the communal nature of the internet in the hopes that word will spread about the free chances to win prizes at Best Buy, certainly a popular tech merchant for those spending most of their time on the Internet anyway. Of course, you should read the privacy notice and terms before participating, but keep in mind that you are giving up little information for the chance at a prize.

In addition, by giving each consumer the opportunity to play the online game five times each day, Mastercard is hoping to increase traffic to the web site that might result in interest into Mastercard services. By getting a consumer to the web site each day for their fresh five chances to win, they are accomplishing one of the toughest aspects of marketing, prompting action of a consumer.

Add into that the emotions most people have about the prospect of owning a new home and Mastercard has tied in a number of compelling aspects with its Home for the Holidays contest. While owning a new television or game system might be enticing for people, the prospect of owning a brand new home is well beyond that in terms of appeal and reach to a wide audience.

So, to get started, head to www.priceless.com and click on the Home for the Holidays Instant Win Game link to get started. You will be asked to sign up for an account on the site and doing so only takes a few minutes and some basic information about yourself. You will then be taken to the prize screen where you will attempt to match three presents together to win a Best Buy gift card.

Each time you play, you will be entered for a brand new home and on the prize screen, you will see another link to enter a home sweepstakes and you should pursue that also. This additional entry can be used once every day to give yourself an even better opportunity to walk away with a $350,000 home anywhere you want.

The best part is that you never have to buy anything and can play the instant win game five times each day in an effort to secure a Best Buy gift card and enter yourself into the home sweepstakes with each play. Your odds will go up substantially if you commit to all five entries each day so visiting often will only help your cause. Have fun and best of luck winning yourself a brand new Home for the Holidays.