“Good morning.”

“Good morning, Bill.”

“Your task this week is to generate sales leads for the Renault Dealer network using the Internet. The winning team will be the one that generates the biggest number of leads. Good luck with the task.”

That could very well be a task that Bill Cullen might set for the new batch of candidates in this year’s Apprentice. As far as I know, it’s not an actual task, but it could very well be if the current competition being run by Renault is anything to go by.

Having seen it tweeted a couple of times, I shuffled on over to the site to enter the draw for one of 50 free car services.

A couple of things struck me about the page. First and foremost was the fact there were no terms and conditions governing the competition. This is (as far as I’m concerned) a basic minimum for any large company running a competition.

• I’d like to know such things as
• What location can I get my car serviced if I won
• What does a “service” actually mean. Is it a mini service, full service, parts excluded.
• Has the service to be completed before a certain date
• Can a service be pre-booked or is it limited to certain days of the week.
• When is the closing date for the competition

The second thing that struck me was the little tick box next to the submit button saying “Keep me updated with Renault News & Special Offers”. That’s fair enough on a competition website. Having it ticked already just screams “spammer” to me.

Not suggesting Renault Ireland WOULD spam people but I much prefer to tick the box myself to “opt in” to receive marketing material. This was the general consensus from others when I asked the question on Twitter recently. “Sneaky” was a word used to describe the practice. Web designer Irishstu made a very good point that by not having an opt-in, a company leaves itself open to spam accusations if people click submit and don’t realise the tick box was checked.

I tweeted Renault Ireland 3 times to ask about the terms and conditions and received no reply, which prompted me to write this blog post.

Whoever is running the competition for Renault needs a few basic lessons in operating a Twitter account and running a competition. If this were an Apprentice task & they were back in the boardroom with Bill Cullen, I definitely think they failed and should hear the words “You’re fired.”