Win A Wildcat - Round Two

Novel sales strategy continues for Al Melling’s bespoke two-seater

By Chris Rosamond / Wednesday, 15 April 2009 / Loading comments

Melling Sports Cars has opened entries for the second round of its unique ‘win a Wildcat’ competition via its website today.

Wildcat competition starts again

The company will shortly begin emailing people who pre-registered their interest online, but the new competition is open to all-comers whether pre-registered or not.

Entry again costs £20, but this time the ‘test of skill’ required by the British legal system is tougher – you’ve got to say how many individual components there are in a Melling Wildcat. Unlike the answer to the previous competition question, the answer isn’t to be found on the company website, we’re told. And no, we don’t know the answer, although if we did we might not tell you…

According to the company the last prize draw was a runaway success, although there has been some consternation on the PH forums among unsuccessful entrants. In the light of some of that feedback we thought it worthwhile raising some of the questions posed, and this is what we learned.

Round one of the competition sold out in just four days, causing Melling to bring forward the draw date - and the subsequent announcement of the prize winner - leading some PH entrants to wonder whether they had been included at all. In fact, only 2000 tickets were sold for that first round, so if you bought one your name was indeed ‘in the hat’.

TV footage of the first draw also drew flak, as the winner was one of only a few people in the room when his name was pulled out of the hat. This was not a bizarre co-incidence, but a stunt pulled to maximise publicity for the benefit of the cameras, says a Melling company source. ‘The TV crews wanted to witness a draw even though we’d already done it with our lawyers, so we invited the unsuspecting winner to a day at the factory and packed out the room with friends and family to give the desired effect.’

And in case any conspiracy theorists are wondering why the first winner hailed from Lancashire, just a few miles from Melling’s Rochdale factory – the answer is simply that a local media frenzy meant 50 percent of tickets were sold to people in the North West.