This might be the most random collection of marketing bits I've seen stuffed together in one place.

I was in the 10th or 11th hour of my trip home from a rainy NYC last Friday evening when I came across this page in my magazine: "Win a cell phone every day in June!" Worth a look I thought. [And, thank you to the gentleman who gave me his seat in First Class so he could sit next to his three year old for seven hours, and I didn't have to do so]

I went to the site to sign up today. I was expecting a small icon or banner ad on the side of the page advertising the sweepstakes. Initially, there was. They wanted site visitors to register – no problem. All sweepstakes require this. They are buying the registration. I clicked through to the sweepstakes entry. There was little to no content from the site. There wasn't much of a promotion of the giveaway. They required participation in a poll – personal information – that had nothing to do with the brand or the product. The sweepstakes entry was otherwise surrounded by ads. The only content seemed to be those answering the poll. How random.

One must return to the site each day to click through the poll question, pages, etc. in order to enter. They'll send daily reminders, if you'd like.

If you're willing to walk through these steps each day, you can enter to win a free phone each day during the month of June.

Many missed opportunities – why not send reminders via SMS? Why not have content related to the products on the pages? Why just ads? Again, really random marketing. Then again, I did give them my info as I explored the experience. Might just be easier to sign up for a two-year contract. One should earn a free phone just by answering so many questions and providing so much personal information – our consumer surveys say young adults would go for it. Free cell phones top the list of give-away's they'd like in exchange for personal information.