Eight O'Clock Coffee Awards $10,000 Prize

Eight O’Clock Coffee Awards $10,000 Prize

Eight O’Clock Coffee announced the winner of their $10,000 Discover the Difference contest on August 26, 2009. The contest, sponsored by Eight O’Clock Coffee, challenged coffee drinkers to upload photos and 100 word essays explaining the difference that $10,000 would make in their lives.

Eight O’Clock Coffee, originally the old A&P brand of coffee, has made a national resurgence in the past few years, and is making excellent use of today’s social networking and Web 2.0 partnerships to leap-frog ahead of the competition. In addition to the Discover the Difference contest, Eight O’Clock has also instituted Accumul8 Rewards, a loyalty/rewards program for Eight O’Clock coffee drinkers, and some interesting and fun tie-ins with movie and television releases.

Among other interesting hook-ups, the coffee company recently tied in with the series premiere of the television show Mad Men, by sponsoring “Madmen Yourself”, a fun web site at www.madmenyourself.com, with an app that allows visitors to create and download Mad Men style avatars for use in places like Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo IM and other applications that allow user avatars or icons. It’s only one of the interesting toys that Eight O’Clock Coffee has made available for those who love that special time of morning.

For instance, throughout the Discover the Difference contest, every visitor to the contest web site at www.discoverthedifference.com had a chance to Spin to Win prizes ranging from a free bag of Eight O’Clock Coffee to $1,000 to a full year of Eight O’Clock Coffee. On Twitter, @8OclockCoffee keeps up a lively stream of patter and interesting coffee info throughout the week – without being annoying. In between the announcements of contest starts, @8OclockCoffee might spend an afternoon sending out “virtual cups of coffee” to Twitter users from friends the previous day, or Tweet blog posts that mention their coffee – or that don’t. The Twitter account also regularly tweets several “Gr8 Taste” Tweets a day – some as simple as “GR8 Taste – Chocolate chip cookies with vanilla ice cream”. Others might link to recipes or to web sites that feature recipes and menus.

The Discover the Difference contest is the largest of the publicity efforts launched by Eight O’Clock Coffee so far this year. The contest featured a web site where users could upload a favorite photo and submit it along with a 100 word essay explaining what they would do with $10,000 if they won it. The judges of the contest chose the top entries from among the hundreds received, and then put them out for a public vote.

The eventual winner of the Discover the Difference $10,000 was Ebony Thomas who, like many of the finalists, had a selfless wish for her $10,000. Her dream – to support her sister’s dream of opening a commercial bakery. The $10,000 Discover the Difference prize, she said, would allow her sister to buy the commercial oven that she needs to make her dream come true.