Elle Magazine Presents a Contest Scam
Elle Magazine sent readers to its website, elle.com to participate in a writing contest. Describe a particular outfit you wore during some singularly momentous occasion, whether good or bad, and you might win not only a cash prize, but a trip to New York City to see your story, along with others, performed on one night in the off-Broadway play, Love, Loss and What I Wore, by Nora and Delia Ephron. Winners to be announced by December 1st, 2009. (This section of the website hosts a large print advertisement of the play.)
December 1st and with some digging on the site, states the winners will be announced December 7, 2009.
Today is January 12, 2010 and the ad remains on the site, no winners announced.
This is not a sour grapes yelp. This is merely an exposition of a tacky advertising scheme. Many people write from their soul and the topic of this contest certainly would seem to yield that sort of response. It did for me. (Rosie O’Donnell wrote about her stepmother wearing her deceased mother’s bathrobe and how this inadvertent act affected her – it was intense.) Just place an ad for the play on the website, don’t take advantage of writers and their efforts. It’s hard work to write, harder yet to market thoughts that trickle from the heart to the fingertips and on to the page.
Shame on Elle Magaziine, shame on the Ephrons, so famous yet so lacking in scruples.
I am confident this is a play without heart, nor soul.
Christine Scioli owns Zan Media, a film and video production company, http://www.zanmedia.com with her husband and daughter.