Nescafé 3in1 Effekt Competition

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Overview

When Nescafé Hungary disqualified a submission for a Facebook contest in December 2011 for receiving too many likes, users retaliated on the company.

Background

The 3in1 Effekt contest was announced on Nescafe's official Facebook^[1] page in mid-December, 2011, looking for submissions to fund five projects or inventions to help make the world a better place.^[4] The contest A Hungarian man named Jonas Szolnoki created a video seeking help for his handicapped brother's school. He posted an image to 9gag asking users to help support his entry in the contest with Facebook likes, asking for 3000 instead of the required 20 likes to be considered in the contest. Users of the site banned together, bringing the video over 46,000 likes by December 15th.^[2] Szolnoki also created a Facebook page for the 9GAG Army^[3] to chronicle his journey through the contest.

Development

On December 15th, Nescafe chose the winners for the first round, but Szolnoki's video was not chosen. He claimed^[6] the video was banned from the competition without reason and encouraged 9gag users to retaliate against the company with trolling humor first in two separate posts that were both removed from 9gag's site and then via Facebook.^[7]

Nescafe responded to the backlash by stating^[5] that the projects were not chosen for their amount of likes, but by a jury who picked the projects based on preference.

Five days later, the story reached the front page of Hungarian news site Index.^[8]