Consumer Generated Media Contests Hit The Big Time

Big, as in the Super Bowl, that is. And it was about time, too.

Chevrolet has issued a challenge to full time students at any US college or university: design a storyboard and script for a 30-second spot about “the love affair between Americans and Chevrolet.” The submissions will be judged and the winning team will have their commercial produced by Chevrolet and it will air during Super Bowl XLI.

Frito-Lay has just launched a true CGM contest for Doritos. Users are to create and submit their own 30-second Doritos commercial via a Yahoo portal. Entries will be judged on specific criteria and five finalists selected, then “America will vote for its favorite.” All five finalists receive $10,000 USD, but the grand prize winner will win a priceless ego boost, as the that spot will be aired during Super Bowl XLI.

This is going to be interesting.

Updated RSS Feed

While we’ve been busy making some cool contests happen today, we’ve also updated our RSS feed, so please update your subscription.

The Establishment Catches On To SMS

Canada’s Globe and Mail ran this story in their Report On Business section. It’s an Associated Press piece on the ‘emergence’ SMS and its future as an advertising medium.

The article does a good job summarizing the benefits of SMS to marketers. Not surprisingly, mobile contests are front and centre:

“Contests and sweepstakes that require consumers to enter via text message are among the most popular campaigns so far, according to Marriott (Laura Marriot, executive director of the Mobile Marketing Association), citing McDonald’s, Burger King, Procter & Gamble Co., General Motors Corp. and CBS Corp. among the corporate giants that have used them.”

Watch out kids, SMS is finally catching on with the mainstream!

An Interesting Promotion With A Lamborghini Gallardo

William Ashley’s downtown Toronto location is using a Lamborghini Gallardo for a promotion in an interesting way. The Gallardo is placed very conspicuously on Bloor Street for everyone to see. You really can’t miss the green exotic car.

It turns out that the car is there to draw people in to fill out a ballot to win a 20-place setting of china. Sadly, the contest aspect of this promotion is done poorly. The ballot doesn’t include an opt-in, so William Ashley can’t (legally) market to any contest entrants and there were no contest rules available anywhere.

By the way, the car was lowered onto the installation by crane. They then used four jacks to raise the car, the tea cups were then placed under the wheels and jacks were lowered simultaneously to rest the car onto the tea cups. Enjoy the photos:

While its an interesting installation, I suspect the Gallardo is not reaching out to their target demo, but their results will speak to the success of the promotion.

More People Are Talking About User-Generated Content Contests

In the latest Brandweek, Todd Wasserman has a few things to say about last week’s The Next Big Idea conference about user-generated content being this year’s product placement. Of interest to me was what Wasserman said about contests in his piece:

“Karin Timpone, head of marketing at Yahoo! Media Group and a former Hollywood marketing maven, started out the day with some case studies involving a contest in which consumers were invited to send in clips of themselves dancing like pop star Shakira to her song “Hips Don’t Lie,” to get a chance to see the singer perform live. Timpone credited the contest with vaulting the song back into the top 10, although when pressed, she was somewhat vague on specific details.”

I’d love to see the metrics on that, but without question, we’re going to see user-generated content contests grow rapidly. Keep your eyes peeled.

Contests We Like – SharpGolf.ca

The Sharp Championship Golf Giveaway

We’ve been meaning to blog about this one. I suppose we haven’t because it works so well. The microsite works perfectly, the entry process and prize selection are ideal for the demographic.

The contest brings together golf and Sharp’s Aquos LCD TV. There are different opportunities to gain entries–there is the standard entry, but Sharp also sends weekly email trivia questions for extra entries.

Sharp’s cleverly tied the Callaway Golf brand and the images of Callaway’s pros to the promotion. In addition, most of the prizes feature both Sharp and Callaway products.

How Long Should A Contest Be In Market?

We were asked just this question yesterday–twice, as a matter of fact. As usual, there is no hard and fast answer to this question. I’m loathe to say it, but our typical answer is “it depends.” It depends on the market, channels, means of entry, business requirements, etcetera.

In an ideal world, you’d plan your entire promotion taking into consideration the full range of influencing factors. However, that doesn’t always work. For instance, we planned out the timing of contest yesterday with a client. In this case, media buys and television programming directly influenced the duration of contest. For this contest, the entry period will be no more than four weeks.

With another project, we have the luxury of an adequate amount of advance planning. As such, the contest length can be determined specifically by the tactical requirements of the campaign. For this contest, which is primarily retail-driven, we’ve recommended a 60- to 75-day contest period.

Empirically, we know that contests should run 60- 90-days, but generally we see interest and entries wane after the 60 day mark.

Purchase / No Purchase Contest Entries

Contest promotions are a great way to stimulate sales. While we’ve designed contests specifically to drive sales for a range of industries, products and mediums, there is one common requirement among all contests. That is your contest must have a no purchase method of entry.

When dealing with a purchase that is tied to contest entries, you must carefully design your contest so that:

- with purchase entries do not increase an entrant’s chances of winning

- for both with purchase and no purchase methods of entry, all entries are treated exactly the same within the context of the contest draw

- entrants have similar access to both modes of entry

A common “requirement” for no purchase contest entry is to ask the entrant to write an original essay. Without question, most marketers would like no purchase entrants to expend the same amount of effort to participate in the contest as with purchase entrants.

While we don’t disagree with no purchase barriers, it’s our opinion that we don’t make those barriers too high, such as the old “500-word essay” trick. Keep the no purchase method of entry simple, but also be creative in the way you ask for no purchase entries. Why not take the opportunity to engage no purchase entrants with your product or brand?

Another Automated Contest Entry Service

Acuwin.com is not an application, but a web-based service that “guarantees”:

- thousands of contest entries per month
- user-selected contests
- a contest-specific email address

These are all the things the casual contest enthusiast needs!

While their site does not provide any testimonials nor explicity state that their members have won prizes, the site implies that their members won 96 cars last month and a total of 873 last year, among other prizes. (I suspect that these numbers don’t ever change on the site–we’ll let you know.)

From our perspective, this is not the kind of thing we want interfacing with our clients’ contest entry pages and, since I’m skeptical about it, we’ll be testing their service and publish our findings.