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How to Make a Video Contest Succeed - or Suck

By B.L. Ochman
Video contests by companies hoping for viral buzz and Google juice are as plentiful as mosquitoes on a humid summer night. But, like their insect counterparts, most video contests suck.

While the rare video contest gets as many as 1,000 entries, many - like Denny's recent disastrous effort - get less than 10 entries. Apparently, 48 Denny's breakfasts over the next four years wasn't a big motivator.

Contests can backfire. Just ask Chevy. Why are you a Republican in 2008? got this horror show entry, this charming Gotta Fuck the Democrats video, and this one. And they're not going away. Because on the Internet, content is forever. They may take them off YouTube, but they'll pop up on other sites. Count on it.

How to make your video contest succeed:

o Define success What do you want? Brand awareness? A lot of entries? Buzz in blogs? To drive traffic to your website? Sell product? Decide what your goals are so you'll know when/if you meet them. Sounds elementary, but most companies don't do it.

Here are some things you can measure:
* How many people are will learn about your brand?
* How often bloggers are talking about you and your contest?
* Are your keywords getting better placement because of the contest?
* How many people are engaging with you looking at the videos?
* Are people commenting on the videos?

o A big cash prize isn’t the only thing that motivates people to enter a video contest, but it doesn’t hurt either. Think about three $20K prizes rather than one $60K prize.

o However, even if they don't care about your brand, people will work hard for a truly huge prize. That doesn't necessarily mean your brand will benefit. There was just about no coverage when Freestyle watches gave away $100K in a video contest that was under-promoted. Nonetheless, a total of 3,331 entries were submitted by contestants, ages ranging from 13 to 50, and roughly 100,000 page views were received on Freestyle's Loop'd.com profile.

o The contest should relate to your brand. Inexplicably Honda is having a contest about do-it-yourself projects, ranging anywhere from home improvement to electronics to odds & ends and more. The prize is $15K. WTF?

o Don’t have a video contest unless your brand has true evangelists who love your products or cause. Firefox, Apple, most beers, some movies, TV shows (MadMen, Sopranos, etc.) and bands have evangelists. Denny’s doesn’t.

Neither does Cowboy Troy. His Hick Chick YouTube Contest's prize included backstage access to go on stage with Cowboy Troy during a concert and $1,000 spending money. (Total Value of Prize is $3,000) Cowboy Troy and John Rich judged the top 5 videos. Entered videos must be your version of Cowboy Troy's "Hick Chick" song. Entries? None.

o Don’t host the contest on YouTube, but do have a YouTube channel for the video entries. You give up too much creative control when you host a contest on YouTube or blip.tv, but you save on what can become huge bandwidth charges if your videos are uploaded there and the contest really is a hit.

Have a contest site, and don’t immediately take it down when the contest is done. Take advantage of the search engine juice by leaving the link and the winning videos online. If you do the contest annually, include the year in the URL.

o Set a time limit on the damn videos! 30 seconds to no more than 2 minutes. Professionals have trouble being interesting for 30 seconds. Don’t think amateurs are going to be interesting for 10 minutes! They’re not!

o Don’t have some big ad agency handle the contest. Few agencies have a freaking clue about online marketing, let alone how to promote a contest through social media.

Look for a company with a track record running successful contests. Hint, there are less than 10 such companies on the planet and many are small. whatsnextonline.com (that's us!) has a very successful track record.

o Promotion to drive traffic to the site is where most contests blow it. (See "Don’t have some big ad agency handle the contest.") Among the marketing tools that can drive traffic to your contest:

- blog advertising
- social media including Twitter, MySpace, Facebook, Digg, StumbleUpon, etc, etc.
- blogger outreach
- seed it: email customers and subscribers to tell them about your contest
- don’t count on a press release to bring traffic. It won’t
- invite people who’ve had good entries in other contests to enter yours – think about paying them to create sample videos
- go where advanced amateurs are – blip.trv, etc. – and invite the best ones to enter the contest

PETA despite its frequent lunacy, is a master at driving traffic to its contests. The winning video in PETA's Veggie Video contest received 258,275 views in the first three weeks and is now up to over 320,000 views and more than 1,000 votes, PETA Marketing Manager Joel Bartlett told MarketingProfs’ Ann Handley in an interview (sub required).

PETA as an organization has embraced social media in a big way, using blogs, YouTube, MySpace, Flickr, and lots of word-of-mouth initiatives. They have 200,000 Street Teamers teams for garden variety guerilla marketing, and an email list of almost 800,000 youth to jump-start their campaigns.

JibJab has a list of more than a million people who want to be notified of their latest videos, which helps their work go viral quickly. And of course, they do great work.

Bartlett said, "If you let people participate in your brand, they will become brand warriors..putting video online, buying online ads, pitching it to bloggers, making an interesting Web feature, providing our activists with tools to promote the idea, facilitating people taking action, emailing something to our supporters, sending a bulletin to our friends on MySpace, updating Wikipedia with relevant information, etc."

Bonus Links: Here's another contest, via Adrants, from Saturn, that's getting no entries. "Do Saturn a Favor and Kiss Its Astra"

And this may be the worst press release ever written announcing a "viral" video contest.

The only thing worse than the video announcing this contest, and the entries, is the fact that they are giving away some poor, hapless puppy. Isn't that illegal? It should be.

This contest announcement video may be the worst ever broadcast:

Are You a Virus Cartoon, Hugh Macleod

Categories: Advertainment, Alternative Marketing, Best Practices, Buzz, Case Studies, Clueless ad agencies, Internet strategy, Marketing Strategy, Peer to peer, Promotions, Reality Marketing, Shameless Self Promotion, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Up Your Budget Treasure Hunt, User Generated Content, Video Contests, Viral Marketing, Word of Mouth

BL Ochman | Jul 30 08 9:14 | TrackBack (0)

Comments

A great post, I really hope more marketers (especially those at the bigger agencies you've noted) read it.

My advice for companies considering a video contest is don't. Just don't. You're entering a highly competitive field with a lot of noise and the benefits will probably be slim. Try producing a realm of educational videos for your current customers instead. Or investing that time and money in improving the product or service.

Posted by: Richard Millington at August 1, 2008 7:24 AM

Three years ago (yes, before YouTube) I created an online platform to launch pro-am video contests that would specifically drive awareness to brands Know as http://fastfilmtv.com, it was never able to get beyond the pilot stage for a lot of the same reasons that B.L.Ochman mentions. However, my initial idea was based upon a live community event that I had originated in the US called the The Shoot Out 24 Hour Filmmaking Festival http://www.theshootoutboulder.com . Five years later we are still doing our event and experimenting with what does work and what doesn't work. I would say that working on a local scale, there is a lot of potential to actualize measurement when combining the live and online together. I also use many of the social media best practices at my current job to support this non-profit event. Disclaimer: My day job is at the social media analytic's company http://collectiveintellect.com

Posted by: Michael Conti at August 1, 2008 11:58 AM

Richard - thanks for the kind words about my post.

I don't agree that companies shouldn't do video contests. What they shouldn't do is ask customers to make commercials on such topics as "why our product is so great" etc.

What's missing from most video contests (and most marketing campaigns) is a good idea. Followed by
o utter cluelessness on the part of agencies and CMOs about what people really care about
o even a foggy notion of how to drive traffic to a contest

Look at Blentec. They manage to be incredibly entertaining while proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that their product is great. That's what creativity means.

Posted by: BL Ochman at August 1, 2008 12:45 PM

Good point about Blendtec.

I guess then it depends upon the product and relevance. I'm more concerned about wasted energy. Many of the time, even with a successful video contest (more than 100 entries), there is a better way to leverage the wisdom, time and energy of your customers.

Posted by: Richard Millington at August 2, 2008 7:14 AM

B.L.,

One interesting thing to note here is how ideas get filtered in a large agency (or any agency really, but the large ones seem prone to this more). The digital team that actually can help avoid embarrassing promotions like this are not brought to the strategy table.

In these larger agencies, the strategy is set by someone on the account management team who does not know much about how this all works (as evidenced that these things get sent out at all). The Digital team is looked at as execution only. Basically, "don't be a buzzkill and tell us this idea won't work, just get it up there and make it look good."

If I can pass out any advice, please agencies, integrate your Digital teams into your account teams. Don't leave them from the strategy. They won't diminish your retainer. I promise. If anything, they will help you increase it.

Posted by: Brian at September 24, 2008 9:18 AM

Brian - you are so right. but this, sadly, is an age old battle of creatives vs sales. we need to keep explaining your argument to top management.

Posted by: BL Ochman at September 24, 2008 10:37 AM

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About BL Ochman

Blogger, social media strategy consultant to Fortune 500 companies, and sought-after corporate speaker B.L. Ochman heads the creative team of whatsnextonline.com. She also publishes the Ethics Crisis blog for SRF Global Translations

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