Contests encourage people to shoot videos promoting your product

How cool is it when you have a product or service that lends itself to people shooting videos for you! As a marketer or business owner, how amazing is it when people are eager to spread your ideas and share stories for you.

One of my favorite examples is Queensland Australia's Best Job in the World contest which generated 30,000 videos submitted by people all over the world.

I recently spoke with Jon Slaughter, Marketing Director at Boreal Mountain Resort near Lake Tahoe about how he worked with young filmmakers to create and post videos of competitors at the Jibassic Pro Invitational ski and snowboard competitions. Jon set up a video contest that also got people talking up skiing and snowboarding early in the 2009-2010 season driving people to the resort.

Team Moment Skis won the contest. Direct link to their entry here.

Here's how Jon set up the contest:

Fifteen teams signed up to film the JPi.5 weekend and after filming had just 36 hours to create their video edit and post to Vimeo. The videos were also embedded onto the Boreal Blog.

After a ten-day judging period the winners were announced during a follow-up "Red Carpet" awards party. The winner walked home with $2,000 provided by FUEL TV and the most viewed video won $500 from Boreal.

Here are some of the metrics from this contest:

• The Video Contest was only promoted via the web (website, blog Facebook, MySpace, newschoolers.com, snowboard-mag.com) at $0 cost
• Team registration opened at 6pm on October 1, 2009. 45 seconds later the 15 spots were filled.
• Over a ten-day period the 15 videos were viewed over 72,000 times
• Teams were promoting their video (and Boreal too) via twitter, Facebook and other social and industry sites in hopes of winning the $500 prize.

Check out more about the contest, the Red Carpet awards and view the other winners on the Boreal blog.

"Hosting the video contest was a new and exciting adventure for the marketing team here at Boreal," Jon says. "The biggest benefit we saw was the kids out 'hustling' their own videos and in-turn getting thousands of views each. One team, bHappy Films, was able to get their video posted on Transworld Snowboarding's website, which has been a white whale for my marketing efforts. bHappy's video received about 3,000 views with-in a few hours after getting posted on Transworld. The video contest showcased what Boreal has to offer early season and presented it to a previously unreached audience."

What a great way to get people interested in skiing and snowboarding early in the 2009-2010 season!

Have you run a video contest? Do you have other ways to encourage video sharing?

Disclosure: Earlier this year, I delivered a presentation to executive management and marketing staff from Powdr Corporation, owners of Boreal Mountain Resort.

Comments

[Geno Prussakov]

This is definitely a good marketing technique to use, and it is great to see you bringing it up, David. What do you think the FTC's perception of such videos (and/or promotions of the video through the Social Medium) may be once their rules for disclosure of monetary connections kick in a week from now? It seems they may expect the endorser-sponsor connections to be revealed here as well?

[Mike]

Interestingly enough, this technique is not limited to ultra-cool places on earth and recreational venues. Kickfire's first video contest has generated several hundred votes in the relatively quiet b2b space for analytic appliances.

[Matt_uVizz]

There is no doubt that the contest model is very powerful and can produce great results. However, the big problem with it is that not everyone is rewarded for creating and spreading the videos. Even though they are promoting the brand, they may not receive anything for their effort.

That's exactly why we built uVizz (You Video Buzz). It is a platform that enables companies to reward their customers for creating and sharing brand videos. uVizz tracks each video view on social networks (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Bebo, Friendster), blogs, websites, and through email and instant messaging. When a company creates a campaign for their products, they decide how much they're willing to pay for a "unique video view". This is the first time someone watches a video. When a unique video view occurs, 70% of what the advertiser is paying is given to the video creator (50%) and the person who shared it (20%). Yes, we even reward the people who share the video. While video creation is very important, so is the delivery. The uVizz model guarantees that everyone is rewarded for their roles in brand promotion.

If a company wants to offer additional incentives (prizes, payment for approved videos, banner clicks etc), they can, but it is not required.

We just launched uVizz a few months ago. If you want more information, check out www.uVizz.com .

[David]

I agree with Mike's comment -- the creative applications of user submitted video are limited only by your imagination, and can work effectively in B2B. I created the following short "ASR 9000 in Scotland" video for the Cisco "Prep the Net" campaign.

http://www.youtube.com/group/prepnet#p/a/3/w4mOxBPiN_A

[Frank Strong]

It's a lovely think if you can make that happen. The skydiving industry has a slightly different take -- they've been getting people to pay them for videos for years. What's the first thing those paying customers do with those videos at home? Post to YouTube and Facebook (among others). Its ingenious!

When viral can work marketing work: http://bit.ly/6NjbZN

[David Meerman Scott]

Thanks for your comments and for submitting these other examples! David

[David Huffman]

I work for a proprietary broadcasting program and we are currently doing this with area high school broadcast programs to help foster interest in our program.

Our first year was unsuccessful to say the least. The contest was packaged all wrong (pegged "The Spotlight on Education" contest) and we only received two entries.

This year, we repackaged the whole deal to be more fun and engaging, named it the "Create a Trailer" contest and changed it up so people could create 60 second movie trailers highlighting their own school/football program/etc.

And we've had over 50 entries so far...

I guess we've actually used it in reverse. Instead of highlighting our company, applicants actually get a chance to brag about themselves...but it's all in the name of our company and it's further putting us out there as a leader in broadcast training.

We've already generated some enrollments from it.

[Kim Crystal]

How clever. There's nothing like getting the public to create your advertising for you.

[Mason West]

Hey, David. What are your thoughts on trying to incite social activity around a brand without a contents, but on its own merits?

We try and create campaigns that have just enough fun and excitement in them that people want to sign up on their own.

Here's a recent example we created for a traditionally overlooked technology:
http://www.youtube.com/prepnet#p/a/0/STdbQz3yAOw

[David Meerman Scott]

Mason - Of course that's a subject I've studied and written about for years. "World Wide Rave" is my most recent book about it. Contests are a subset of the process of creating something online that people are eager to share.

[Krista]

Excellent example of how the Social Web really works. Kudos to Jon and Boreal for implementing and activating a great contest!