Donna's Promo Talk

Top Ten Consumer Generated Content Promotional Contests

My first and my second post in this blog were about Dove's Real Beauty campaign which both described two interactive promotional contests that invited consumer generated content. In those I referenced the Doritos Super Bowl Promotion that started us off on this trend earlier this year. Dove quickly followed with a consumer generated ad for their Dove Cream Oil Body Wash which aired during the Oscar's. Since then more and more brands have followed suit and this promotional trend has continued to grow and grow.

I'm not sure if the consumer generated content promotional trend has reached its peak or not, but it may be close. I've been reading one new announcement after another regarding a new promotional online contest that involves having the consumer create and submit something that ties back into that particular brand. These contests select a winner that must provide a degree of individual skill or uniqueness whether it's writing a song, creating a video, uploading a photograph, composing a themed essay, whipping up a creative, new recipe, or showcasing some degree of talent.

Contests are often used to help reinforce the brand or product/service attributes and their positioning in the marketplace while at the same time engaging the customers. Sometimes they make a great fit, other times they're not quite right. I wrote about a Heniz Ketchup Contest a few weeks ago which poses that very question. Over the past two months I've saved many of the online articles from PROMO Magazine that has been reporting on these new promotional contests as they are announced. So, I thought I'd list the Top 10 Consumer Generated Contests here with a quick summary of each. For a more detailed description of each you can click on the link that will open that article from PROMO's website.

1. Doritos Unlock Xbox Contest - They're at it again, but this time with a partner. Consumers are asked to submit their ideas for a video game featuring Doritos for Xbox Live Arcade. Five finalist will be chosen to work with Xbox game designers to create an online version of their game that consumers will vote for online in November. The actual game will then be released in Summer '08.

2. XM Satellite Radio/Current.TV V-CAM Contest - Viewers of Current.TV can submit a TV spot (V-CAM) showing what turns them on about XM. Current.TV features programming created by and for consumers 18-35 who will then have a chance to vote online for what clips they think should be broadcast. Next XM executives will select up to 4 winners whose spots will run in rotation on Current.TV and will each receive $1,000.

3. Sephora and theBalm Design Contest - Consumers can submit designs to represent theBalm's shadyLady eye shadow product which will be sold in Sephora stores. One winning design will be chosen to inspire the design of the product as well as included on the packaging. Consumers can vote for their favorite online and then automatically be entered into a sweepstakes for a chance to win shadyLady products. (I passed this one on to a few of my packaging design buddies).

4. Applebee's Big Burger Showdown - They've teamed up with The Food Network in search of the best burger recipe to add to Applebee's menu. Chef Tyler Florence from the Food Network along with Applebee representatives will choose 4 regional finalists to compete in October at the Burger Showdown in New York City. The winner will receive $5,000 along with the chance for their recipe to join Applebee's menu.

5. Oreo & Milk Jingle Contest - Consumers can submit a video of their group (2-15 people) singing the O-R-E-O jingle or be videotaped singing the jingle at a participating Major League Baseball event. 10 finalists will be posted online where consumers can vote for their favorite. The top 5 will then compete in a live competition in Times Square hosted by Carlson Daly. The final winning group gets $10,000 and their video broadcast on a Times Square super sign.

6. Oscar Myer's Sing the Jingle, Be a Star Contest  - While on the subject of jingles, Oscar Myer has been running this contest for several years, so they've been way ahead of the trend. But this year they have tied-in in with American Idol and are offering the 3 grand prize winners not only the chance to appear in a national TV spot for Oscar Myer next year, but also a trip to the Season 7 finale of American Idol in Los Angeles. Consumers can enter either individually, or for the first time, as a group (up to 5) either online, by mail or audition in person at Weinermobile stops. Consumers will then vote online among the 12 finalists selected by the judges. The final 3 winners will include one soloist in English, one in Spanish, and one group (either language).

7. HomeWood Suites by Hilton Simple Moments Contest - Following in the footsteps of Dove's Real Beauty Campaign, Hilton is also looking for real people to feature in their advertising campaigns. Families are invited to upload a photo online of their favorite "Simple Moment" from a vacation along with a brief written description. Three winning photos will be selected by a panel of judges that best ties in with the "Simple Moments" concept. Times Square is again being utilized as the broadcast vehicle where the three winning images will be shown on a billboard during September and the families will get to travel to NYC to view their photos along with some spending money for the trip. Homewood Suites also plans to incorporate the winning images into their advertising.

8. Hyatt Ultimate Adventure Challenge - Hyatt Hotels is also looking for real families. They want to feature them in webisodes they are producing to help promote some of their key resorts. Participants can register online and submit videos that show their passion for adventure and why their family should be selected to compete in a series of competitions taking place at these resorts. The competitions will be filmed and posted online. Twenty families were chosen to attend a casting call that took place on June 16th. The webisodes will begin appearing on Aug. 15th and the winning family will be selected Sept. 28th.

9. California State Fair Be A Star Contest - Even a state fair has gotten on the consumer generated content bandwagon. They've partnered with MySpace and are inviting consumers to upload a video that could become part of a new TV commercial. "Big Fun" is the theme of this year's fair and the video should show family and friends acting playful, silly, or childlike to show that fun never grows old. The winner will also receive $500 and the new campaign will be announced sometime in July. The Fair takes place Aug. 17 - Sept. 3rd this year.

10. Cherrios' Spoonful of Stories Contest - For the aspiring writers in us all General Mills is expanding its Spoonful of Stories promotion to include a contest. The annual promotion, which gives away children's books in boxes of Cherrios, will also award $5,000 to be best unpublished children's story. Unpublished authors can submit their stories online for a panel of judges to review. Three finalist will be chosen who's stories will appear on the promotion's website. The grand prize winner will have their story evaluated by Simon and Schuster which may chose to publish it.

Well, there you have the Top 10 Consumer Generated Content Promotions for May and June which I could have easily expanded to 15. At this rate, maybe I'll have to make this a monthly post. We'll see. If you have any that you're working on or know of, please pass on the information to me in an email and I'll consider it for the next round or possibly it's own post if it warrants it.

Why Heinz Ketchup Maybe Shouldn't Do a Consumer Generated Promotional Contest

Yesterday I read an interesting article that caught my attention in the Contra Costa Times that PromoXtra passed on in their daily online promotional newsletter. The article is called "Heinz finds ad Contest has a messy downside" which is about a current promotional contest, Top This TV Challenge from Heinz. The website is done quite well and has a streaming video ad that you can view below that asks "Are You Hungry for Fame?...All you need is a camcorder and a great idea for a Heinz ketchup commercial."

We in the promotional marketing industry have been following this trend of consumer-generated content and the article brings their California readers up to date by saying "Consumer brand companies have been busy introducing campaigns like Heinz's that rely on user-generated content, an approach that combines the populist appeal of reality television with the old-fashioned gimmick of a sweepstakes to select a new advertising jingle. Pepsi, Jeep, Dove and Sprint have all staged promotions of this sort, as has Doritos, which proudly publicized in February that the consumers who made one of its Super Bowl ad did so on a $12 budget."

So, what's different about the Heinz promotional contest? Well it appears that they have received quite a lot of submissions haven't been what Heinz would want to associate with their brand. Heinz has hired an outside promotions firm to view all the videos and so far according to the article they have rejected more than 370 submissions. Many of these didn't fit the judging criteria that's spelled out in the contest rules, but unfortunately have made their way on to YouTube anyhow.

As of this morning there are a total of 386 videos posted on the official Heinz YouTube Site. I took a look at some and found a few that were a bit entertaining, but many that were just plain bad. So I did a search on YouTube for Heinz and found some of the others that were disqualified (or banned as they say). Most of these involve smearing ketchup all over your body, one from a Dutch person mocking Heinz for making the contest only eligible for U.S. citizens and another from Sweden that I had to first consent that I'm an adult in order to watch. You can probably figure that one out.  As David Ciesinski, vice president for Heinz Ketchup said "they wouldn't be appropriate to show mom".

So did Dorito's, Dove and the NFL also have this problem with their promotional contests that ask for consumer generated media? They probably had some of it, but I asked myself what's different about Heinz and I posted a comment to the article in the Contra Costa Times and I thought I'd repeat it here for my readers which says:

So if brands want to go in this direction they need to first consider whether or not their product (or service) is the right fit to open up to the collective "you" (referring back to the NY Times 2006 Person of the Year). I'm sorry, but ketchup does look a lot like blood and personally I think it's not very appealing to look at, wasn't even in the famous "Anticipation" ad. I don't think mustard is very appealing either. But yes, we do eat many hamburgers and hot dogs in this country that incude both of these condiments. I'm sure the people at Heinz and their ad agencies have struggled in the past to generate good looking ketchup ads, and used professional food stylists to do it.

As I've noted in my post on Contests they generally are used to help reinforce the brand or the product/service attributes and its positioning in the marketplace. So, if you can think of any negative attributes that your brand may have, believe me the consumer will also.

My company, DDC Marketing Group, is assisting with administering a consumer-generated promotion for Purina's Cute Cat Video Contest. I'll have to let you know how this turns out. However, if you think back and ask if the brand and/or product in the content is right for this you have to admit, cats are much cuter than ketchup. I wouldn't advise Reddi-Whip to do a consumer-generated contest promotion either. However I was surprised to see a "Reddi-Whip Moments" section on their website but it's text only, no photos.

The Heinz Top This TV Challenge Contests runs until August 6th, so we'll have to come back and see what they end up with. I'm sure they'll have a great winner in the long run. So if you're thinking of jumping on the bandwagon with your brand, you should learn from those that already have.

Jonah Bloom from Ad Age Sets the Stage For PMA Conference

PMA's Annual Conference was under way this morning with a a promise to help us define how to successfully and not successfully address change, how to leverage it and how to make it work for us. With David Bowie's "Changes" broadcasting through the room's speakers we were inspired with a slide show of people and products that defined changes throughout our history. We were then greeted by Michael Murphy, Chairman of the Board for PMA and Director of Consumer Integrated Marketing for Johnson & Johnson, who reminded us of the recent changes we've seen in our marketplace from the consumer generated Dorito's Super Bowl TV ad to the Dove Real Beauty Campaign.

It was quite a very long day which started at 7:30 am at the Breakfast Round Table I hosted on Blogging with my partner from WME Blogs, Greg Bell, to the welcome reception that began at 6:30 pm. It was still going on at 8pm when I left so that I could catch up on my email and create a blog post about today. All the speakers tied back into the overall theme of "This Changes Everything" with PMA inviting us all to "Be part of the change and come join us."

Jonah Bloom, Editor for Ad Age got us started off explaining that he was originally invited to come talk about why they picked the Agency of the Year as "The Consumer". Focusing his discussion on this topic would hopefully address the changes affecting our industry today and "why agencies were beaten by the Joe Schmo's off the street". Ad Age originally intended to give the award to Draft FCB for their bold step in redefining the agency (which we'll hear from tomorrow morning). He continued sarcastically to say how their new business model was justified when they won the Wal-Mart account, but quickly taken away because Wal-Mart didn't want to go this way. So Ad Age also rethought their decision and gave the award instead to the "technology-empowered super consumer" instead.

He further quoted Thomas Friedman in saying consumers today are "flattening the world". First a couple of negative examples such as "If you have rats running around your restaurant, they can video this and globally show it around the world on the Internet." Another was about an irate older woman who couldn't get her cell phone out of the plastic package and broadcast this through a blog that caused the cell phone retailer to accommodate the problem by supplying employees with scissors.

The Diet Coke and Mentos video went viral really, really fast and 120 million people saw the Belaggio inspired fountain. Coke brand managers at first saw this as negative and didn't embrace it, but Mentos eventually did. We had an actual Mentos/Coke demo later in the morning during a further discussion on viral marketing.

From an Ad Age interview, Jonah quoted Nick Law, EVP, Chief Creative Officer, North America R/GA who said "For years, there's been a given mentality.... clients came because agencies created the magic behind the screen. The new environment has blown open the idea of being an expert so you can be very good and working in a bedroom in Dundee and the world can be seeing your work." Jonah still doubted that if you were really good you wouldn't working out of a bedroom in Dundee, but we get the point.

Further he commented on the fact that Ad Age actually made the decision to chose "The Consumer" as the agency of the year before Time Magazine came out with their "Person of the Year: You". Ad Age just put "the consumer up against an agency, not a world dictator".

We must now work "Outside In" which means getting the messages from the outside and bringing them into the organization.

• Microsoft Vista worked with over 500,000 testers before launching their new product.
• Toyota, by listening to blogs and social networks, learned that the Tundra was not considered to be made by an authentic truck manufacturer and had to change the perceptions about Toyota to truckers.
• Ford monitored consumer impressions of the "Edge" on blogs and received so many positive comments that they've decided to include consumer generated media in their future campaigns.

Dian Hessan, President-CEO of Communispace told Ad Age "What consumers are screaming for is the desire to help companies make decisions and not just ads". They want more today...to be directly involved.

Mark Hans-Richer, Director of Marketing for Pontiac " has a really interesting perspective. "Consumers today are almost omniscient. You might call them Santa Claus consumers, you know, they see you when you're sleeping, they know when you're awake. They definitely know if you're good or bad. But do things right and they'll bring you really great presents."

Jonah closed by mentioning that there are many different blogs that cover marketing and media today, this one being one of them. "News is becoming a commodity and Ad Age is no longer my property".

So, he nicely set the stage for the rest of the day, especially for our next speaker, Stephen Roberts, CEO from the Geek Squad which will definitely be one of my next blogs, and gave me great pleasure in feeling that I'm actively participating and embracing the changes facing us today. So, do you feel you're on board yet?

Dove's Cream Oil Body Wash Gets an Oscar

A second promotion to come out of the Dove Real Beauty Campaign is for the launch of their new Dove Cream Oil Body Wash product line. Back at the end of 2006 Dove ran a contest in which they provided online tools such as product shots at www.dovecreamoil.com to be combined with consumer generated video ads that promoted the product. 1,000 videos where submitted by the deadline of Jan. 15th and posted online.

So, similar to what Doritos did for their consumer-generated ads during the Super Bowl, Dove planned to do for this promotion. This time it was the Oscars and not only did they run the winning ad, but they bought another 30 second spot to run before it so that Grey's Anatomy star Sara Ramirez could introduce the ad as well as its creator, 22-year-old Lindsay Miller from Sherman Oaks, Calif. Lindsay sings into a pink hairbrush and dances in the shower and told "Good Morning America" anchor Chris Cuomo "Thinking about beauty and what it means to me … and to me it's when I'm doing the ridiculous things that I'm doing."

By utilizing Sara Ramirez together with Lindsay, Dove is connecting with a much younger female audience that they have been with their ProAge line ads which are utilizing 50+ real women. Dove Marketing Director Kathy O'Brien said "We love the contrast of Dove real women against the glitz and celebrity of the (Oscars)."

Visitors to www.dovecreamoil.com now can view both the intro ad by Sara and the winning ad by Lindsay as well as enter the new contest to become the next Dove Real Women. You just need to submit an essay explaining why you should appear in the next Dove ad and a photo of yourself. The following will be the criteria for this contest: Written Expression (Essay only-50%), Sincerity (Essay only-40%) and Photo's Relevance (10%). We'll have to wait till May 15th to find out who the new winner is and what TV network will first air the winning ad. Perhaps ABC will run it during the season finale of Grey's Anatomy?  We'll just have to wait and see.