[cross-posted to the Forrester Interactive Marketing blog]
Chances are you’ve seen an online video contest lately. In fact, you’ve probably seen a lot of them: more than 20% of interactive marketers — including category leaders like P&G, Nike, Coca-Cola and Sony — tell Forrester they’ve run campaigns asking users to submit online content in the past year. I’ve been collecting a list of dozens of great video contests, and one contest clearinghouse site says there are 115 user-generated video contests accepting submissions right now, across a huge range of categories:
Some of these contests — like Tourism Queensland’s Cannes-Lion-winning “The Best Job in the World” contest, or Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” contest — generate a lot of media coverage. But there are many hundreds more each year, promoting everything from steak sauce to psoriasis research, that don’t get as much notoriety.
Why are so many marketers running online video contests? Because users love online contests almost as much as they love online video — and because user-generated video contests can help marketers achieve a huge range of marketing objectives.
Video contests let marketers listen to their customers and learn about their needs — like student loan provider Access Group, which asked law students to enter videos about their concerns and then used insights from those videos to create its “Student Loans, No Worries” ad campaign. Contests can help marketers energize users an drive a viral marketing effect — like Servus Credit Union, which encouraged entrants to develop their own marketing campaigns to drum up votes, and found the three finalists generated as much publicity as the credit union’s PR firm did. And they can give marketers access to cheap, original online video content — like ski resort Sunshine Village, which used its contest to generate a video library of its mountain’s trails and terrain.
Of course, not every video contest succeeds. They often take months to plan, they can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $250,000 or more, and they usually require the coordinated efforts of several internal departments and external vendors. And if you don’t get the “three Ps” right (choosing the right premise, offering the right prize, and picking the right promotional strategy) you could fall flat on your face.
I’ve spent the last two months studying hundreds of contests, and have just published two new Forrester research studies on the topic. User-Generated Video Contests: Best Practices For Driving More Entries And Creating Viral Impact is designed to help marketers understand which users they should target with video contests, what goals they can achieve, and how to get the most value from their contests. Video Contest Checklist: How To Choose The Right Premise, Prize, And Promotion For Your Contest contains a checklist that guides marketers through every single step in the contest process — including choosing a contest premise, selecting a prize, planning a promotional strategy, choosing a voting structure, picking a vendor, setting a schedule, establishing a budget, getting internal buy-in, and measuring the results.
Over the next few days, I’ll be publishing some of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my research — including the best promotional strategies I’ve seen, and mini-case studies on what makes contests successful — here on my personal blog.
In the meantime, if you’ve been thinking of running a user-generated video contest — or if I’ve convinced you it’s a good idea — drop me a line (nelliott at forrester dot com). I’d be happy to work with you on making your video contest a success.
[...] reports about user-generated online video contests [8 July 2009 update: I've posted some of the research findings], so I’ve spent a lot of time recently talking to contest vendors and to marketers [...]
Loved the article. I found it on Forrester Blog Nate. I was one of the finalists in the Doritos contest in 2007 and have won my share of contests in the interim. You are dead on about the three P’s and none more important than the ‘PRIZE’ structuring. I posted a blog this evening entitled, “Why I turned down $3,034.00 from a video contest”. I think you would find the information useful in light of the data you regularly assemble and organize for your clients. Keep up the great research. I will be back to check out more of your postings and will check out your personal blog as well.
Great information.
I’m working on a UGC video contest for a client and your insights have been helpful. Unfortunately it’s a very low-budget operation compared to those that you’ve mentioned, however I’m sure that there are ways to make it work.
I’m particularly interested in your focus on the 3 Ps, especially premise. I hope that you will elaborate on it in the future.
Thanks.
Thanks Bill. For what it’s worth, I’ve seen marketers find reasonable success with video contests costing as little as $10,000 — and that includes everything (labor, platform, marketing, and prizes). If you need to watch your spending, check out Strutta — they can provide you with the contest platform for as little as $500 (or for free, if you don’t mind having some advertising on the page). Use your company’s own products as prizes and/or ask partners to supply some prizes. And find ways to leverage your existing marketing resources to promote the contest — I’ve seen marketers successfully promote contests using a few seconds at the end of their 30-second TV spots, emails to their house lists, inserts into postal mail that they were sending anyway, and of course promotion through their Facebook profile or twitter account.