What Makes A Successful YouTube Brand Contest?
There’s moments in life when a new gadget or toy comes along that you might look at and go, “Man, I wish I had that when I was a kid growing up.” For me, it’s pretty much the entire Internet.
I get that same “Only If” feeling every time I see a new YouTube “Brand” Contest and some of the creativity that Gen Y is able to put on display for them. For those who are not familiar with YouTube Brand Contests, they’re exactly what they sound like – contests sponsored by brands that YouTube promotes and enlists their vast community to partake in. You can see a whole list of them here.
Granted, some of the contests are very lame or look like an idea that was once cool but was subject to corporate legal counsel’s tool of ‘cool campaign death’ – the track changes function on Word. However, a recent YouTube Contest caught my eye and is a very good example of a contest that does everything right execept in one key area (more on that below). This would be the Slam Dunk Challenge presented by Nissan. Sure, enlisting amateur slam dunk videos is not new (we pitched this type of idea 6 years ago to a brand we worked with that got whacked by legal) but this is a great example of a YouTube contest that appeals to the core demographic of YouTube – Gen Y. So what are the key elements for a successful YouTube Brand Contest?
- Cool contest idea? Uh Slam Dunk (pun intended.)
- Timeliness? Big check. Right smack dab in the middle of the most exciting NBA playoffs in years…
- Authenticity factor? NBA Athlete judges. Check. And bonus points for getting Chris Bosh and Jalen Rose who both have very active YouTube channels.
- Brand revelenacy to Gen Y? Check. But only if you’re 35 and younger. If you’re driving a Z over the age of 35 or trying to show how you can slam dunk, we need to have a talk…
- Promotion? Not only is this promoted off of YouTube’s blog but also on the YouTube Channels for Chris Bosh and Jalen Rose.
- Active Community Participation (i.e. entries)? Here’s where we run into problems. Though there’s a few quality entries like the video embedded below, there are only 95 total entries, many of which have been ‘removed by the user’. For a contest that’s enlisting NBA talent, a cool Gen Y brand (Nissan Z) and an appealing idea, you would think it would be a no-brainer that people would be lining up with submissions. But there’s a reason why (below the embed video)…
Prizing or in this case, lack of it. It doesn’t matter how cool a YouTube Contest is – If the prize sucks, you’re not going to get many people to make the effort to shoot a video for it. Any brand manager that’s run any type of contest before knows that. So it’s all the more confusing for this contest once you try to find what the actual prizes are. From looking through everything, it looks like it’s just a chance to hang out with the Team Flight Brothers…really? I assumed (like probably most initial entrants) that the prize was a Nissan Z. Granted that’s definitely a high-end prize in a down economy, but let me know what you think on just an initial look at the home page graphic below:
I get that Nissan needs to promote the Z, but in this instance, it’s definitely over-promoted to the point that you would think it’s part of the actual contest. Maybe that’s the reason there were only 95 total submissions when, with the idea and talent / brand involved, they should have had at least 10X that amount of submissions. Other than the glaring omission of any intriguing prizing, the rest of the campaign is completely solid and is a good example of some initial requirements you’ll need to get started on your own YouTube Brand Contest.
P.S. (ZUGARA PROMOTION ALERT!) We’ve had our own hits/misses with YouTube contests for our clients but the best part of these is seeing the actual creativity put into some of the videos. This is still one of my favorite videos from a past Dream Digs YouTube Brand Contest we ran 2 years ago for Casio and there were substantial prizes involved which led to many quality entries…
