In theory, the DEW D.I.Y. promotion was a good idea: Mountain Dew asked people to create art, tech or game gear with Mountain Dew branding, then submit pictures of their masterpieces for a chance to win thousands of dollars. They even offered local prizes, with the top entrant from each college receiving $250. Some marketing genius probably envisioned dorms buzzing with students chugging Mountain Dew, building MD robots and knitting MD scarves for orphans. In practice, all you had to do was write "Mountain Dew" on an old jock, upload it to the sports gear category and if nobody else entered from your college, you just made $250. Awesome.
The result was a massive influx of entries, I'll even say an uncountable number because I can't be bothered to count them. My favourite entry is a pair of yellow shorts with "DEW" written down the leg in shaky red marker. The vast majority of entries are like that: not worth looking at and if the amount of voting is any indication, nobody did look. Low voter turnout is an issue because the semifinalists were determined by user votes. If I can mobilize ten of my friends to vote for me, I can get my jockstrap into the semifinals!
That problem was compounded (from a marketing perspective) by the prominence given to the vote count by the site designers. Each person that visited the site could immediately see that nobody was voting (see attached screenshot). You don't want to advertise that nobody cares about your contest.
If that wasn't enough, the marketing agency that put together the contest, also missed an important aspect of online promotions: People. People like people - they like looking at them, rating them, abusing them, supporting them, etc - but there were no faces on the DEW D.I.Y. site. Few people care about a mug with a slogan written on it. But far more people would be interested in a cute girl holding a mug.
So what did we learn from the DEW D.I.Y. promotion?
1. There needs to be some barrier to entry. This may seem counter-intuitive but it encourages higher-quality content and also focuses the competition for the sake of the voters. Imagine if there weren't auditions for American Idol and viewers had to watch hundreds of entries before voting. An absurd number of voters is fantastic, an absurd number of entries is devastating.
2. People don't vote. In the real world, politicians spend millions of dollars on advertising, promise jobs, tax cuts, schools, security, health care - literally offering money in exchange for votes - and still, they're lucky if 60% of eligible voters cast a ballot. Internet users are media-savvy, A.D.D.-ridden multitaskers, and there's a good chance they won't take the time to fill out a registration form to vote if they get nothing in return. One solution is to enter voters in a sweepstakes to reward them for helping support your brand. That also helps promote the contest. Switching from a vote-based system to a rating-based system is another great solution because it hides the inevitably low vote-count.
3. Show faces. It helps viewers engage with contestants and feel like they're voting for a person, even if they're not.
Post new comment