User Generated Video Contests and Brands

Lea & Perrins, a Heinz brand, is running a really fun video contest called “That’s a wRAP.” The concept is pretty straight forward, submit a short video of your rap about Lea & Perrins Thick Classic® Worcestershire Sauce for a chance to win a variety of prizes, including $5,000 in cash.

Engagement comes in several key ways: Content, Activities and Interaction. Activities like this create tremendous opportunities for brand engagement. As a Social Graph Engine, KickApps provides brands with the ability to deploy engagement experiences which in turn generate your brand’s very own Social Graph that can provide you with Customer Insight and an abundance of Actionable Data that can inform other engagement experiences and other marketing and sales programs (e.g. email campaigns, coupons, etc.).

It doesn’t have to end at the end of a contest either. In fact, I’d even go as far as saying it shouldn’t. You’ve now aggregated an audience that you know quite a bit about. Ask yourself how you’re going to keep them engaged. Is it another contest? Is it a content strategy? The opportunity is to go from a one off campaign to a perpetual campaign. Heck, maybe even ask them what they’d like to do next.

Some keys to success:

• A compelling, and usually fun, concept that will appeal to the audience or customer you’re trying to reach (drop us a line, we enjoy coming up with great ideas).
• A prize that will appeal to the customer or audience (we had a client that gave away a house!). While you don’t have to go as far as giving away a house, the importance of a great prize can’t be overlooked. You’re trying to motivate your customers to engage and interact with you, appeal to their desire to win something cool.
• Deploy an interactive platform that allows people to take the contest viral and become your virtual street team (a term that was coined by an early client that was behind one of the most successful video submission contests, VIBE Verses). Encourage and enable people to share the videos across the social web and tap into their ’social graph’ to drive people back to site to vote for their video, leave comments, and more important, engage with your brand.

With that said, I bring you…