Contests are a great tool for direct marketing. I’m not talking about vacation cruises, product give aways or million dollar sweepstakes with brightly color balloon and slowly fading celebrities. While those are time tested and apparently effective promotions, they are not particularly interesting or original…. and I don’t have anything clever to say about them.
I am talking about contests that challenges people to do something creative that involves your product or service and lets the winner be judged on merit. The creative task engages the recipients imagination and makes them think about you while they think about what they could do to win.
A contest that stimilates the imagination on content instead of on the prize. Challenge people to come up with the most unusual application of your product, an off the wall picture, a great slogan or even a video. You not only get a great response, you also get free creative consulting!
A simple example is the calendar design competition recently run by client of mine. The call for entries asks designers to submit a page for a calendar for next year. The only prize is being included in the calendar! They sent out 2,000 invitation and received 50 entries within three weeks! As soon as they pick the winners, they will print calendars and mail it to thousands of more designers.
Guess who the real winner is!
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