What The Flip: A Contest Done Correctly

We here at Sway are big fans of the Flip Video cameras. They only have 3 buttons so they are extremely easy to use, easy to upload videos online, and the video quality is excellent for a hand held device that small.
It's no surprise that MTV and Flip have teamed up to bring some user generated buzz (i.e. cheap) to the product while keeping MTV edgy and cool. The contest "What The Flip" gave 100 cameras to college students and asked them several questions and asked them to submit their answer via video. The contest is doing extremely well for a number of reasons that I want to highlight for anyone considering an online contest in 2009.
1) The barrier to entry is very low. Flip gave the cameras out. No one had to buy a camera. This is key because brands often want to make the participants of the contest their customers. What they should be doing is using the contest participants to generate buzz for the product like Flip is doing. Set people up to participate. Introduce a lot of steps or even a purchase to participate and your contest is done for.
2) The questions are general yet have direction. We work with a lot of would-be contest creators that want people to do "whatever they want". The thing is, no one will participate if you do that. It's like sitting down an artist with a piece of paper and saying "draw something." Direction is good. Tell your participants to follow a loose plan. Get too specific and you'll lose people too, general guidelines work best.
3) You can see the other entries. People who are participating in a contest want to see their competition. Period. They aren't going to dig through YouTube looking for them either. Create a nice, organized place for the videos to be displayed.

~~ Caitlin