« Curb your enthusiasm | Main | “You talk. We listen.” »
August 19, 2008
How about a video contest?
Many of our clients wonder, “How can we use Web. 2.0 on our intranet without breaking the bank, terrifying our lawyers or letting the inmates run the asylum?”
Here’s a simple idea: Run a contest in which you invite employees to create their own videos to support a theme or answer a specific question.
For inspiration, here are two video contests created for marketing purposes—one involving employees, one aimed at loyal customers. Although not exactly apples-to-apples, the ideas could be easily leveraged for internal communication purposes.
Olympic Spirit of McDonald’s Video Contest
To highlight its Olympic Champion Crew, which includes 1,400 McDonald's employees who have been selected to travel to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games to serve at the venue restaurants, McDonald's has created an online video contest. Members of the Olympic Champion Crew were invited to submit videos demonstrating their Olympic spirit in just five words. The top 25 videos have been posted at osom.mcdonalds.com , where visitors voted for their favorites. The winning videos will be announced in Beijing.
What would you do for a Klondike bar?
The parent company of Klondike ice cream bars, Unilever, has created a contest in which fans were invited to submit videos that support the ad theme, “What would you do for a Klondike bar?” klondikecontest.com has received 500 video uploads, which, after more than 123,000 votes were cast, were narrowed to four finalists. Visitors to the site can not only participate by voting, but can also create a custom Klondike Gram to send to their friends.
What makes these contests successful? They support the brand, of course, and they have specific parameters (especially the McDonald’s contest), so participants know what to do. Plus, these contests are wonderfully inclusive, since you don’t need to make a video to participate—simply vote for your favorite.
Why not give the video contest idea a try? (And for more ideas on using social media to improve your intranet, sign up for my colleague Julie Weissbach's October 7 web workshop .)
Posted by Alison Davis at August 19, 2008 08:57 AM