Subtitle: “We care not about your stupid photo idea, just deliver us eyeballs and page views for our branding and ad revenue.”
A few weeks ago I first heard about an upcoming photo contest, Name Your Dream Assignment, where you could win $50,000.00 to photograph your winning idea. Sounds great, right? I thought so. Then today, someone posts a promotional announcement on Linked-in, where he proudly touts, “It’s the idea that counts.”
Well, I’m sorry, but that just smacked me in the face of hypocrisy. You see, just the other day I got a promo email from the contest, saying that only the top-20 vote getting ideas will be considered for the prize. What this really means is that it’s not about your idea, so much as your ability to drive eyeballs (read: votes & voters) to their web site. What about all the other photographers out there who have truly great, inspiring, and worthy ideas that should merit consideration, but who don’t posses any grand social-networking skills? Why should they even bother entering? They’ve already lost if they don’t have a blog network, a fan following on a photo-sharing site, or some other means of delivering a thousand or more votes for their idea. But someone with the ability to drive thousands of eyeballs to the site stands a chance to win fifty grand for his idea to shoot dissected frog-guts dripping off children’s faces in the 10 most affluent neighborhoods in the US.
IOW – you have a great and worthy idea for a $50k dream photo assignment? Well, tough crap if you can’t bring them enough eyeballs.
Shame on these guys for their spitting in the face of all these other photographers, without giving them any other chance to have their idea considered or given the slightest bit of merit.
< ! ---END RANT! --->
Gary,
I saw your post and I thought you brought up some good points that I am sure others are thinking about as well. I work on the Dream Assignment contest and was hoping you would be open to a response on some of your thoughts?
When we were designing the rules for the Name Your Dream Assignment contest, we spent a great deal of time trying to figure out how we could make the contest as transparent as possible. We believe you cannot be any more transparent than allowing your peers to vote on who has the best idea for their dream assignment. Our goal is that anyone, professional photographer or not, can have an opportunity to compete by leaving the voting up to anyone and everyone who comes to the Web site.
We also have put into place that once the top 20 has been chosen by the audience, we have an incredible group of photographers who will serve on our panel to choose the winner of the Name Your Dream Assignment contest. In other words, the person who gets the most votes does not automatically become the winner. The best idea out of the top 20 will be named the winner.
We absolutely understand your concerns that this will turn into a popularity contest, but we have been working very hard to promote and get the word out on this contest and we believe that the most creative and innovative idea will end up winning Name Your Dream Assignment.
If you have any further concerns or questions, I have sent you an email with my contact information on it. Please feel free to contact me at your convenience and thanks again for sharing your thoughts and concerns.
Gary,
In a lot of ways I agree with what you said.
I also see Cord’s view.
I realize this isn’t a charity project from a foundation. It’s marketing. Driving traffic is their primary goal; promoting photographers’ dreams is not their primary goal.
I accept the necessary evil to drive traffic. My grief is more with the design of the web site itself, which continues to reward the top 10 (and to a slightly lesser degree the top 100) people over and over simply by their visibility, by showing their ideas on every page. I think this is where the contest doesn’t work or wasn’t carefully considered.
I don’t have a better suggestion, but then again that isn’t my job, that’s the marketing company’s job.
Good luck to the participants and the companies.
I agree with Gary and the “me” user above. The method of obtaining the top 20 is completely a popularity contest. It’s all a matter of how many people you know on facebook, myspace, etc.
The layout of the site definitely doesn’t help either:
“Random” tab: Halfway into Day 2 of the contest, there is already only about a 1/100 chance (1000 ideas @ 10 per page) of appearing on this page when a user visits. This is fine as it’s a random list. However it totally disappears when specific regions are chosen.
“Most Recent” tab: this is the only page that gives fresh low-count ideas some face time before they are cycled off.
“Most Commented” tab: directly correlated with the top in ranking.
“Most Popular” tab: speaks for itself.
Most importantly, the visitor is naturally attracted to the top 10 list on the right side, giving them even more visibility and generating even more votes.
Seriously, how many people are going to click through all the nearly 400 “worldwide” ideas and vote that way? It also doesn’t help that users cannot easily access the LEAST voted ideas except for clicking “Next” 100 times to get to the last page with the least voted ideas. No loop around arrows. No page number jumps.
We are not the only ones troubled by this: http://www.flickr.com/groups/usnationalparks/discuss/72157614676866875
Basically if you do not have an online social network, then forget it regardless of how good your idea is.
Gary,
I agree with you 110%. I am not a photographer but I am married to a wonderful one. She has entered the contest, literally posting a dream she has had since she was 10 and it will probably lose because she lives in the real world. The real world in which I work, she works, we have 2 kids, a mortgage, and our parents dont pick up our tab each semester…Wow, the top 20 make it, and right now the top 15 of 20 are “vacation” dreams. I don’t want to bash anyones idea but why vote for a top 20? Why couldn’t THEY decide on a top 20 AND then let the public vote? Oh thsts right, because as you said Gary, they want eyes on the site. Too bad last time I checked 99.9% of the “eyes” belong to college kids who could care less about the site, the product or any of the other people except there buddies. I don’t know how many of them are actual consumers or future consumers of the “product” but I am sure the company was told they would be “loyal” customers for life….Well good luck sending out emails to hundreds or ghost accounts that were created to vote and ONLY vote for there buddies. That should make for a GREAT story when they realize none of there promotional aspects worked just cause they got myspace or facebook “time”. They forgot the ONLY formula that sells: Senseless violence+sex+drugs-responsibility=18-24YO’s full attention span…which is about 3 minutes these days… But hey atelast some college kid will have the best dam “What I did on my Summer Vacation”essay for there speech class this fall semester.
Cord,
Gary’s right. Let’s face it, there’s no way to put a spin on it. As someone earlier pointed out, 15 of the top 20 are vacation dreams. I’m sure the panel of judges will chose the most “creative and innovative” out of the top 20, but to me, it just means the judges are too lazy to weed out the best of the bunch. By relying on popular vote, your judges are not going to judge the best 20 entries, only the most popular. I don’t think the public would have minded if industry professionals had chosen the final 20. And even if the judges had chosen the top 20, everyone would still have had a fair chance. Most people aren’t logging into that slow site to peruse and find their favorites. They only go to vote for who they know.
Gary:
First of all, I want to say I agree with your statement the NYDA website definitely has its flaws, in terms of new ideas being shot to nowhere land without enough votes. There should be a better way to sort through ideas, indeed.
However, what you may not know is that there were several emails sent by the NYDA contest prior to it launching, emphasizing the importance of getting your ideas posted ASAP to maximize voting time. There was even a countdown timer posted to their homepage the day prior to launching!
What this means is that any entrant (such as myself) was given plenty of time and forewarning to put a plan in place to spread the word, and get votes out.
I’m sure in your pre-“Enlightened” days, you understood the importance of Grand networking skills in order to get thousands of eyeballs to view your work.
It’s an obvious fact: ANY aspiring photographer with an ambitious dream is going to need:
1) An ultimate vision of what they hope to accomplish.
2) The technical skills and talent required to gain interest and produce compelling images.
3) Equally important, a network of friends, fans, and followers – to help spread the word and get the visibility necessary to put their dream into action.
My point here is that the road to fulfilling any dream is going to be filled with countless challenges. For aspiring photographers such as myself, one of the biggest challenges is getting noticed, period.
In that regard, the Name Your Dream Assignment contest truly does provide an opportunity for those that came prepared for the challenge. The fact that some of are part of a generation that utilizes popular networking websites should not in any way be a detriment to the ultimate goal of this competition – to turn one’s dream into a reality.
“Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
-Mark Twain
Gary and Friends:
You were right, the contest was a failed attempt. More than just a “popularity contest,”, it totally turned into a race of who could get enough people to create email addresses, to then register as votes, to ultimately end up in the top 20.
Email sent to the Team, explaining my Closing Thoughts. Not that you are that interested, but after being disqualified from the competition, in 2nd place, with less than 10 minutes of the voting period remaining, I feel compelled to do something here. And I’ve had about 10 beers since.
>>>>>>>
Dear the Name Your Dream Assignment Team:
Thanks for the disqualification. I definitely understand where you are coming from. Although other ideas’ supporters undoubtedly utilized the same technique of creating email addresses, we were just ridiculously obvious about it. No worries. Look at it from our point of view. We were pushed into a corner, and had no other options, because falling below #20 was not acceptable.
Overall, I blame it on a poorly designed contest infrastructure. The voting process was (for those not well-season) relatively confusing, and undoubtedly deferred a lot of potential voters from placing their ‘PIC’. The end result was negative in that only those individuals that were involved in the contest were voting. (By involved I mean they were either part of an entrant’s network of friends & supporters, or personally engaged in the competition.) This made accumulating votes from outside visitors very challenging, and frustrating.
Consequently, entrants began condoning creating emails to accumulate votes. How else is a poorly worded idea, explicitly proposing to photograph children “testing their blood sugar or injecting insulin” going to be in 1st place? Think about it.
It’s a shame that this is what the contest resulted in, and I assume the judges will realize this when they sit down to review the Top 20. For me, the initial impact of dedicating over a month of my life to a dream that ultimately was “disqualified” is a tough pill to swallow. In the end, however, it will just motivate me that much more to turn my dream into reality. And ultimately it will benefit my vision, because it will be something I do on my own, not under strict control of a large corporation with alterior motives.
I wish you best in the marketing opportunities that may arise out of this unsuccessful attempt at a photography competition with such great intents. Who knows, maybe we’ll pass the Shutter Sisters in Nepal on our way up Everest. Or the LGBTIQ’s in Holland, on our way to capture some previously undiscovered windmill photography in HD. (Good thing I’ll have my Mac.)
I respect all of you involved with this competition for helping ultimately turn one’s dream into reality. For the rest of us, however, the reality remains that the path to accomplishing our dream is an incredibly challenging one. Ultimately though, the only thing holding any of us back is ourself.
Thanks for the opportunity, and most importantly for giving me a reason to take the first and most important step in turning my dream into a reality. I look forward to eventually showing the world the potential my dream has. Either way, we’ve got quite the adventure in front of us. I hope to document it accordingly, and should you ever come accross a less expensive, travel-designed Microsoft laptop that needs some product placement, give me a call. I might consider it.
Cheers,
David Huting
“Empty pockets never held anyone back. Only empty heads and empty hearts can do that.”
-Normal Vincent Neal
Hi David:
Thanks for coming back here and posting about your experiences. I’m sorry to hear about the disqualification experience. I’ve heard a lot of different types of “Please” which sounded an awful lot like “pleas” for help voting for their idea.
Personally, aside from the popularity contest aspect, I thought the rest of the contest was good, and I would have enetered myself.
I just didn’t like the “beauty pageant” aspect.
Bst of luck and thanks again for visiting and commenting. It’s very much appreciated.