BlogHer, ScrapBlog, Contests, Horses, Pigs, Cows and Braided Marketing

Like Tara Hunt, Scrapblog is a client of mine and like Tara, I usually think contests are pretty lame in a social media environment.  They are often tools of mass merchants trying to resusitate fading brands. But also like Tara, I think the one that Scrapblog has just jointly announced with BlogHer has some interesting twists.

Yesterday, I was at a workshop where attendees discussed the difficulty in
braiding new and traditional marketing together and I expressed doubts
that you could do much of it. In this case, I think they've done
exactly that.I like this one because I think both companies and the user win more than some goofy prize. Here's what's happening.  Scrapblog has long realized that it's primary users are women on line, about three-fourths of them.  Not only that, but they spend more time on the Scrapblog site and make more Scrapblog. BlogHer is the largest community of women online and the people who run it need to keep finding new things that will be either useful or interesting to its millions of users.

So the two companies made a deal and Scrapblog could have employed members of its team to design Scrapblog templates that seemed appropriate for the BlogHer community.  That's called targeting and it's how traditional marketers do it.  Instead, the two companies thought, why not let BlogHer community members design Scrapblogs and have the winner gets a free most-expenses paid pass to the upcoming Blogher conference, a prize you have to assume a lit of BlogHer members would want?

So users get introduced to a creative means of expression.  Scrapblog gets closer to a community that they may be more suited to than say, NASCAR racing fans, BlogHer women get a shot at a free pass and everyone wins. Scrapblog gets user generated content that BlogHer gets to offer exclusively.









Technorati Tags: tara hunt, blogher, scrapblog

Comments

[Tara Hunt]

You know. If I wasn't already going. And Scrapblog wasn't already a client. I would be Scrapblogging like a madwoman towards that trip! :)