[image-1]
This is a huge marketing ploy for Coach, and people are getting competitive in trying to be number one and win the ultimate prize. Aside from that, it's excellent for whoever participate. I admittedly took it off my blog because it was too distracting and killed my layout, but the traffic I got from it was unbelievable.
Click through "follow the poppy trail" to get to other websites linked with the poppy design and enjoy all the websites you come across. Don't forget to look for the hidden bag.
Pepsi Refresh Project
The Pepsi Refresh Project has been going on for a while now, and revamps with new ideas. I was on the website earlier today and it was actually having a project going on to refresh the gulf communities that were harmed during the oil spill. If you submit your ideas, Pepsi is giving away $1.3 million to fund the execution and completion of these projects.
[image-2]
Pepsi has a history of being eco-friendly and green-conscious, and is using the Refresh Project as an outlet to inspire others in the community to do the same. Their call of action is to strike users and tug on the ol' heart strings to make them think about what they find important, and what others will hopefully deem important too. Users can go on and vote for their favorite ideas that they would like to see happen. Voting contests are typical, but the radical ideas entered in this contest are not.
Sometimes money gets in the way of making truly beneficial moves for the whole community.
Celsius
The Ultimate Workout Challenge, that's being put on by Celsius, uses a different social medium to encourage users to participate. For this contests, the call to action is to submit a video that will inspire and encourage others to join in the fun. Since fitness and working out isn't supposed to be a chore, Celsius is wondering what kind of fun, interesting or serious ways that you workout. Do you like to underwater basket weaving? Do you like hanging upside down and doing crunches from a tree?
This is different from the others because most workout challenges are generally about results- often making people ashamed of submitting themselves. This contest makes it clear that fun is encouraged... and who wouldn't want to enter a contest that involved Mario Lopez?!
Anthony Bourdain
Here's a really interesting contest. Anthony Bourdain's (he's the host of "No Reservations" on the Travel channel) Medium Raw Challenge has a strong social media hub going on, around his contest to help promote his new book, Medium Raw. It's allowing users to answer the contest question, "What does it mean to cook food well" and put their stories up for everyone to read and vote on.
It also shows the site recent activity (and Anthony is actually commenting on stories that go in) and includes the Twitter stream, etc. This is so unique because you don't see many authors (or publishers like Harper Collins) crossing over into the social space to help promote contests.
He's also drawing in fans of his television show into one melting pot of contests essays. I'm sure foodies will love to jump in on this contest and hear what others have to say at the same time.
These contests are not going to be anything new in the near future. Not only have brick and mortar business crossing in the online space over the past few years, but many are getting smart and jumping on a strategy involving social media and contests to help promote and push traffic to their site. They are, however, going to get more creative, which is something that all these companies and businesses have in common. What are they going to come up with next?
