@dvocable

Once upon a time before Facebook, there used to be contests by brands on newspapers or magazines, like ‘I love XYZ because____________’. You have to complete the slogan in 5 words and could win a prize. Other contests will include a question something like ‘Taj Mahal is in A) India b) Nepal, or c) Australia’. How many of us have participated in these contests? I haven’t at least. But guess there were many participants and these used to be favourite of marketers.

Now during this age of Facebook, those contests have their 2.0 versions. Upload a photo of yours and get likes. Tell us why you think you want to go to XYZ and win prizes. There will always be takers for such contests but I personally wont want to participate. Probably I think they are silly. None of my colleagues or friends, at least in the the working class, would participate. But still today you will see so many contests like this on many Facebook pages of brands. Even if the brands are for people in college, let’s say, I wonder if they don’t want more exciting contest than ‘uploading their pictures’?

So it was refreshing to see Flipkart’s a little different puzzle on its Facebook page called the ‘Six Degrees of Connection‘. As a digital marketer, the thumb rule was to always make easy questions to get many participation. Now here is the complete opposite. I don’t know how many people participate on this difficult puzzle but Karthik said the contest have grown well. Well if they want to engage their fans with meaning, maybe this will do the trick. I won’t mind myself seeing participating in this type of contest as there is some ‘challenge’ and some’ intelligence’ in it. What I think about Flipkart’s contest is though instead of vouchers, they should give some acknowledgement, online or offline, or souvenirs. Participants might want to show that off the souvenirs to their friends more than trying to win Rs.500 vouchers.

Months back, a movie blogger colleague, Shrey mentioned about a movie quiz of Flixter where they asked difficult movie questions. He said you really have to know a big deal and remember scenes from movies to answer those quiz questions fast. Sample this: In the movie “The parent trap” where did the two twins meet?

Saw any intelligent contests on Facebook that you want to share?

Similar to uninteresting and unintelligent contests, one type of engagement I think is in danger of losing steam is the cause related campaigns. Every brand is trying to gain a ‘like’ or ‘a share’ by caring for the environment or some other cause that I don’t know how much value these campaigns still hold. Unless it is very strong and genuine, like the Earth Hour, most of us are not going to be easily convinced.