Last month I interviewed the Web Team over at Fight Hunger I got an email from Cordelia SalterNour telling me that they've selected a winner for their video contest.
A little bit NPTech blog kismet, someone just the other day raised the question: "What's good or useful about user-generated content and what's just entertaining or cute?"
Cordelia's answer:
For us it's perfect - it combines all the messages we wanted to get across in a neat, engaging video. I think our experience demonstrates 100% that creative talent is out there and is equal to (if not better than) commissioned talent.
I think the video is very effective because the message is in a child's and the animation is well done. It isn't too glitzy. It's also an Internet video that I would show my own children. It's never too early to educate them about the potential for social change.
The other entries are here.
UPDATE: I asked Cordelia to share some of her lessons learned and I'm elevating them from the comments because they are very useful:
We had some really high quality coverage across many sectors but in the end had 14 entries. This ties in with something that I think I saw in one of Beth's postings about there being a lot of "lurkers" out there but only a small percentage of people who actually deliver.
The deliveries were great though so no complaints... but you should be realistic about how many people actually participate
Video is a new genre and there is no standard format. Some people wanted to submit in Powerpoint (which wouldn't have been very viral!) Be prepared for techy questions/problems and to help solve them to maximise your entries
You should also keep an eye on licensing and copyright. We made it clear that our contest was using a Creative Commons License and recommended using Revver... but YouTube/Google are the most popular online video services and it's not clear whether they respect the Creative Commons Licenses
The best thing was to see the entries and to see how people are willing to creatively contribute to our cause. I recommend it as a way of tapping into the creative talent of the socially conscious people out there.
Beth asked me what our lessons learned from running the contest are. My thoughts:
We had some really high quality coverage across many sectors but in the end had 14 entries. This ties in with something that I think I saw in one of Beth's postings about there being a lot of "lurkers" out there but only a small percentage of people who actually deliver.
The deliveries were great though so no complaints... but you should be realistic about how many people actually participate
Video is a new genre and there is no standard format. Some people wanted to submit in Powerpoint (which wouldn't have been very viral!) Be prepared for techy questions/problems and to help solve them to maximise your entries
You should also keep an eye on licensing and copyright. We made it clear that our contest was using a Creative Commons License and recommended using Revver... but YouTube/Google are the most popular online video services and it's not clear whether they respect the Creative Commons Licenses
The best thing was to see the entries and to see how people are willing to creatively contribute to our cause. I recommend it as a way of tapping into the creative talent of the socially conscious people out there
Posted by: Cordelia Salter-Nour | January 04, 2007 at 12:58 AM