They may have been shortcomings with the campaign-contest-thing, but putting forward an Encyclopedia Dramatica link to support your point is on par with supporting your theology with pictures of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Xenu.

Consider the source, people.

There are historical contexts that situate our emotions. For example, if Lincoln really believed that, he would have just let the slaves be.

The context of the Cube contest is fascinating and dirty. You won and deserved to win, for sure. But judge’s BF’s and stuff? This ain’t sore losers. It’s dirty Tony’s dirty advertising deed.

Like the 50 winners, this was something we (450) all participated in, dreamed and talked to people about. We created, we shared and we followed. Doing what we could do to win.
Why did I spend 122 hours in 1.5 months on a contest while I worked full time? Because I felt that I really had a legitimate chance to win!

Then to wait to find out we had to wait?

Funny thing was I never received any notification if I won and who else won. I chose not to attend the “party”. Perhaps there are some people who felt (like myself) it not necessary to drive/fly/hotel and time off work to find out if they won a car.
I am not willing to spend more money including the many hours I spent to discover the results considering I felt 95% sure I won.

I sent an email to the company 2 days after the announcement suggesting it would be a classy thing to do by sending out a thank you and a notification of the winners etc…
Response? We are too busy and we’ll get around to it.. blah blah. (still nothing- 3 weeks later)

If you had the time to type that.. you have the time to say “Thank you for participating. Without all of you this wouldn’t have taken off as it has… ” cc. everyone…

I don’t recall the cost involved in an email- Free?

The value of 450 and the traffic that they brought to the site is underestimated and not appreciated and has been clearly indicated as such.

It is now verging on to late for a Thank You. Now it should be an apology for the blunder and perhaps this would appease those of us who feel under appreciated for the hard work put forth to bring awareness to the Nissan brand.
just my two cubicle cents.

Thanks for the reply.

Again, I’m not going to address the legal questions, other than to say that yes, if there are issues, than this may turn in to a very negative branding exercise. But, until then…

I don’t agree that word-of-mouth is free. This is the most challenging kind of marketing — anyone can create and buy space for ads. Creating deep brands that consumers connect with, engage with, become loyal to and recommend is much more difficult.

Some of my favourite examples of this are:

1. Dell Ideastorm
2. Goldcorp’s gold mining
3. MyFootballClub.co.uk
4. The YouTube Symphony

When customers are passionate about the brand, they contribute regardless of the call to action from the brand. Brands have to decide how to use this for their own and their consumers’ benefit.

By the way, thanks for the comments everyone. Great discussion.

Now, time for my little bit of honesty. I don’t know if it’s just me, but I find your writing a little wordy. It could be just the fact that I have a different writing style than you, but whatever, that’s besides the point.

Regarding the contest, you have to look at stuff beyond just the face value. There have been a lot of issues with this contest as well. As a result of those issues, I do not believe that “the bar’s just been raised for ’social media marketing’”. In fact I believe that they have done a very good job of showing what you should not do in this new marketing realm.

I agree that they did a lot of things right! They did a really great job right from the beginning, however, that quality drastically decreased by the end of the contest, culminating in many “undeserving” winners. Not all winners were “undeserving”, I wouldn’t even say that a majority were undeserving. However, there were many that were. I have read allegations that one of the Judges had been promoting 4 of her employees who were in the contest (supposedly one of which was an ex-boyfriend, and another a current boyfriend), and 3 of those 4 people won cubes. Now I hope that this is not true, but if it is, then there is a serious issue of conflict of interest. A judge for one thing should not be ‘helping’ a contestant whom she knows, and whom she will also be deciding whether to award a car to or not. Regardless, my point is that there were many people that should not have won cars.

Do not get me wrong, I am not saying that I deserved to win. I merely feel that this contest could have been something great, had they stuck with what they initially stated. The moral of this story is that the great thing about social media is that word of mouth is free for the advertiser, and that it is a great way of spreading news, and often to a very specified target market. On the other hand, social media can be extremely detrimental to a companies brand image, and customer loyalty if they start to do things that many involved view as unfair. As we all know, bad news travels quickly!

As for the participatory prize, I know that many times contest prizes, even for winners, sometimes take months to process. It’s an unfortunate aspect of this type of marketing that I’m sure will progressively get better as corporations become more accountable. That said, I don’t know anything specifically about this secondary prize from this contest.

@Jack – And now I have.

The Encyclopedia Dramatica piece seems like a very long-winded rant by one or a few who didn’t win the contest. It’s an unfortunate list of personal flames that I have a hard time taking seriously.

There are a few legal accusations too, that I can’t and won’t address — it’s very much not my place. As for the questions of creativity and merit, I think the winners produced exceptional work, and there are always debates like this when this type of a contest occurs.

When the contest was first announced, it occurred to me that this would be quite a commitment for entrants. But, there were many entries, and these contestants new what they were getting in to. It’s up to Nissan Canada and Capital C to mitigate any bad feelings around the contest. They may have created a monster, but, assuming the contest was legally sound, I doubt it.

@Brian Alkerton – Perhaps “constantly” and “annoy” are too strong, but I would say that on Facebook and Twitter, whether you’re following just close family and friends or 3000+ there’s noise. Quite a bit of it, that you skip without interaction.

I think the “self-promotion” aspect of this contest falls into the same category as any self-promotion. It is up to the individual user to manage their social currency and impact on their social sphere. If the mechanisms of the contest were anti-social in any way, then the contest and the brand would (or perhaps will) suffer.

I wonder what other areas companies can source talent for?

Simply put, while I have no doubt the majority of hypercube winners are wildly creative, active in social media, and dedicated to building a great community around the product, a number of the choices are pretty questionable, with some winners having pretty clearly violated the contest rules, and others having seemingly little to no interest in the community aspects of the competition.

I’m in total agreement with you that it was a bold campaign for Capital C to suggest, and for all it’s worth I think it eventually will pay dividends for Nissan, but it was not the success it could have and should have been, and I think a number of people ended up with a sour taste in their mouth. Moreover, I disagree with your assertion that “social media users are constantly pushing out posts and tweets that may annoy some, but be useful to others.” While I agree that not everything a person tweets is going to be of value to me, I can acknowledge that it has value to others. Self-promotion to win yourself a car doesn’t meet that test. Who else benefits if you win a car?