What Rickrolling Can Teach Marketers About Running Successful UGC Contests.

Way back in the dinosaur days of the web when I was part of AOL’s infamous Greenhouse incubator, we all knew the one surefire way to increase our site traffic: run a contest.

Those early online contests — circa 1995 –were largely bland, boring and limited by lack of bandwidth. An even bigger speed bump to creativity came from Legal. Most corporate lawyers were petrified of the wild wild West of the Internet, with the ever-present possibility of utter chaos and brand destruction, so we were channeled into fairly wimpy, easily definable sweepstakes and mini-giveaways. To counter this, I ran one of the first primitive ventures into Branded Entertainment: a popular chat room game called Play Z Magic Word starring cyber game show host, Chat Pat. We gave away goodies such as free AOL hours (believe it or not, LOL-ing used to cost $2.95 per hour ) Wonderbras, books and Nordic Traks. Given that we never failed to pack them in, AOL’s TOS (Terms of Service) patrol was on 24/7 alert with the attorneys on standby, shaking in their Brionis.

We now realize that this Lawyer Hysteria was not completely unfounded. Their paranoia about rampaging bands of Internet outlaws burst into ear-shattering reality this spring with the Internet phenomenon known as Rickrolling. According to Wikipedia, Rickrolling is a prank and Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up.” The meme is a bait and switch: a person provides a Web link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video.

By late spring of this year, YouTube’s top Rickrolling videos had been viewed some 30 million times, while a national survey reported that at least 18 million American adults confessed to being Rickrolled. A quick search will reveal that such random entities as the New York Mets, Scientologists, Michelle Obama, the Pittsburgh Pirates and a Fox television anchor have been punked as well. Rick Astley’s old record label is reportedly considering producing a new ‘Greatest Hits’ CD.

So what should you do if your company is considering tapping into the high buzz but equally high risk area of User Generated Content-based contests? Other than making sure your attorneys are on speed dial?

First let’s look at why your company might want to create a UGC contest. As noted above, online contests are reliable traffic-generators with the power to dramatically increase your customer database, generate buzz among pivotal psychographics, and even help boost your community. They tap into the growing do-it-yourself trend with its legions of Creative Consumers wanting their 15-minutes of fame (and possibly fortune) via mash-up, photos, videos, songs, ideation and brainpower. All you have to do is tune into American Idol’s yearly coverage of their auditions to see upclose-and-personal the millions who believe they should share their talents with the globe.

User Generated Contests offer prizes that range from major to mini, everything from cash to ’star’ turns on TV commercials, reality shows or music videos to gadgets, gizmos, spa trips and CDs. They work particularly well for launching anything new, from a new benefit or feature, to a new product itself, especially when that product is trying to move into new territory.

Lessons learned from the Rickrollers:

Lesson 1: Plan for the worst case scenario
Assume that your contest is likely to get hijacked by the next new Rickrollers. So carefully build your contest rules with risk in mind. A clause that allows for an out of some type, that puts the ultimate decision-making power back in the hands of the sponsor if a Rickrolling-style prank occurs, should head off a problem. The Mets were savvy enough to have envisioned the possibility that leaving the winning song completely up to the fans could result in an entire season’s worth of Rick Astley.

Lesson 2: Be Transparent
Today’s technology makes it easy for a site to show the contest in action –how many clicks, downloads and entries have been received, who might be winning or lagging behind. We have generations of online users trained in rankings, ratings, polling and page views from everything from gaming to YouTube to iTunes to social networking quiz widgets. So when this is information is fuzzy, confusing or unavailable, it’s not only suspiciously opaque, it can inhibit potential buzz or viral activity. A recent uber-cool contest, smartly conceived and designed by a newly-resourceful Getty Images, directed contest entrants to post their own cause-related advertising using Getty’s encyclopedic collection of everything from classic photography to video. Getty then provided tools that seemingly encouraged viral interaction. However, there was no real explanation as to what the posted numbers meant or how many votes each entry had gotten. From what I could tell, there were many worthy and creative entries yet this lack of clarity certainly deterred me, and likely, others, from viralizing this contest. I needed to see a clear path from submission to polling to refining possible winners to victory.

Lesson 3: Design A Target Specific Contest
Successful contests are seldom one-type-fits-all. The type and format appropriate for a Dove UGC contest might not be the appropriate format for an MTV contest in which the prize is an evening with Tila Tequila. So carefully design your format, your prize, and (of course) your microsite to fit the specific user you want to attract. And while you’re at it, consider how your chosen target feels about the viral aspects of your contest. Some consumers actively enjoy seeding your brand’s message — and in fact, quite a few of them find Rickrolling a hoot — while others are turned off by anything that smacks of ‘Send This To A Friend.’

Lesson 4: Continue The Conversation

Just because the contest has ended, there’s no reason not to keep the conversation going. Make sure the winners’ content is posted and consider creating a gallery of other entries. Nuture this new and thriving community that took the time to share their passions and talents with your company. After all, the primary reason to create a contest in the first place was to boost the level of engagement with your brand and ultimately develop relationships with your best customers.

Lesson #5: Call in the right experts

The world of online contests is about 180 degrees more complicated than when I was playing Chat Pat and giving away AOL hours to chatters who said Z Magic Word.  What with Rickrolling and whatever’s coming next with the old warez gang, the smartest move a marketer can make when it comes to UGC contests may be to call on the pros.  One of these is Votigo,  which uses high-engagement social media technology to come up with creative solutions for their clients, most notably contests based on user generated content. Votigo is run by an ex Yahoo – which makes me decidedly biased due to my long stint as market research vendor for the Purple.