>> Help needed here - If and when we ran another competition ?

heyjoe
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Sun Jan 02, 2011 7:42 am

As others have said, for this to work, the competition needs to increase traffic on the site, preferably ( I'm guessing) for target sign ups, to increase the revenue stream.

Social media/viral videos etc etc seem to be the most effective way of getting products advertised these days, so I'd say it has to include this somehow- but as has been stated before, it has to be TG and target related-as always the simplest ideas are the best- one stunning viral video takes off and TG gets a membership boost, its a win win situation.

As for prizes, I've notriced people being very specific about prizes, and I had another idea, how about making it less specific so it catches more peoples attention...for examples, the prize is a $5000 voucher to spend in a music store of your choosing. My theory for this being that if you have a micro br, or a cole clark or a taylor already, would winning another one motivate you? or would being a ble to go into a music store and choose exactly what you want be more motivating?

The ideas based around meeting Neil and the TG crew are great, but I see a flaw. People who dont know about this site wont know Neil, and how amazing he is, so may not want to meet him. Think about it, if you saw a competition, and the prize was to meet spomeone you had never heard of, would you enter, or would you be wary?

If the prize includes meeting someone, then it has to be someone well known ( sorry Neil), someone well known in guitar circles, after all, thats who we are aiming for- my first thought, Tommy Emmanuel, a meet and private lesson with him, and a TE signed Maton guitar- now thats a prize that would motivate me!

If we can also tie the competition in to getting more visibility and assistance for Matt Bs situation then I think it'd be a win win all round.

I'll be back when I've thought about this more

Joe


willem
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Sun Jan 02, 2011 8:32 am

@ heyjoe..when i read your contribute i can complete find me in that,,looking forward to your thought on how the enntry(s) could be..(theme(s))..

I must say that i don't know about a money price,,,,cos if the price would be(for example) a micro br,,the firm could be involved and give this as a price(sponsor),,what 'cha think..?


MarkM
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Mon Jan 03, 2011 10:43 am

Hey Matt. Happy New Year. This is a great idea but after giving it some thought it will be very difficult to administer. I'm sure you already know that as well. My humble opinion would be that it should be a TARGET song that should be the basis of the contest. If this is truly to promote the site then the common denominator should be TARGET itself. That's the easy part. The more difficult portion will be how to determine the winner/winners. A couple of ideas to kick around would be picking three catagories with three different winners or finalists. Group the TARGET songs into diffiulty levels. Group 1 could be level 1-3, Group 2 level 4-6 and Group 3 7-9 (as there really isn't a level 10 song now is there). Now that leads us to another mess. Strumming, fingerpicking and classical songs are at different levels for individual players. My guess is that the TG team will have to decide the groupings. So now that we have the groupings we give each member 60 days to learn a new song of their choosing from the TARGET program. Once all the videos are in then its up to a predetermined panel of folks to vote. Now from here the folks that vote will have to consider ones ability before and try to determine how far they have come to learn that new song. Meaning we wouldn't want a a player with many years of expierence to submit a campfire song that is well within that persons ability already. I understand that this will be very difficult to determine. Maybe with a combination of TG staff and outside voters you have have a good team to vote. With all this said there should be some form of "fly on the Wall" or play by play narrative by the submitter as they determing what song to pick and then have a a few clips of them going throught the process of learning the song. This will show really how far they have come on that particular song and promote the TARGET program. Only one entry per person. As far as singing I agree with the other folks that said that shouldn't matter as this is a guitar learning site after all. Not to mention that my submission would have to be scrapped as you wouldn't want my singing voice representing this site :laugh: :laugh: .

OK so that's really only about 1/3 of the equation. Now how to use this as a tool to promote the site. Well I figure it would have to be, to some extent, part of the prizes. Although I love the idea of a new car, that really wouldn't drive new membership unless TG was going to pony up the money for the car (which I don't think TG should or could do anyway). Now the ideas of guitars, recording equipment, trips to CA etc are all great ideas. However to net out new memberships, TG needs to tap into a bigger market of existing players or want to be players. I really think there is no getting around some form of sponsorship by a guitar manufacturer here. We have to look at their side and why they would want to paricipate. They want to drum up brand recognition. Most good quality volume guitar manufactures have a form of a build to order program today. That could be a prize and may spark a bunch of interest from possible contestants. Regardless if it is a BTO or off the shelf model from Martin, Seagull, Breedlove, Cole Clark, Gibson, Collings, Taylor, etc it would be a great prize. So how could/would the word get out? Well all these companies have some form of web presence. If TG can bridge a partnership with one of these companies to co-advertise on both your web pages then that would be a start. As both companies will benefit from this, both should share the risk/funding of the project. Also a possible outcome for the guitar manufacture could be that they could promote the winner at the Summer NAMM show this July in Nashville. The winter NAMM is this month and we don't have time for this now. How would it look if "X" company puts a promo on their website with TG showcasing the contest and the winner gets their new guitar at the NAMM show? Talk about brand promotion!! This could be a pretty good prize and drive brand recognition for both companies. Come to think of it another prize could be a trip to the NAMM in July. How cool would that be?

OK so that is what could happen if a guitar were a prize. As far as recording equipment goes I think it would be more difficult if you are looking for sponsorship from a retail chain. What do they have to gain? That market has very little loyalty to individual chains. Guitar Center, Best Buy, Daddy's Junkie Music, etc., not to mention the web companies like Amazon, Musicians Friend, etc are all players. We as customers look for the best deal. This may have to be done by TG funding it by either buying gear off of EBay or you have a local relationship with a music store that wants to parnter on this and get their own name out there for a regional market. Going back to the NAMM funtion on July, TG may find a willing partner in M-Audio, Line 6 or PreSonus that may want to participate and get some face time at the show by presenting a winner there. You may even what to look at a 3 way partnership with the guitar manufacture and the recording equipment company to go in together on something. These are two existing markets that TG could tap into and there should be enough time if the NAMM event was the target date.

Again just some ideas here that try to hit all the key elements of contestants, partners (driving mutual brand awareness) and TG. Regardless of what you do I think that this could be alot of fun and I'm looking forward to it. Now back to work for me.



MarkM


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