The online video ad competition held by Specialized Mobile Provider Webtel.mobi has broken all previous records set for video advertisement competitions on ad competition site Zooppa.com. Webtel.mobi appointed social media and marketing companies Unruly Media and Zoopa.com to manage and host the competition, and offered $76,000 USD in prizes, also breaking the record for prize monies offered on Zooppa.
A Webtel.mobi spokesman explained that “For an ad agency to produce one ad would cost around $76,000. Although other companies have offered prizes as low as $500 to online ad producers, we decided that it would be fair value to offer the same amount to “Citizen Marketers” that we would to an agency to do the work. We also opened the competition to any entrant - regardless of the media that they used. Our corporate culture is one of equal opportunities, and to allow personal excellence to reveal itself regardless of financial or other constraints”
When the competition ended last week, Webtel.mobi had received 174 video ad entries from 15 countries, breaking the previous record of 121 entries set by the “Google Chrome” contest at Zooppa. The competition entries also received over 89 000 views – even though they were on a non-public community platform. "Not only did the record breaking prize make this exciting, but the innovativeness and leading-edge nature of our mobile phone product being advertised helped to fuel the creativity,” said the Webtel.mobi spokesman.
At least 100 of the video ads were of high enough quality that they could be put on the air immediately. According to Webtel.mobi, the ads that they received would have cost several million dollars to produce via an ad agency, and the fact that so many high quality videos were submitted for the effective cost of one video from an agency vindicated their confidence that a fair value offer and open-door policy to the online video production community would be rewarded with high-quality submissions.
With the competition winners being announced today - July 22 2009 - Webtel.mobi will be using the winning videos for an online advertising and branding campaign. They are excited that they were able to match their innovative product with the newest and most innovative way to produce commercial advertising videos. They expect that other companies may follow their lead in collaborating with "Citizen Marketers" to create mainstream international video ads.
The Competition Winner and 5 Grand Prize Runners-up can be seen at
http://console.unrulymedia.com/wildfire/video/aCTMT-1248106784175
The full list of Grand Prize and Community Voted winners can be seen at
http://www.zooppa.com/contests/webtelmobi#contest-info-2
About Webtel.mobi:
Webtel.mobi is a Specialized Mobile Provider whose innovative service allows users to make local, international or roaming calls, or send text messages, from their mobile phones, anywhere in the world. It has the largest geographic coverage of any mobile provider. Its call and text rates are up to 80% less than competitors' standard costs, and can be made directly from any web-enabled mobile phone, anywhere in the world. Information on the Webtel.mobi product is available at http://www.webtel.mobi/pc and the service is available from any mobile phone at http://www.webtel.mobi
Media Contact:
