This article covers:
- What perks are
- How to navigate a tight budget
- Understanding how to support your applicants
- Running a public vote
The building blocks
Knowing what you are offering those selected for your competition is key.
Perks can be made up of a mix of any of the following:
- Money (e.g. £12,000 of prize money to be won)
- Space (e.g. Get your art on the walls of the Tate)
- Resources (e.g. Get a free week of ARRI Alexa to hire)
- Kit (e.g. Win a tablet)
- Prestige (e.g. Have your work seen by Yinka Shonibare)
- Exposure (e.g. Get featured to our 1,000,000 strong audiences on Instagram)
- Experience (e.g. Have your portfolio reviewed by our creative director)
- Purpose (e.g. Make a case for the importance of gender diversity)
- Time (e.g. Takes 5 minutes to submit)
Fostering diversity & inclusion
Be aware of the needs of the community you aim to serve. Some of the perks above will be of no value to them if they can’t access them (e.g. space that’s too far from home).
Perks on tight budgets
When we think of rewards, we tend to think about money. This isn’t the case, you can absolutely run a competition on a very tight budget by offering alternative rewards.
Have a think about everything you already have available to you – is it a link to a high profile artist who could give you an hour of their time? Is it an unused space or kit you have? Do you have a good social media following (it doesn’t have to be large, it might be high-value individuals who buy art)? It could also be free tickets, feedback on a portfolio or kit from your shop.
Everyone has something they can offer, being creative and putting together a list will allow you to discover the value your organisation already holds without spending any money.
Fostering diversity & inclusion
Again, knowing the needs of the community is key. Money is agile and allows winners to buy what they need. But what they might need is training.
What’s in it for me?
Answering “What’s in it for me” as quickly as possible in your communications is key to getting candidates to engage further.
If you have many perks, list them in order of most valuable to least valuable and focus on the top one when pitching your opportunity (cramming too much in your pitch makes it difficult for candidates to digest the information and take action). Candidates will discover the others once you’ve caught their attention.
There is an exception – when advertising your call out on social media, you can mention the other perks, but be sure to mention only one perk per post. This will help keep your content fresh and allow you to gain better traction by advertising certain perks to certain audiences.
Be clear
Exposure means nothing (just like money means nothing). Each one of your perks needs to be defined in enough detail to ensure candidates see the value of what you have to offer.
Can be improved
“We will give you exposure!”
Better
“Your work will be exclusively featured to 24,000 UK based art collectors”
Find a way to prove what you have to offer is true (get a high profile judge to tweet their involvement, add a link to readership stats, have a good website, publish testimonials by past winners…).
If you are not already established; you will need to go that extra mile to prove you can hold true to your promise. Telling candidates you will feature them to thousands of potential buyers when your social media following doesn’t reflect your promise will lead to candidates losing trust, and often being very vocal about it. Candidates will do their due diligence so don’t be tempted to cut corners.
It’s better to under-promise and over-deliver
Proving your worth will become less important as you run more opportunities, but be sure to capture testimonials from winners as soon as your call ends to include them in future opportunities and galvanise your credibility.
Fostering diversity & inclusion
Being clear at the onset means candidates are clear on the outcome. The last thing you want to do is disappoint a community which is already feeling hardship – they will never submit again.
Balance effort & reward
The rule of thumb is the more valuable your rewards are, the more thorough your application process can be.
If you can’t offer much, then make submitting as quick as possible
However, giving valuable rewards shouldn’t excuse you from making the application process as simple as possible, so do review the information you require from candidates and trim it down.
Fostering diversity & inclusion
Time-poor candidates will not take a risk on applying. Shrink your process as much as possible, and be sure to let candidates know how long applying will take at the onset.
Alternative structures
You might want to consider alternative structures to having just one winner – this could be rewarding your shortlist or the runners-up. Even small things like feedback on their work, or featuring the 10 best could be invaluable.
Winner takes all leaves many with nothing.
You could even use that as a way of marketing your own services, offering a free coffee in your shop for taking part, or a 25% in your shop. You might even be able to engage with other local brands who might see what you are doing as valuable to them (free marketing) – why not reach out to them and see if they would be happy to offer a discount on their kit for all candidates?
Fostering diversity & inclusion
You cannot support a whole community by giving only one person a reward. Try an find how else you can create value for some of the others.
Supporting the others
What about all those that were not selected?
It’s impossible to reward everyone, but it isn’t impossible to make everyone feels valued.
Make sure to email everyone who took part and remind them of your appreciation for them taking part. A little empathy goes a long way in building a relationship with those you serve and is likely to inspire them to submit again to your next opportunity.
Fostering diversity & inclusion
For communities used to being overlooked, the feeling of rejection might be felt deeply and will stop them from trying in the future. If you really want to help a community you have a duty of care towards them – make sure they know they are valued regardless of the result.
Rewarding a public vote
Some opportunities reward a candidate based on a public vote. This is a great way of creating engagement with communities and get exposure to your brand.
When doing that be mindful of what you offer the public vote winner – giving a large amount of money is likely to lead to foul play. Although you can identify some types of fraud, it doesn’t cost much to buy votes from click farms.
Offering large cash prizes is likely to inspire some to go that route – however, alternatives to cash are likely to stop this practice (click farms don’t accept exposure, experience…)
Fostering diversity & inclusion
Giving the public vote to those who can afford to pay to cheat is bound to put people off engaging with the competition. Making sure there is no monetary incentive to cheat the system creates a more equitable system.
Finally
The success of your opportunity is pegged to creating value for the audiences you serve. It doesn’t have to be expensive, it doesn’t have to WOW (unless you want to generate PR with it), but it has to be of value to those who submit.
Making sure candidates know what they get if they win allows for more submissions, and will have a more positive impact on winners once they are selected. This puts you in a good position to build positive brand recognition and scale your ambition with future call-outs.
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