Dogs and cats can now get something from the home vacuum cleaner besides the fright of their lives.
Manufacturer Bissell Homecare has launched a summer promotion to find the funniest, most athletic, or most talented pet captured on video, with a chance for the overall winner to be featured on its packaging.
The “Bissell Pet Games Video Contest” is keyed to the company’s sponsorship of the 2008 Animal Planet Puppy Games. Bissell will sponsor the opening and closing ceremonies for those games, which will air on Aug. 8 and Aug. 24.
The Puppy Games will feature animals from around the globe competing in events based on swimming, soccer, weight lifting, boxing and gymnastics.
Contestants can submit video of their own pets doing similar activities (or simply mugging for the camera) to the Bissell Web site, http://www.bissell.com/petvideocontest. Once uploaded, visitors can cast votes for their favorites among the week’s submissions. The game will have 10 weekly voting rounds, beginning June 20 through Aug. 14. Judges will then select a grand-prize winner from the public’s 10 weekly picks, based on originality, humor, contest theme and overall appearance.
That blue-ribbon pet will get a chance to be featured on packaging for Bissell’s Lift-Off Revolution Pet Vacuum, and have his or her video posted to the Animal Planet Web site. The winner’s owner will get a chance to direct a $10,000 donation from Bissell to a favorite pet charity. Owners of the weekly winning pets will receive a Bissell Pet Hair Eraser Vacuum, and runners-up will win a SpotBot Pet Compact Deep Cleaner.
On the assumption that entrants will want to get out the vote for their pets, the Bissell contest site allows owners to upload pet photos, add a border and text, and create and order customized stickers with their pets’ faces. A set of four stickers goes for $9.99 on the site.
This is the second pet-centric contest Bissell has run this year. In May the company concluded a photo search for the “most valuable pet” that drew 62,000 entries from January to mid-April and led to 7 million impressions on the contest’s Web gallery. The winner, a Bernese mountain dog from Anchorage, AK, named Brewster, is now featured on the packaging for Bissell’s Pet Hair Eraser Vacuum.
Several other contestants in that promotion—a New Hampshire golden retriever named Bailey and a Baltimore retriever named Dash—put up Web sites to drive the popular vote.
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