The DIY Network, Scripps-Howard’s home project cable channel, said a promotion built on user-generated video and a chance to win a special Burt Reynolds edition Pontiac Trans Am resulted in more than 55,000 submissions in less than eight weeks.
Launched in October, the video contest coincided with the latest season of DIY’s automotive show “Celebrity Rides”, in which Reynolds oversees the customizing of a Trans Am like the one he drove in the “Smokey and the Bandit” movies. Viewers were asked to submit a video showing why they deserved to win the car that Reynolds and team produced. Entries were posted to video aggregator site http://www.Heavy.com for public viewing.
The winner, Spencer Brinkerhoff III of Mesa, AZ, was selected by an expert panel including Reynolds himself and announced on the Dec. 14 episode. The videos will remain available on Heavy.com, a Web site skewed heavily toward user content from young males, for an undetermined time.
The Heavy.com videos were accompanied by banner ads that delivered about 14.4 million impressions for “Celebrity Rides”. In addition, the large number of submissions made “Burt Builds a Bandit” one of Heavy.com’s top 10 most viewed UGC contests of all time.
“Heavy.com’s engaged online audience responded with great user-generated content that showed they found DIY network’’s content…relevant and reliable,” said Robin Ulrich, DIY senior marketing vice president in a statement.
The DIY network has made use of social networks before, most recently in a “Blog Cabin” contest that ran from February through April 2007. In that promotion, Web visitors offered input on designing a log cabin to be built in Townsend, TN. The network filmed the cabin’s construction and then ran a sweepstakes offering it as a grand prize.
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