Like a proverbial carrot on a stick, certain incentives can make a person try something they have never thought of doing before. The reward from a contest can be one such carrot.
ASPSU is currently holding a contest called the Student Pantry Extravaganza Contest in which design submissions are accepted for a mural in the Student Pantry. The top designs will be voted on by students in late November.
The contest is open to all students, but print advertising was distributed throughout the art building before other parts of the school.
The reason for this preferential advertising method was the expectation that art students would show the most interest. Grisel Estrada, intern for the ASPSU publications director, said that ASPSU is expecting a big response from the art department.
Contest winners do not always come from a background related to the nature of a contest, but there are still clear advantages to marketing a contest to the people most likely to be interested. Keeping in mind both possibilities is important for contest organizers, especially since there are many more advantages for the organizers than it would seem.
For example, it would seem that giving away a $1 million prize would be a big sacrifice for a company such as 2K Sports when it gave that same amount to Brian Kingrey for winning the MLB 2K11 video game contest in May. By holding this contest, however, 2K Sports invested in extra advertising for its product.
The investment paid off, too. Search-engine giant Google gave the contest extra coverage due to the fact that Kingrey, a teacher who claims he had no prior knowledge of baseball, used Google to learn about various pitchers and rules of the sport.
In comparison, the Student Pantry contest is not just a way to advertise ASPSU, but rather a way to give incentive for participation in campus events.
“We want students to get involved,” Estrada said. She explained that the contest was a way to get to students to want to help out at PSU and to give a space for artistic students to express themselves.
Though there is no cash prize, getting one’s design picked for the final mural would mean recognition for the winner’s artistic capabilities. Certainly this would be very attractive to an art student who could put this in his or her portfolio.
With this in mind, the Student Pantry contest is likely to be successful in attracting submissions.
Besides recognition as an incentive, there are contests with cash prizes that can attract more people simply because money is generally a powerful incentive. Kingrey, for example, probably would not have participated if the prize had been meeting a famous baseball player. However, the large cash prize captured his interest enough to play a game based on a sport he knew virtually nothing about. In this way, cash prizes can succeed in bringing people in from all backgrounds.
The most noteworthy example of the appeal of cash prizes is the lottery. The Oregon Lottery has many games that, for a small fee, could help lucky people win big. Of course, Oregon is not doing this solely for the sake of gambling.
According to the Oregon Lottery website, 84 percent of cash given to the lottery by law has to be given back to the public. At least half of that 84 percent is in the form of prizes, but the rest goes toward funding Oregon’s economic wellbeing. The money goes toward funding new jobs and education, projects like state parks and the development of watersheds.
The categories for these projects and programs, originally approved by votes from Oregon residents, are funded through loans and grants given by Oregon Lottery. The total that has been given since the lottery in this state began is over $7 billion.
This is yet another case in which a contest organizer seems to be giving more than it is receiving, but ultimately the Oregon Lottery makes the state of Oregon the big winner.
This is how contests should be done: boost up participation that will benefit both the participant and the organizer. There is no set way to achieve this, but the method should be determined by considering the main audience.
The Student Pantry contest is a good example of considering where the majority of interest would come from—in this case, art students. There is, however, a chance that someone who is not from the art department would win.
Like in the case of the MLB 2K11 contest, a contest can sometimes bring forward unlikely candidates. However, if ASPSU was aiming to attract a larger crowd, they could have added a cash incentive (maybe in the form of a bookstore gift card).
There is still time before submissions will be due, so we will have to wait to see the type of people the contest attracts.