Back in July, we commented on the Significant Objects project where 100 authors are writing up 100 stories involving 100 various trinkets — and then selling those stories along with the associated items on eBay for a tidy profit. (The project originally struck me as an experiment to see if the one red paperclip stunt could be mass produced in some way as a sustainable publishing business.) Now, just a few months later, Slate has teamed up with the Significant Objects folks with a contest for Slate readers to submit their own 500-word stories about a cheap tchotchke — a BBQ sauce jar bought at a thrift store for $0.75. The contest attracted over 600 stories to be judged by Slate and the Significant Objects founders, and the winner gets the honor of being picked as well as the proceeds from its eBay auction — which has a current bid (and profit) of about $20.
This contest is brilliant in that it not only highlights the concept that every product is a bundle of scarce and infinite goods, but it also demonstrates that content can be used to engage with an audience as a form of entertaining advertising. For the price of a bauble and some editorial judging, Slate connected with its fans and gathered a bit of demographic information on its readers who sent in a story (submissions had to be accompanied by an email address and location). Imagine if Slate had instead put a banner ad on its website with a form to fill out for personal information, the response rate for that would likely be much much lower. But with this contest, the cost of the BBQ jar was negligible, and Slate editors spent their time reading stories and got a peek into the creative minds of its readership. Okay, the drawback is that the submission judging process is actually not a trivial task, especially when there are more than a handful of entries (and more than a couple judges). Even Google hasn’t exactly figured out how to judge its own Project 10100 contest. However, the search giant opened up the judging to let anyone vote on winners to help narrow down the selection. (And there are other examples of crowdsourced judging processes like Threadless’s tshirt designs.) So I envision the next generation of advertising contests reaching out to audiences, calling upon more volunteers, and trying more and more creative campaigns to produce scarce goods out of thin air.
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