We assumed (and, we think, assumed correctly) that we needed to incentivize online users to view our content.  We knew that people interested in Greenland or the Arctic would be inspired about our videos, what what about those who might not ordinarily give Greenland a second thought? An opportunity at free stuff might get their attention.

So, we decided to include a competition. When you think about it, many online campaigns for tourism destinations are actually based around a competition, where the prize is a trip to the destination (Best Job in the World, Snow at First Sight, etc).

Defining the Goals of the Competition
Our number one goal was to increase awareness of the destination.  We knew we were developing great content, we also knew (because we are guilty of this ourselves) how short the attention span of online users is, so we wanted to create a way for people to carefully watch the content, or even watch it more than once.  Secondly, we wanted to capture leads and to learn more about the people interested in Greenland.

Defining the Details
Our competition went like this:

• In five of the six videos we hid a Tupilak (a traditional greenlandic carving).
• Viewers had to spot the Tupilak
• They took a screen shot or wrote down the minute and second at which the tupilak appeared n the film and emailed “us” (tupilak@greenland.com) with their answer – and more than 1,300 people did this over the 6-week course of the contest
• Each week a winner was drawn at random for a weekly prize and the grand prize winner (for a trip to Greenland with Arne & Stefan) was drawn at random from entrants from all the weeks

* In the snowmobiling episode, Rough Riders, there was no good opportunity to hide the Tupilak / we forgot about him so we instead asked “ What’s the Greenlandic word for snowmobile?” (Answer: Qamutit). We had substantially less entrants that week than any other week.

We consulted a lawyer to make sure we weren’t breaking any Facebook rules (the two most important rules when running an FB promotion: you can notify the winners over Facebook and you can’t use Facebook mechanisms, such as  “liking,” or “friending” as a condition of entry or a way to choose the winner.) To be extra safe, we promoted the competition over Facebook, but had people enter (and notified) via email and hosted the rules on a subsite of our website.

Results
Learning about our target markets
We found that we learned a lot about the people interested in Greenland and those who are finding information about Greenland on social channels through our competition entrance process. When contestants entered the competition they had to send an email with their age and country.  We received emails from all over the world from El Salvador to Japan to Poland to Australia.

• ⅔ Male, ⅓ Female
• 18% were males between the ages of 26-35 – a highly desirable adventure segment!
• 10% were women over 46.
• 74 people entered more than once and 13 people entered all six times, including the Rough Riders episode.
• 32% of entrants came from Denmark; the next most represented country was USA with 13% of all entrants;

Ultimately, a 63 year old Grandmother of two from California won the grand prize trip to Greenland.  She won fair and square but we were especially excited because we hope her involvement next year will help appeal to our most captive audience even more.

Having Conversations with Our Audience
When entering the competition, entrants had to email “Inuk the Tupilak.” We gave him a quirky voice, and a slightly mischievous personality.

We had a “canned response” that everyone received, including a small reminder of the competition rules. However, if someone asked a question or made a comment – we responded in kind and this allowed us to engage in some meaningful, authentic conversations with consumers about Greenland.

While the quantity of B2C conversations via the competition was low, the quality was high.

Lessons Learned
1) Sharing
We mistakenly assumed that with a competition, people would be more incentivized to share the content. However, since by sharing the competition they decreased their chances of winning a trip to Greenland, we inadvertently disincentivized people to share the content. Next time, we will include a benefit to sharing or make sharing a condition for entering.

2) The length
Our competition ran for six weeks, which was too long.  Our goal had been to maximise the content we developed, but we saw a steady decrease after the first week of views and competition entries. In hindsight, a two week time frame may have been more appropriate.

3) The prize
Our friend Scott Adams at Birchbark Media has a useful rule of thumb for prizes and competitions – the level of effort to enter should match the size of the prize. We feel that the level of effort needed to enter our competition fit the prize well – and this was a key to success, since the barrier to enter was low and enjoyable and the prize was substantial.

4) Ads
Our competition was purely, 100% social. We did not use any paid advertising.  This was probably a mistake. We could have used a Facebook Ad to promote the competition, and we may have seen higher number of entries.