Would You Create a Video About Your Lip Balm?

According to Forrester’s Social Technographics Ladder, only 13% of the U.S. adult population are social media “creators”. That means that only 13% actively publish or upload to blogs, web pages, or sites like YouTube. But as social media marketers, it’s our job to encourage people to participate with the brands we are marketing. So how much do you ask people to “create” on their own? Would you create a video about your lip balm?

Carmex’s Share the Tingle Video Contest

Carmex Share the Tingle Contest

The idea is that you send in a video about a “unique Carmex story”. They ask that you have a Carmex product in the video or that you use some of the Carmex Artwork that they provide. They have some great prizes. The grand prize winner wins an HD Camcorder, 5 years worth of Carmex, and $5,000. Three first prize winners win the same five year supply, camera, and $500, and five second place winners win a five year supply and a Canon PowerShot Camera. The contest started on June 9th and runs until September 30th. Right now there are 9 videos in the YouTube group Carmex is asking people to submit their videos to, but at least two seem to be ads for the contest.

Granted it’s only half way through the campaign, but as of now they have more prizes to award than videos submitted. But with this type of campaign, seven videos is a huge accomplishment. That’s because they are attempting to find fans of Carmex who would be willing to make a video about how much they love Carmex. And according to Forrester, that is a very small percent of the U.S. adult population. In fact of the thirteen percent of creators, only 48% of them upload to YouTube, the others seem to strictly publish to blogs and web pages.

It would also be interesting to know what Carmex plans to do with these videos after the contest is over. Will the winning video be shown on TV? Or were they hoping to increase their presence on YouTube? It’s always a great idea to do so, but I would love to know what else Carmex is doing in the social media world to accompany this YouTube presence. It’s important that every part of a social media campaign support each other and that each are designed to meet overall brand objectives/goals.

I think it’s great that Carmex was willing to give away such great prizes for this campaign, but I hope that they were aware of the difficult in getting people to be creators in social media, or somebody may be disappointed in the results.

I would love to hear what others’ expectations are for “creators,” as well as whether or not you find the Carmex videos to be interesting enough to watch!



Ignite Social Media