Well the "contest" is over....

With all my efforts I couldn't crack the top 10. I was in the local paper, in my college's alumni magazine, asked my FB friends and linkedin contacts to vote and get the word out everyday and my biggest exposure was a live interview on the number one morning station in Denver:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADlXaTKbf2A

I was frustrated that my video was getting far more views than products that were appearing in the top ten. It became clear the contest as it is structured is not really contest about what is the best product for Walmart but who can get the most votes. These votes don't even have to know what your product is or does. Any many of the voters were voting with out watching the videos.

Yes, I got some exposure and did sell some of my products. I enjoyed figuring out how to get my message out but in the end I don't think this contest was set up very well. I now understand why other online contest have a panel of judges to narrow the submissions to a manageable number so it the contest is really about the BEST idea/product.

I will go back to growing my small business slowly.  If you would like to know more about my bath toys please go to www.ZooPoo.com

12 days into the contest and I'm dazed and confused...

So I am sure many of you have been trying to get votes everyday.  I have had hope with all the marketing I have been doing and having my friends and friends of friends vote that I would pop up into the top 10 but it hasn't happened.  I sent Walmart an email asking for the vote counts so I could see how far behind I am. THey sent a note back saying at this time they do not display the voting counts.  The only positive thing I can say about the contest/top 10 is everyday there are a couple new (never been in the top 10) videos on the list.  Which means that 1 days activity can get someone enough votes to springboard them way up the rankings.  


However here are some of my other observations.  Many of the video that have been in the top 10 have only less than 300 views?  How can product be getting views with out people watching the video?  some of the videos in the top ten I watch and think, You have to be kidding me! (This one is NUMBER 4!!!  http://youtu.be/Bb7lmSLxxMs )  This morning's top 10 has company (Grasshopper Outdoor Products) that hold 3 of the top ten spots.  They entered 3 videos and they hold spots 3, 6, and 7!  They average videos for these videos are just 500! 


I am very frustrated by the lack of details for the voting.  I can't wrap my head around how many votes these videos have.

Day 1 of voting is in the books and I am confused

I was following the leader board yesterday and there were 3 updates with the products bouncing into the top and others boucing completely out.  How many votes does the top video have? Walmart doesn't say.  Here is what is strange.  The top video this moring is for a product called "Wholly Salsa." I watched thier submission on youtube and the video only has 72 views!   The #2 vote getting is simalar with only 80 views!   This is definately a popularity contest.  If you have the contacts and can get them to vote for you it doesn't matter if they watch the video.  I am still in the motion of promotion.  Trying to get as many people to vote for me as possibile.  Good Luck eveyone!

Still some small change...We are now at 4,056 videos!

Well the folks at Walmart are still working on the contest.  We are now UP a couple videos and still waiting for our voting rules email. Geez, I thought for sure we (the contestants) would get some time to understand the voting rules.  I want to make sure I follow them.  How many times a day can I/someone vote? can we only vote for one product once or once a day? can only vote once per device/computer/ or once per IP/MAC address?  Maybe once per YouTube account?  Can I do a give away for votes? Can I send visitors to my Walmart page from my website? I am guessing we will get and email some time tonight about voting.  Looking at what other contestants are doing for promotion I think many that will be recruiting people to vote for them will be able to get to 100 votes.  I think getting to 500, 1000, or 5,000 will be very difficult!  I think the winners of the Doritos' Crash the Superbowl contest were able to get a little over 6,000 votes.  What will it take to be in the Walmart top ten?  I don't know but I would guess over 1,000!  Stay tuned!

We went down by 1 video!

As of Sunday night we are now at 4,051.  This number only changed by one.  This is great news.  Hopefully the videos are now finalized so that first thing Monday morning we get the "How Voting works" email.

A little more movement...

Here is just a quick update.  This mornig we are at 4,052.  That is up 3 videos!  we are diffinately leveling out.    If I have access to my computer I will update this again tonight.  Howver, remember last week they did take the weekend off.  I would imagine they deserve a break this weekend too.


Have a great weekend!

Now I'm REALLY confused?!?

I just did my mid day check on the number of accepted video and the count is now 4,049! We dropped 11 videos! Is Walmart now going back through the video and deleting the duplicates? Did they just remove the broken video links? I wonder what they are up to? Let's see what my end of the day check comes up as.

On a side note, I am thinking a lot about voting. I had assumed the contest would just count the number of people who vote for an individual video. This is where I was really thinking this contest's first voting round was more about promotion than anything else. However what about this ZINGER..... What if each video is rated from 1 to 10 (10 being best) on how much it is liked? Then video's with the 10 highest ratings move onto Round 2 !?!? This is how the Doritos "Crash The Super Bowl" contest was run. The scary thing was is one of the competitors were asking people to vote down other entries! I am really starting to over think this voting. Please Walmart email come soon so I can stop speculating!!!

We are very close to a final number of accepted videos!!!

In the last 24 hours Walmart has only added 10 more videos. Our count stands at 4,060 this morning. This is great news! In the days previous Walmart was still adding 100 to 200+ videos. With only 10 being added in the last 24 hours I think it's safe to assume they are almost finished viewing all 5575 submissions. Let's take a peek at some of the numbers I was following earlier. The first one I was following was acceptance rate. The rate was pretty low. Last I calculated it the acceptance rate was 46%. Today it is at 72% ! I wonder why some video took longer to approve? Technical issues (some video are still broken), Content issues, Manpower to approve videos? I don't think we'll ever know. Whatever it was they are straightening it out. It's great that they are working hard to make sure everyone who entered gets a shot to compete.

I noticed something else on YouTube that I thought was interesting. Do you remember the first Walmart video announcing the contest on GetOnTheShelf.com? YouTube shows it to have only 6,647 views! I find this very surprising. The contest generated 5,575 entries. This means there were only 1,072 views extra views! Heck I was probably half of those :) I find this puzzling! On Jan 18th Walmart made a big splash announcement about the contest and I would have guess the video would have gotten a BUNCH of views from it. I mean as soon as you went to GetOnTheShelf.com the video started playing! Even if you stopped/paused the video, that would have counted as a view. It makes me wonder how many of us competitors are going to just enter it and cross our fingers hoping that our product will win? I would also wager that Walmart will promote the site again asking visitors to vote for their favorite videos.  Will that only draw 1,000 more peopl other than the competitors to the site?

I am really not this much of a math guy but let's looks at another estimation. Right now the GetOnTheShelf.com page is displaying 30 videos, which 4 of them change every 3 seconds. Doing some quick math that means 1 of the 4060 video would flash up in these 30 videos ONCE every 51 minutes!! Then the visitor would have to pick your video out other the other 29 while it is being displayed and vote for it. WOW. I sure don't like those odds.

Ok enough of me and my calculator this morning! I'll check the count and update this posting in the comments section! Good luck all. I hope we receive our Voting email ASAP!!!

By the way I found another contestant blogging about the contest.  Check out their blog:

http://drillbrush.blogspot.com/

and we are now over 4,000!

This morning's count has us at 4,050 videos.  I'll check in on the count at mid-day and again at the end of the day and post a comment to this blog entry for the latest video count.

Now officially I have stopped my quest to watch all the Walmart video entries. However, I do enjoy watching most of them.  So I have still been watching more video's here and there.  While there are a couple companies/individuals who have 2 or 3 video's posted I have found one guy who has entered at least 15 videos! Most are just concepts. He talks to a camera and describes what problem he is trying to solve and then uses hand gestures to describe what his solution would be. I did a little more research on this guy and found out he was the first person to present one of his products on Shank Tank last week (Feb 24, 2012 - Episode #302.)  All I can say is wow! He got eaten up and spit out. Most of them didn't trust this guy.  If you missed it here is a link to that show: 

http://abc.go.com/watch/shark-tank/SH559076/VD55174019/week-6 

Anyway my point is I think people who have multiple products in this contest are going to have to pick one and promote only it.  If you are promoting multiple products you will be splitting your votes.  I actually had 3 videos accepted but I will only be promoting ZooPoo Kids Shampoo and Bath Toys.

Up, Up, and Away!!! We are up to 3,939 as of this morning

This morning we are up another 256 videos from yesterday.  That is still a lot of movement.  We  are most likely not finished yet. I would guess will see more videos added.  Again, all I am doing is reading the HTML code for GetOnTheShelf.com.  I can see when they add videos.  Walmart tends to do a couple updates a day.  I'll check in on it through out today.  

My concern is having enough time to understand the rules for voting.  We are 7 days away from the first day of voting.  With nearly 4,000 video and about 145 hours of content the name of the game will be promotion.  How can each of us get people to vote for our products? How many votes is a lot?  Will large companies who are in this contest simple buy votes (like products by Huggies, OxiClean, Martha Stewart etc.)?  I hope we get the information on voting soon.  I like to make/have a plan!

Still at 3,683

This morning we are still standing at 3,683 videos in this contest. This number could still go up some but it seems to me the people in charge of the "Get On The Shelf Contest" are really on the ball trying to get all the video's ready for the next phase which is VOTING. I am eager to get the email about how voting will work, what rules will be in place to stop people from cheating and to just get the overall details.

The more I think about trying to get through 101 more hours of video submissions the more I think it is kind of a waste of time. I have made it through a thrid of the accepted videos here are some facts:

     Longest Video:                  19 minutes and 14 seconds (plant feed)
     Shortest Video:                8 seconds (tooth brush)
     Average video length:    2 minutes and 11 seconds


Here are some of the most common types of products entered:

- Dog waste

- Taco Stand

- Ipad Stand

- Fishing products

- Camping grills

- Thing to help stop baby/toddlers from droping things

- magnetic photo frames

- truck tie downs

- Ipad stroller holders

- a bottle stand (example stand a ketchup bottle upside down to get every drop)

Most common phrase in the videos:  "There has got to be a better way!"

Although I am kind of addicted to watching the Walmart submissions (I like everyday people inventing items) I am going to abandon my quest to watch them all. The name of the game now is the motion of promotion! We need to figure out how to get our friends and family to vote for us. Can they vote once, once a day or only once per device? Who knows? Walmart does and I am sure all those details will be in our next email from them. 

Have a question for me?  Post it.  Have a great day everyone!

The number of total acepted Video Climbs to 3,683!

Yes there have been another 234 videos added to the Walmart Get On The Shelf Contest. I thought there was a chance that the number stayed unchanged because of the weekend.  Looks like the people at Walmart are back working hard making sure everyone who entered this contest get a fair shot.


I have been back at trying to watch all the videos.  I thought I had caught up a bit and have now watch about 30% of the video accepted into the contest.  I have been keeping some notes and will blog about some of the things I have found in tomorrow's post.  I will let you know the longest and shortest videos I posted earlier are still holding their spots.  The average video length is still right around 2 minute 11 seconds.    Using this average and the new 3683 number for total videos in the contest, Walmart had more than 134 hours of content!  So far I have gotten through about 36 hours!  I still have 100 hours of videos to try to get through.  I honestly don't know if I will make it before the 7th when voting starts.  More to come tomorrow.

Hey they might need a day off or two!

Good morning! I just wanted to quick put an update out. The number of accepted videos has not change since my last post. We have been at 3,449 for the last 2 days. Now as the title of this post states, these guys have been working hard! They could have just taken the weekend off. I'll check for more additions in the next few days. I would guess if we don't see a change through Wednesday, that we can assume that is a final number.

The next big thing we are all looking for is the email about Round 1 voting. Voting starts in 8 days (March 7th, 2012)

The total number of video keep going up....

Today the total number of videos accepted into the contest still stands at 3,449.  We'll have to wait a couple days to see if it stay there or if they continue to add a few more. 

Walmart's "Get On The Shelf" Numbers Update

Quick update. The total umber of video accepted into the contest is 3,267.  That is up 244 from yesterday. This is no surprised here.  We'll see if that number drift up a little more over the coming days. I would guess it will go up a couple more times and then stay flatten out. Once we see this number stay the same for 3 or 4 days in row, we will have our total number of contestants!  Stay tuned for that.


The strange thing is I noticed is Walmart added one more submission on Feb 23.  I wonder how this submission got in on the 23rd? In any case it should be the last one.The total number of submissions 5575!

That's it People, no more submissions!

Ok, I woke up this morning early to check out the new totals.  We have a final number for number of submissions.  That is 5574 video submissions! There can not be any more, so this number is a final.  Congrats to everyone in the contest.  The other number I have been following is the number of videos accepted.  This morning that number stand at 3,023.  However,  on the GetOnTheShelf.com page this morning it states they are still adding a videos that were submitted before the deadline. So the 3,023 number should grow some. Overall this is an outstanding responds to this contest!
 

I'd like to point out that this is only the first year of this contest.  I was also following the Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl"  contest (where people create their own ads and the winner's ad will run during the big game) this year.  This is Doritos 5th year for having this contest.  In year one of the "Crash The Super Bowl" contest in 2007 they had 1065 entries! This year the contest had 6,100 entries.  For this being the first year of the Walmart Get On The Shelf  Contest, we can expect big things from this contest in the coming years.

 

Now follow up on some numbers I have been watching. First of all the longest (19+ minutes) and shortest (8 seconds) videos I found are still holding their spots.  I have also been averaging the length of videos as I watch them.  The average is still at 2 minutes 13 secs.  With 3023 videos in the contest, Walmart Get on the Shelf contest has over 111 hours of video content.  That means it should take 4 days and 15 hours to watch all the videos before voting.  How many people are going to be able to that? 

 

Now let's take a look at estimated odd for moving onto round 2.  As I am viewing the all the video submissions, I have noticed there are a few repeats and a few that are broken. Let's reduce the 3023 videos by 5%  making our entry number 2871. With only 10 videos moving on to Round 2 the estimated odds of moving on are 1 in 287.

 

That's a heck of a lot better than the lottery!  I hope ZooPoo Kids Shampoo is one of the lucky ones!

Quick update...Walmart is reviewing products that might not have made it in at first

In my post from Feb 3rd I said I submitted 3 products and 2 were accepted.  I JUST got the acceptance email for my 3rd product.  This means Walmart is going back over all the videos again making sure you meet their requirements, if so, you're in!  Just thought I would post this right now for people still waiting to hear.  Best of luck to you!

We are coming down to the final hours of Walmart’s Get on The Shelf contest product submissions!

The people at Walmart running this contest have been BUSY!  Really busy.  Here are the updated number as of about 5pm today Feb 21^st.  There have now been 4267 videos submitted to the contest! We have about 24 hours to go.  Will we see this number go to 4500 or even up to 5,000?  I’ll let you know on Feb 23!  The number of product video accepted into the contest is now at 2,516! WOW, and I didn’t think we’d go over 2,000.   We could still get to over 3,000 entries!  I had the weekend off from watching video submissions so I have fallen behind.  I am now through about 20% of the 2,516.  Again I have been keeping track of video length and the new average video length is 2:13 secs.  As you can see every time I watch more videos and average out them out, the play time gets longer.  Using 2 minutes and 13 secs as the average play time this contest now has almost 93 hours of submissions! That is almost 4 days of video submissions! I am starting to wonder if it will be possible for me to get through them all.   I am going to go out on a limb and say that this contest will have over 100 hours of video submissions.  Time will tell.    GOOD LUCK EVERYONE!

All I can say is WOW!

As the time on this first submission phase of this contest runs down the folks over at Walmart's Get On The Shelf are gearing up!  Over the last 3 days they have approved about 600 more videos for the contest.  As of this morning my unofficial count is at 1898! There have been 3228 video entered to date.  Meaning over the last 3 days there are about 400 new submissions.  With 4 days left I think I have to change my estimated total entries from 2000 to 2200! 

I am still making my way through watching all the entries. The longest and shortest videos from my last post are still in the lead but I still many videos to watch.  The change I have noticed is the average video length time is increasing.  It was 90 sec for the first couple hundred I watched.  That number is now 120 seconds.  I am watching them in order of submission (each has a number in their Walmart page URL) and figured the early entries are people who already had videos posted on YouTube they could submit to the contest.  Most of those are typical 20, 60 90 sec TV type Ads. If videos are created especially for this contest they are considerably longer. Now if we redo the estimated total amount of YouTube video time using the new numbers ( 120 Sec x 1900 = 228,000 , then 228,000 / 60 = 3,800 Minutes, and 3,800 minutes = 63.3 hours of Walmart videos!  Almost DOUBLE my last projections!!!! 

 

4 days people!   Good Luck to ALL!

Walmart's 'Get On The Shelf' Contest ends Feb 22nd!

The contest is in full swing.  With just 7 days left to enter Walmart's Get On The Shelf contest now has over 1300 videos entered!!! Last time I posted we were 8 videos from 1000. Well, we have gone way over.

To date, by my calculations there have been more than 2800 videos submitted to the contest.   The acceptance rate has increased to about 46%.  This is up from 36% (based on my unofficial findings from the GetOnTheShelf.com website.)  I am going to project that on Feb 22^nd there will be roughly 2000 video/product contestants.  That is a lot of videos to watch and it will be interesting as to how people will vote. You’ll see in my next paragraph it’s going to be tough for voters to actually watch them all!

As I stated before I am doing my best to watch every single video.  As I am going through them I am taking some notes.   I have a couple updates for the longest and shortest submissions to date. So far the longest video I have seen submitted in a whopping 19:14 seconds long!   I have also found the new shortest video.  This video is 8 seconds long! The average length of the videos I have watch is about 90 seconds.  

I am about 25% of the way through watching all the videos (and more are added every day.)  If we do some projections based on the numbers above we can safely assume this contest has generated enough submissions to run for 32.5 hours without a repeat submission ( 90 sec x 1300 submissions /60 = 1950 minutes. Then 1950 minutes/ 60 = 32.5 Hours) It will someone more that one day and a half just to watch them all straight through (and we still have 7 days for more entries!)

On a side note I have also found a couple companies that have multiple submissions for the same video.  I am not sure how Walmart will handle these.  We’ll have to wait to see.  Let's see what these last 7 days bring.  If you haven't entered yet you need to get on it! Good Luck to all the contestants.

Quick update on Videos

Walmart's get on the shelf contest is VERY close to having over 1,000 videos/product in the contest! I have a couple bits of information to pass along since my last post. First is probably some good news to some people haven't heard if they have been accepted into the contest. Walmart is sequentially adding video to the contest.  This means the larger the number they have for the entry the later they submitted their videos to this contest. I do see the Walmart is adding large number (ie newer videos) but in the last few days I have notice they are going back and adding videos that might have been passed over at first. If you haven’t heard about your video yet….you still have a shot!!


I am still making my way through all the videos. I have noticed not all the videos actually work. There are about 10 that don’t. I also have to update a couple things from my last post. We have a new shortest video. It comes in at 15 seconds! WOW! There is also a video that has Billy Mays doing the pitch for it. This contest is really big boys going against the little guys.  It’ll be fun to see how it develops.