The Atlas Shrugged Video Contest was one of the most interesting promotions that I had the opportunity to be involved with during 2010. For those that aren't familiar with Atlas Shrugged, it is a novel written by Ayn Rand that was first published over 50 years ago in 1957. It was on many high school reading lists back then and the book has been gaining popularity again, now with a whole new generation.
The Ayan Rand Institute (ARI) sponsored the contest as a way to help promote the new website they launched for the novel and to create awareness of the story and encourage new readers. I started discussions with one of ARI's agencies, Emerge Partners, who I had worked with earlier on a promotion for Microsoft's 2010 Office launch. The Microsoft promotion was the first that we did on Facebook, so they came to me for guidance with this promotion as well.
At first ARI said they were interested in running the contest on YouTube. Instead I recommended to the team at Emerge that we use the Wildfire White Label application which enables videos to be posted utilizing both Facebook and YouTube accounts. I have not yet done a YouTube specific contest and it appears you have to have really big pockets and a really big brand name for anyone there to even answer your inquiries. I've tried several times with no success.
This user-generated contest launched on October 1 and submissions were taken up until December 8th. ARI invited people to submit a video 3 minutes or less that described how Ayn Rand’s epic story relates to current issues in today's society or in their own life. The novel's title is a reference to Atlas, a titan in Greek mythology. Atlas carried the weight of the heavens on his shoulders and in the novel, the thinkers, the innovators, and the doers of the world must carry the weight of a world gone wrong.
One of my roles was to manage the submission process. So I reviewed each entry that was submitted and either qualified it so that it could be viewed on the contest site or disqualified it. There were some that obviously were existing videos that someone wanted to promote that had nothing to do with the novel. A few others went over the maximum length or had some clear copyright issues. However, I was amazed at how many really creative and high-quality videos were submitted. It was clear that participants read the book and then created a video that expressed their views and opinions. You have to take a look at some of them here.
I also had helped the participants that had trouble uploading their video. As with any program, no matter how simple you think the directions are, they can be misunderstood or not clear to some. I developed a reply email that contained additional upload details that I sent to some and then continued the dialog with others one-on-one. I write this because if you are thinking of running a contest, especially a video contest, you need to have someone in this type of role.
I wasn't sure how many videos to expect because ARI is not the type of organization that promotes itself much. They did have it on the Atlas Shrugged Facebook page and there was a link to the contest off of the home page of the Atlas Shrugged website. We received about 125 videos which I was very pleased with this result. Remember, you had to read the book, create a script and shoot the video specifically to meet the contest criteria. So quantity wasn't the goal, but quality and engagement where.
The good news was that ARI was contacted by John Stossel who offered to announce the winners on his show. ARI agreed and the viewer's choice, runner-up, and grand prize winners will be announced exclusively on "Stossel" on the Fox Business Network, January 13 at 9 p.m. and 12 midnight (ET). Apparently all the winners are being flown to the show to appear in person.
So I invite you to view the videos, watch the Stossel Show and read the book. I'll be following up with news on who the final winners are here.











