In addition to FOX, the contest is being promoted and sponsored by AppNation, the first global conference for application developers. It’s no coincidence that the subtitle for the conference is “Show Me the Money”, as independent app developers have long-struggled to truly cash in on the smartphone and i-app craze. This promo sponsorship provides the contest with the credibility it may need to overcome the building backlash against CGA; some feel CGA is just brands taking advantage of free efforts by others, with little investment or responsibility. Will this leap into the application development pool be different, at least for the first few brands that take advantage of its novelty.
CGA began it’s surge around 2007 with the now-famous Dorito’s Super Bowl contest, still going strong and with probably the best level of execution – it’s 2010 consumer-generated Super Bowl ads were ranked #1 by two Twitter surveys, in number of Tweets, TiVo replays and Hulu post-game views. But it’s not a success story for everyone – Chevy Tahoe’s first and last foray into CGA ended up with a slew of negative videos that went viral, all positioning the vehicle as environmentally criminal. Others simply suffer from terrible execution, a la the Folger’s “Best Part of Waking Up” 2010 jingle contest, being held up as proof that CGA has truly jumped the shark. In 2007, AdAge pronounced consumers the “Agency of the Year”. Yet a recent AdAge article about CGA opened quite brutally with these words” “Dear consumer, your 15 minutes are over. You suck.”
FOX, never one to shy away from innovation or risk-taking, has high hopes for Pimp My App, and so far has enjoyed a backlash-free launch. Any search for “Pimp My App” brings up top app dev bloggers and other influencers touting the contest and driving traffic to both the FOX site and AppNation’s. We’ll soon see if app developer contests become a new vein in the crowd-sourcing movement, or if they, like FOX’s ill-fated Tweet-peats, come to a crashing halt amid cries of “foul”. In the meantime, let the pimping begin.