Todd Skidmore pulled out the win with his design. Heather and I, independent of each other, chose his design as the best. The contest was close between four participants, but I liked that Todd made the laces hot pink. Hot pink in the laces will allow me to replace them with black after the wedding. Rolling to the gym with too much hot pink might look a little funny on me.
While I did get some cool new kicks out of the contest for my wedding, I was interested to see the viral effects of the contest. Overall, I was very pleased with the results. The contest ran from March 9th to March 31st. Here are some stats from the contest:
-Over 1,500 hits to my site
-Almost 1,000 unique visits
-Over 20 user-generated submissions
-Trackbacks to multiple shoe blogs
-Twitter helped push my blog up to readers in Beaverton, OR (Nike HQ)
I learned a great deal about how users interact online. However, there are several things that I would have done differently next time.
1) Make it easier to submit designs. The process did cause more problems than I expected. It would’ve been easier to have the users email their designs to me.
2) I wish more public commentary on the design had ensued. I was disappointed with this aspect of the contest.
3) Get more people that bleed Nike to participate.
Thanks so much to everyone that participated in any form! If you tweeted the post, created an entry or simply left a comment about what you liked, I really appreciate you helping me have fun on my big day! It’s going to be fun!
