Christien Louviere

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!

The response to my Nike Shox Wedding Contest and your chance to win $50 has been pretty impressive so far.

The Back-story…

About 6 months ago while discussing wedding plans with my fiancée, I tried to convince her that my groomsmen and I should be able to wear customized Nike Shox as our shoes for the wedding.  Somewhat of a debate ensued.

“It will look horrible!” she playfully exclaimed.
“Jerry Seinfeld did it!” I anxiously responded.
“You’re not him!” she responded as if she were my mother.
“I’ll make sure all the Shox match the vests.”
“No, it the worst idea ever!” she exclaimed in her customary, enthusiastic and playful 5-year old like pitch.

At that point, I proceeded to work on her friends, thinking that she might seriously consider it if it had some strong XX chromosome backing.  Outside of one that works for an ad agency, the idea never picked up steam; but I did manage to help the girls burn off lots of calories through laughing.

Fast Forward…

Two weekends ago, my fiancée informed me that she had spent $300 on her wedding shoes.

And of course, being made up of XX chromosomes, she can’t help but brag about the “deal” she received, especially since the deal is related to shoes.   This price phenomenon is one of those female conversation starters that I’ve never quite figured out, and I consider my female knowledge slightly above average.  Anyway, she saved some $600 on the “Something Blue” Manolo Blahniks that Carrie Bradshaw wears in the Sex and the City Movie.  If I was a girl, I would have jumped up, hugged her, hit her with a pillow, kissed her and then started to…well, you know all that stuff that Cinemax says that women do when men aren’t around.  Unfortunately for both of us, the conversation took more of a logical approach.

“Wait! You get to wear blue shoes with your white (ivory) dress, but I can’t wear my NikeID Shox?” I asked with sarcastic inquiry.
“But, baby,” she said pleadingly.  “They’ll look terrible; and besides, no one will be able to see my shoes,” she said hesitantly as if she knew what my next move was.
“Then, whyyyyyy are we spending $300 on shoes that no one will see?” I responded in typical guy fashion I assume.
I then heard a voice from above whisper to me, “Well played sir.”

I’m not really sure what happened next because I think I mentally blacked out from my strategically placed response; but when I regained consciousness she was telling me about something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.  The part about blue sounded made-up to me, but I didn’t care because she informed me that if I wanted to wear Nike Shox to the reception only then I could do so.  Victory!!  A series of questions ensued with the only stipulation being that she gets the final say-so.

The Result

After I declared victory, I told her that I would put my social media skills to the test to help choose the colors of my new shoes; thus, we now we have the Nike Shox Wedding Contest.   The goals of the contest are simply to illustrate how the various aspects of social media can be used to create a successful marketing campaign, show how easy it can be to create personal involvement in a brand movement, get people to use their creative talents and for me (and the groomsmen) to be comfortable on my wedding day.

Within 24 hours, I had hits on my site from over 10 countries and a few from Nike’s corporate headquarters.  The contest has a little over 2 weeks to go and there have already been 16 submissions.  So far, I like what I see, but I’d like to see some more questions to make the shoes as personal as possible.   I can’t wait to see what other submissions come forth.

Fine Print: Nike is not officially involved with this contest other than they’ve done their part to keep me as a customer for throughout my entire athletic career.  My fiancee is just simply awesome for letting me do this.