| By Jim Bruene on December 31, 2009 10:10 AM | Comments (1) |
Personalized card designs have been offered by Capital One and others for years. But I've yet to see the idea turned into a contest. Discover Card is running a promotion for the best design submitted through its microsite or Facebook page.
The winner will pocket $1000 and the design will be featured on the next Discover Card Student Card. There is also another $1000 split among five runner-up designs.
To enter the contest, users must log in at the Discover microsite using Facebook connect (see screenshot #2, below). After creating the design, users end up on a Facebook page where they can provide optional personal information (screenshot #3).
The promotion is powered by the Graffiti Facebook app.
As you can see by my handiwork (inset), most card designs are pretty crude. But there are also some pretty creative entrants. There is only one design tool available, a brush you run with your mouse. The only variations are color, brushstroke width and opacity. No uploads are allowed, so you cannot add any fancy graphics created in other apps.
The contest ends tomorrow and so far there are nearly 5,000 entries.
Bottom line: It's a drop-dead simple contest with excellent Facebook integration and a link to apply for Discover's Student Card. It's a great idea, with good execution, and the card issuer will end up with a cool new card design for a relatively small cost. Grade A+
Thanks to Payments News for the link.
1. Discover Card microsite (31 Dec. 2009)
Note: Homepage showing the 10-most recent entries with our lame effort in the lower-right.
2. Discover Card design creation page
3. Facebook optional personal info page
4. Designs appear on the Discover Facebook page under the Graffiti tab (link)
Note: Considering the crude input tool, some of the designs are amazing. As you can see, I will not be in the running for prize money.
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Does this kind of "creativity contest" result in any new accounts? Doubtful. The vast majority of entrants would be either existing customers or artists who simply want to notch another achievement on the belt.
And wouldn't students prefer to be able to customize their own card design rather than have some contest winner's artwork adorning their plastic?
The only advantage I see to this promo is name awareness. Cost of card design seems like a non-issue, even if the company typically paid $50,000 for professional design work.
If name awareness was the primary objective, and Discover simply wanted to test some social media tools using a UGC contest, then this is an excellent solution.