Mint Digital - WebApp Weekender 2010

The Results: 2011

It’s been a long road, but we’re finally at the end.    First of all, let me say I was really pleased with this years WaW.  More than one WaW veteran mentioned that this may have been the best one yet, and I absolutely agree.  Next year we’ll need to have one that’s a bit crap, or the bar might become too intimidating, but that’s a problem for another day.  Today’s problem is to deliver the results to an eagerly awaiting audience of Mints.  To give credit where it is due, and to heap scorn upon those who have been found wanting.  It’s worth looking back at what we actually set out to do this year:

“In the history of Mint, we have been primarily focussed on [production].  We’ve either ignored [direct-to-consumer marketing] altogether, or we left it to our clients…  This year, we’re going to make [marketing] the primary focus.”

When we put the brief together, there was some concern that we’d all be basically doing the same thing.  I think we can all agree that that is not what happened.   Three teams put together five campaigns, all of which were radically different.  The lesson here is not to underestimate the imagination and creativity of the Mints.  Not only that, but I think if we’d discussed it after the weekender, we’d have failed to predict which of the five campaigns was going to be the most effective.  Through this contest, I’ve certainly learned a lot about marketing, as I’m sure all of you have, but more importantly, we’ve learned about marketing as an organization.  This will prove enormously helpful in the future.  I expect us to engage in similar campaigns both for our own products (stickygram, for example), for our business as a whole, and potentially for our clients.  We’re not exactly the world’s #1 marketing department, but we’ve taken a step, and every attempt we make from here onwards will be less intimidating.

After the judging, the results looked like this:

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2011: the brief

The brief for this year’s WebApp Weekender is a little different.  

In the past the WebApp Weekender has been very focussed on production.  We’d conceive of an app, design it, build it, and allow it to be judged.  This was fun, but we left out a key piece of the puzzle: marketing. This meant that no Weekender app has ever had much of a life after the Weekender.  This is a shame.

So this year, marketing is primary focus.

Each team starts with an existing Mint site: Quotables. They will work to develop and implement a campaign to drive engagement with the site.  They can’t change Quotables itself, but will build something that sits alongside it.  A new website maybe, or an iPhone app, perhaps.  The campaigns are likely to involve creating some new mechanism for using Quotables, or for seeing Quotables from a different angle.  Each team has a budget of £1000 with which to support their plan.  The budget can be spent any way they like.  Each team will have an appointed treasurer, who will have a Mint credit card in their possession, and will be responsible for allocating the budget.  

The judging will be as follows. There are four categories, and each category will be worth a certain amount of points

1) Overall campaign.  This will be judged by someone from the advertising industry.  They will evaluate the campaigns’ originality, and determine which of them they believe to be more likely to be commissioned by an outside client.

2) Technical excellence.  Is the technical execution of the campaign  interesting?  The usual tradeoff between ambition and realism will be at play here.

3) Design excellence.  All design related elements of the campaign judged purely from a design perspective.

Each of these categories will award 10 points for first place, 5 points for second, and 0 points for third.  There will be separate prizes for each of these categories.

4) After the judging, the final category will commence.  This is the “proof of the pudding” category. On March 15th 2011, noon GMT, the three teams will be judged purely on their improvement of the Quotables metrics themselves.  The KPIs are 10 points for a new user, 2 points for a new quote, and 1 point for a new love.

This category will award 20 points for first, 10 points for second and 0 points for third.

The team with the highest number of points overall will win the grand prize, and be crowned the winner.  We have yet to choose a grand prize, but it will be more substantial than last year, when the grand prize was a trucker hat.

Rules:

1. You may not modify the Quotables site itself.  An API will be provided. Teams can create sites on subdomains or new domains. 
2. You may feel free to buy Google AdWords, etc but you may not enter into long term affiliate deals
3. If you go over you £1000 budget, inadvertently, your points will be scaled back according to the percentage over budget you went.  Your treasurer may be audited if there is any suspicion of nefarious behavior.
4. In terms of marketing:

• You can make one blog post on the Mint Digital site and tweet once from the Mint account.
• You can write two blog posts and two tweets each weeks from Quotables: so up to 8 each for the 4 week period in which the KPIs are being assessed.
• You can write as many blogs posts as is reasonable on http://weekender.tumblr.com/
• You may use your personal Twitter, Facebook, etc. accounts as much as you like. 

May the best team win!