The next competition has officially begun and we do hope you think about sharing a photo of your nearest and dearest silly pet along with some birthday writing. (It's that easy to get you and Sparky into the running.) (You've got 20 days.)
The finalists' cards from this competition will not only be printed and sold online, they'll also be available for sale in more than 10,000 of our stores (!!). (See how much faith we have in you?) And, like last time, the world will vote to pick the Grand Prize Winner from the pool of finalists.
Do it for your pet or the fame or do it for the prizes: Each finalist will also take home $250 and the Grand Prize Winner will get a whole $1,000 plus a professional photo shoot with their pet here at Hallmark's HQ. Among other goodies.
Oh and we've snazzed things up a bit on our website. (Do you like the new design?) It's a wonder we've had time to sleep.
You have totally made all of our efforts on this end worth it: We were so hoping you would find these card competitions fun and interesting. (We know you have great ideas. You've been telling us as much for years.) (Teasing. We're teasing.) (But you have.) We're glad that you seem to be enjoying yourselves. We sure are, too.
Okay, go make some killer pet cards.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Oh, It's On.
Posts
7 comments:
Potential contestants need to read the Rules very carefully. By submitting an entry, you give Hallmark ALL RIGHTS TO YOUR CREATION FOREVER, whether it is a winner, finalist, or not. In otherwords, Hallmark gets a lot of royalty free images from contestants at no cost.
Shame on you, Hallmark.
It is reasonable for you to ask for some rights to content for any prize winner, since you will be giving them something in return. It is NOT reasonable to grab all rights for FREE from every entry.
I disagree with the comment left from the other person. I think that its great that hallmark is trying to put new pictures on they're cards. I am so sick of the same old pictures. For example I have a min pin and so do some of my friends. But I rarely ever see them on a greeting card. And cats are always a black and brown tabby. Come on now, people do have other pets other than a bassit hound or shepard. Same with "water Dragons" my husband loves them but i never see them on a greeting card. Come on now. I'd love to see alittle change. Hallmark your more than welcome to use my pictures anytime. Thank you
I happen TO agree with bruce&dee, TO a certain extent. Being a freelance photographer it is not a good thing to be giving over ALL rights. However, given that Hallmark is a GREAT name on a resume, that you could get $250 if you win (which is about the same amount any greeting card company would pay for limited rights), and then a possible grand prize, NOT to mention the years worth of exposure? Then to me, it is well worth the effort.
It's only ONE picture you are taking a chance with, and not your entire inventory either. I must have over 2,000 photos in my inventory. I know another freelancer who has over 50,000. When it comes to Hallmark? It is well worth losing rights to ONE photo, and I could care less if they used mine for NO pay or even a win, as long as my name is mentioned as the photographer. :)
You go enter your best shots now, and may the BEST photographer win!
Rose
Ok - where do we follow the results...I am not seeing how to even vote or see the jugdes favorites so far, which is what I thought this blog was about. This is my first time to do this...so maybe I'm just missing something/
Thanks for your candor and thoughtful discussion, everybody. Believe me when I say that we thought long and hard about how to do these competitions to not only make them fun and rewarding for you guys, but also to protect everybody (you and us) from potential misunderstandings:
See, we have a huge creative (and very productive) staff here at Hallmark. They come up with thousands of new card designs year after year. We try to keep the card judgers separate from the card makers, but we are pretty sure that sooner or later, one of their designs is going to be similar to something that was submitted in one of our contests. Then, everyone will get their feelings hurt and start talking to lawyers. So, we added some language in our entry form to keep from having your lawyers meet our lawyers (we intended it to protect us, not as a way to build a giant library of dog pictures). It also makes sure we have permission to show some card designs on our website or in promotions for our contests.
We are trying to do a new thing here and hope to make it fun and fair for everyone involved. At the end of the day, if you are picked as a finalist, we think we’ve put together a pretty sweet deal. If not, we hope we’ve made the process enjoyable and that giving us some rights to your design is worth it to you in exchange for a chance to win world renown (and some cash money).
Yeah, the only thing I don't like is the public voting. We all know how that can be tampered with - co-workers emailed to vote; family members; people with jobs that have large followings; people on photographer websites who will be advertising for others to vote; etc.
Pet contests on actually pet contest sites are hard to win due to such public voting. Personally? I would like to see it where only HALLMARK picks the finalists and winners based on the expertise of their staff, rather than have it be where its on a who-you-know-and-how-many-you-know basis.
This is the only downfall I can see with this process is that tampering of votes can be involved. Even people with access to multiple computers, and who are their OWN servers can vote for themselves over and over. It taints the process that way, and I can say this with an educated opinion because I have seen people banned off of other contests sites for doing this very thing.
So it is my hope that Hallmark will eventually change the way the winners and finalists are chosen.
It seems much more limiting to request only vertical photos. The first option can easily be a horizontal photo as long as it can be cropped square. Sometimes that very best photo may be a horizontal image. I do realize that most, if not all, Hallmark cards, are vertically oriented and I suppose it's for space issues and symmetry?
I'm looking forward to seeing the finalists!
Thanks for the opportunity!
Post a Comment