Capture your adventure and share it with the world in the first-ever “YOUR PARKS” video challenge.

The small, family-owned vineyards and artisanal wineries found throughout Oregon Wine Country have inspired many visitors and locals alike to wax poetic about the region’s unique sense of place, memorable characters and world-class wines. This love affair is the impetus behind the Capture the Spirit of Oregon Wine Country online video and photo contest, sponsored by the Oregon Wine Board. Starting July 4th, Facebook users and Oregon Wine Country fans are invited to share their experiences with creative and memorable photo essays or 60-second videos.

“Facebook is an ideal platform to connect adventurous wine lovers with Oregon wine country,” said Ted Farthing, executive director of the Oregon Wine Board. “We’re constantly inspired by images and stories from our many visitors, and this grassroots contest will help others share an uncommonly authentic experience.”

Votigo creates custom, branded Facebook applications for contests and promotions that allow our clients to engage over 200MM users where they interact, share, and communicate every day.  Votigo offers a full-service contest platform that includes everything you need to run a successful, user-generated video, photo, or essay contest on Facebook. You get your own branded application complete with a separate database for collecting user registration data, a comprehensive list of features and maximum customization.

It’s a whole new Pizza Hut!    Votigo powers the social media photo gallery for Pizza Hut’s Red Hot Summer in Jacksonville Beach.   Throughout the summer at seven different events the Pizza Hut team will be sponsoring contests, games, and giving away a bunch of free stuff.  They’ll also be serving their full menu right on the beach.  While at the events the street teams will be snapping photos of visitors and posting them to the online photo gallery where users can browse, rate, and share with friends when they get back home.

This is a great offline / online execution where the brand is able to keep the users engaged even once they’ve gone home from the events.

Find out more about Votigo’s social media video and photo galleries.

Two other examples are the Sharpie Showcase and Prismacolor Art Gallery.

Hear what the press and marketers have been saying about Votigo-powered social media video contests, photo contests, Facebook contests, UGC galleries, and contest widgets.

July 10, 2009 - Inside Facebook
Simmons Beautyrest Running Video and Photo Essay Contest on Facebook

Mattress maker Simmons Beautyrest has partnered with social media agency Votigo to announce a Facebook video and photo contest designed to encourage customers to generate content and then get their friends to vote for their submissions.  The contest can be accessed via Simmons’ custom Facebook application, a Facebook Connect-enabled microsite, and a contest widget.

July 8, 2009 - EON Businesswire
Really Want a New Mattress? Simmons Wants to See How Badly

“We wanted to host a promotion this summer that not only heightened the visibility of the Beautyrest® brand but allowed us to interact with consumers on a creative level,” said Tim Oakhill, Simmons’ executive vice president of marketing. “Thanks to advances in the social media landscape, we’ve been able to develop a promotion that is really unlike anything Simmons has ever done before. We designed the ‘I REALLY want my Beautyrest® mattress’ contest to be a fun endeavor for both entrants and for our company, and we can’t wait to see the entertaining submissions that will be posted to the contest Web site.”

July 8, 2009 - Backpacker Magazine
National Park Video Contest
Feel like channeling your inner Spielberg in tribute to the national parks? If so, you’re in luck: The National Parks Foundation just launched the first-ever Your Parks Video Challenge. All you have to do is film your personalized experience at a national park this summer, and you’ll be eligible for a raft of loot, in addition to Interweb fame.

July 3, 2009 - PR Newsire
Capture the Spirit of Oregon Wine Country

“Facebook is an ideal platform to connect adventurous wine lovers with Oregon wine country,” said Ted Farthing, executive director of the Oregon Wine Board. “We’re constantly inspired by images and stories from our many visitors, and this grassroots contest will help others share an uncommonly authentic experience.”

June 29, 2009 - The Future of Ads
Sharpie Gets Uncapped And Embraces The Social Web
What the Uncapped Gallery does is allow Sharpie to go out and find cool things that people are doing with their products and highlight them in a very public way. This serves to both thank the people that are showing off what they can do with Sharpie products, and to encourage others to create things with Sharpie products so that they too might be highlighted on the site.  In essence, Sharpie is able to take what users are doing naturally, namely, share the work they create with Sharpie markers, and increase the frequency by showing users that they are paying attention to, and appreciate the work that is being shared.

June 12, 2009 - MediaPost Marketing Daily
Sharpie Out To Prove It’s More Than A School Supply
“The goal is really to inspire people to get creative and express themselves with Sharpie,” Grimes, global vice president of marketing for Sharpie, says. “It’s really a change in the way we as marketers interact with our consumers. It’s about what they think about us and celebrating the many loyal and passionate fans of Sharpie out there.”

May 29, 2009 - ToyCyte
Jailbreak Toys Presents the Photobama Freestyle Contest

The PHOTOBAMA freestyle CONTEST is housed inside a specially crafted widget which can travel to any website. Using a simple embed code (much like a YouTube video), contestants can place the PHOTOBAMA widget into any blog, MySpace, or Friendster page. This way, participants can host the contest on their own sites, making it easy for their friends, family, and fans to vote for them up to once a day. Not only that, but everyone can upload an entry into the PHOTOBAMA widget wherever they find it on the web.

Sunkist Soda and Veoh have teamed up to run “The Mission for Awesome” Watch & Win Sweepstakes.  Visitors must watch 4 featured videos for their chance to win a Sunkist branded iPod, Xbox and many other prizes.

Votigo handles the sweepstakes registration, administration, official rules, winner verification & notification, and prize fulfillment.  Find out more about Votigo.

Simmons Beautyrest® is calling on consumers to get creative and tell them why they deserve a new Beautyrest® mattress through a video or photo essay contest.

The contest campaign takes advantage of Votigo’s custom Facebook contest application as well as our viral contest micro-site solution and flash contest widget.  The contest micro-site also includes the Facebook Connect login option so visitors to the fully branded site can easily log in with their Facebook user ID and password and then invite their friends, publish stories to the News Feed and more.

Entries must be submitted by September 30, 2009.  Voting is open to everyone.  Ten lucky winners will receive a new Beautyrest^® mattress of their choice (retail value of up to $3,000).

Sample entry

Facebook continues its growth and mass appeal…  Brand pages are becoming the go-to place for all types of companies that want to create a two-way dialogue with their consumers.  Italian fashion designer, Patrizia Pepe, is no exception.  The Patrizia Pepe brand is running a two-month long offline-online campaign at a beach club in Ibiza accompanied by an online user-generated photo and video contest on Facebook.  Visitors are encouraged to take a video or photo while at the beach club and submit it to the online contest on the brand’s Facebook Page for their chance to be a fashion model for a day.

The five women and two men with the photo or video that get the most votes will be invited to spend a day at the Patrizia Pepe headquarters in Florence, Italy where a photo shoot will be staged for them.  So fare there have been over 100 contestants and there are 24 days left in the contest submission period.

Votigo’s custom Facebook Contest application is perfect for any Facebook brand page.  It is easily added as a tab across the brand page top navigation.  Users can interact with the contest application without ever leaving the brand page.  Features like user-voting, video or photo upload and playback, custom registration questions, links to contest rules, share and invite friends are just some of the many features that can be included with the contest application.

Here’s the scene at the club.