While discussing the benefits of the new Escape model — you can apparently open the trunk with your foot — some of the details of the promotional strategy were revealed. In order to promote the vehicle, Ford is having it take part on some global adventures. It appears as if Ford is tapping into the reality television/The Amazing Race model by having teams compete while showing off the new Escape. However, instead of racing to see who comes in first, the winners will be decided by voters.

The teams will be competing in what speaker Jim Farley referred to as a “series of spontaneous adventures.”

Apparently, the social media aspect of the web is going to come into play a great deal as well, because Farley mentions using the “social media graph” in order to win. To facilitate the social aspect of Escape Routes, the teams will make short videos to promote the competition and each team will feature blogger/content creator with them.

As for the QR codes, if BlogWorld attendees activate one on their mobile device, they can track the progress of the vehicle up until its launch in two weeks.

It’s all about getting noticed, as are new approaches to marketing, which is something Ford is clearly committed to.

For those of you who have been hiding the desire to do Steve Jobs as a zombie, this contest is for you, and no, I’m not really concerned about the “too soon” aspect of that statement. Of course, the recently-departed Jobs does not have to be the only person of interest, because, as many of us know, there are tons of tech celebrities to pick from.

Mark Zuckerberg, for one, looks like he’d make a great Jesse Eisenberg. Oh, wait. That’s too easy.

You get the idea, however. Bill Gates as a the Crypt Keeper or Matt Cutts as a pimp. There are too many options to list here, so get to work on your images. On the incentive side of things, the winner of this year’s competition receives having the site of their choice featured in an upcoming WebProWorld newsletter, as well as having their image featured in a WebProNews article covering the contest.

So yeah, free publicity, something that should never be overlooked in the web industry. The contest ends on Friday, October the 28th, so get cracking.

Given that these feature were largely based upon Facebook integration, it seems a bit strange that the contest is Twitter-based, but whatever.

Bing is asking via Twitter, “What decision can you not make without your friends?” Today, until midnight tonight, followers can simply reply to the question with the hashtag #decisions, and Bing will randomly select 5 winners to win “$100 towards a night out with friends”.

The money will come in the form of a Visa gift card. To be eligible, you have to be a legal resident of the the 50 U.S. states and District of Columbia, and be 18 or older. Microsoft employees, relatives of employees, and employees of subsidiaries are all ineligible.

I’m guessing Microsoft is using the contest to tap into the social community to spark some ideas for how to improve upon its social search integrations. It’s become quite clear that search in general is trending much more in this direction, and with Google upping the ante with its +1 button, Bing is uniquely positioned to get more out of Facebook – the social network that most already use.

The official rules of the contest are here.

Adobe is running an interesting contest right now. They are inviting people to upload a two minute length tutorial video to Vimeo sharing why they think that they should be the next Photoshop evangelist.

From Adobe: “submit a two-minute Photoshop video tutorial demonstrating why you should be the Next Photoshop Evangelist. Your video must use Photoshop CS5, a new Photoshop CS5 feature, and, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Photoshop, incorporate the concept of “20″ somewhere in the final image. Have fun!”

Once you make your video you submit it to their Vimeo group here.

Adobe will then select up to 12 finalists where the general membership of their Facebook Photoshop Community will vote on which finalist video is the best for the Grand Prize.

The Grand Prize winner will receive a copy of Creative Suite 5 Design Standard, a trip to Photoshop World (Spring 2011), the chance to demo their tutorial at the conference, roundtrip coach airfare, lodging and meals. All Finalists will also be showcased on the Photoshop YouTube channel.

So Adobe’s incorporating Vimeo in this one. YouTube. And even Facebook. A nice contest that touches on a lot of the social web.

Personally I think someone could do something pretty creative with the new painting features using the mixer brush that’s new in CS5. By the way, here is my own review on the new CS5 from a few months back.

Submissions must be in by August 24th.

Good luck!

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Leapfish is giving away $100,000 in gadgets, prizes and cash to Internet users who participate in leveraging their search engine in unique ways.

If you want your share of the $100,000 cash from Leapfish, you can use your online social media and social networking presence to earn points towards prizes and cash drawings. By doing this, you will help LeapFish’s goal of 1 million homepages set in 2010. You can earch cash and prizes by blogging, Tweeting, creating a LeapFish Homepage, searching, referring friends, or other ways ways that promote the Leapfish search engine.

I guess that just by blogging about Leapfish already I may be in the running, especially since my previous blog post about Leapfish ranks well in the Google search engine for “fastest search engine”. I’ve been a fan of Leapfish for a while now, even though I am still not seeing a whole lot of search traffic from the Leapfish search engine directly. However, using the social media and social networks to promote Leapfish, that may change this year.

LeapFish is an evolved search engine that captures the traditional, multi-media and real-time Web through a single, connected platform for both searching and sharing content. LeapFish is a privately held corporation headquartered out of CARR America Corporate Center in Pleasanton, California.

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I offered a $100 prize, and gained about 300 followers which is about $0.30 per acquisition. Right now social media gurus and web 2.0 weenies are tearing the temple robes since I’m referring to twitter followers in a commodity sense, but hey deal with it. I did have some drop off after the contest, but nothing significant, and you can see the slope of  line adding new followers remained fairly consistent, after the event.

I know some people believe this was all some evil plan that I executed to look like an “accident” but really it wasn’t. I opened my mouth said what I was thinking, the opportunity presented itself and I ran with it. I know there are some people who won’t ever believe me, and that’s cool. However if I had thought about this before hand I would have executed it a little better, here are some of the ways I would have improved it:

• By offering cash I attracted everyone, I would have been better offering something more targeted to my community like a BOTW listing, or SEO Book Membership, or pro SEO Moz account.
• I would have started the offer earlier in the day and on a day when I could devote my time to pimping it. Sure I could just robo-tweet but scheduled tweets are almost always inferior to live tweets
• I would have put up a short message and required people to retweet my name to be entered
• I would have taken out some PPC ads for popular twitter terms and software.
• I would have scheduled some guest posts on popular social media blogs for that day allowing me to saturate the twitterverse with my presence and the contest

Are twitter contests a viable way of gaining followers … absolutely. However you do have to be aware that many social media purists dislike the concept, so it’s not all unicorns and rainbows, be prepared for criticism. If you take the time to plan beforehand and execute a little better chances are you’ll have even better results than I did.

Lastly less someone think this was just a game and I never gave away the prize, here’s a link to the winner @SteveGarfield, who did the right thing and turned the money around and donated it to charity

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Register your class for the Google Online Marketing Challenge

Or is this something more than a contest? Maybe it is Google planting the seed of online marketing, AdWords and general SEO into the minds of college marketing students. Right on the sidebar of the contest page you have a link explaining what Google AdWords is:

The Google Online Marketing Challenge > About Google AdWords

Digging deeper in the FAQ’s for the contest you find:

Is the competition about Google AdWords?

Partially; the competition is about online marketing. Google AdWords serves as a vehicle for gathering real world data and discussing online advertising’s role in online marketing. Teams, however, must discuss other aspects of online marketing such as website layout and offline promotion, in both written reports. The competition is about real-world applications of online marketing; Google AdWords is merely the platform.

What if I have never used AdWords?

As Google’s flagship advertising product, setting up and running an AdWords account is simple. You and your students will have ample AdWords material in the Competition Pack sent to all registered professors. All things equal, the more you know about AdWords, the more fun for your students and you, and the better their chances to win.

So you pretty much have to use AdWords in this contest:

How do students win?

Students compete on three criteria, two short written reports and the most effective Google AdWords campaign for their business.

The most effective campaign is judged by looking at over 30 different factors from account structure through to use of budget.

Details on the report format and a guide to creating a successful campaign will be available in the Competition Pack sent to all registered professors and students, and on this competition website in late 2007 / early 2008.

More about the Google Contest:

The challenge is a global online marketing competition developed by professors from across the globe in collaboration with Google. It starts in February 2008 and is open to any higher education institution from anywhere in the world.

Student groups will receive US$200 of free online advertising and then work with local businesses to devise effective online marketing campaigns. They will outline a strategy, run their campaign, assess their results and provide the business with recommendations to further develop their online marketing.

It’s a great chance for students to gain practical, real world online marketing experience whilst getting all the excitement of competing with other students from all over the world.

We’re looking for professors and institutions to register for the challenge now.

I think the funniest part of the contest is the “Tips On Selecting Businesses”

Tips on Businesses to Avoid

When searching for likely candidates, remember that regardless of the business’ size, you may compete against many companies who have large advertising budgets to spend on the same keywords you want to use. With this in mind, there are a few businesses you should avoid:

* Web Hosting
* Web Design Agencies
* Insurance Companies
* Mortgage Agencies
* Debt Consolidation Companies
* Multi-level marketers
* Distributors
* Affiliate Companies

Also bear in mind that Travel and Finance businesses can be difficult to utilise for this competition – many of the big players in these industries have advertised and optimised their campaigns for years, and have significant online advertising budgets. It might be tough for you to compete against them.

I am wondering what’s the angle here? What is Google trying to get from this?

1. Better local SERP results for localized queries?

3. Teaching SEO from the ground up? Maybe G finally realizes the disconnect SEO intrinsically has with most of the public, namely college students. Realizing that no colleges really offer a satisfactory SEO course, that can be properly maintained, Google might feel that this type of contest will help the next generation of college students become more familiar with the practice of SEO.

I will say number 3. By plugging an SEO contest into many college curriculums that otherwise might not have it, could be good for Google AdWords bottom line long term. This will also cause a dependency from the local business on Google if they have success in the initial spending, Not bad thinking Google.

What do you think?

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Since I’m an optimist I try to imagine they do it mainly to encourage innovation and better solutions to the world’s problems both on and offline. Even if that’s not the whole story, it’s very feel good. It infuses a sense of fun and open-mindedness since they are always a bit quirky are aimed a broad age and range of people.

Contests can be a good way to get things done and you don’t have to fly people to company headquarters either. Guy Kawasaki got his book cover designed by running a contest.

Here is a list of some Google contests (feel free to fill me in on any I’ve missed):

• Google Highly Open Participation Contest
• Doodle 4 Google competition
• Google Moon Contest
• Build Your Campus in 3D Competition!
• Google Desktop Gadget Contest

Here’s another Google contest for college students who want to assist local businesses about online marketing. It’s called the Online Marketing Challenge.

Here are some details for the Online Marketing Challenge:

• It was developed with college professors around the world
• Students get $200 worth of free advertising dollars to spend on a campaign
• Groups of students find local businesses to run an internet marketing strategy
• Starts in February 2008 and participants run the campaign on a three week timeframe

If you teach a college course (this makes me want to actually) this is a great way to give students practical experience on Google’s dime. The contest winners get a trip to the Googleplex and get to meet the developers of Google AdWords. Probably some swag too. No cash, but a bit of fun.

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“We don’t focus on optimizing the revenue we have today. It has always been our philosophy to run the company at around break even as we grow.”

This reminded me of what Jim Buckmaster and Craig Newmark have always said about craigslist.org, which is that they basically spend zero time thinking about how to “monetize” all the eyeballs and pageviews they get (about eight billion a month or so) and spend close to 100 per cent of their time thinking about their users and what they want and need.

That drives Wall Street types and venture capitalists crazy, and people like to use those quotes to make a point about how unrealistic Web 2.0 businesses are, etc. etc. — but from a certain standpoint it makes perfect sense.

Not that you shouldn’t be thinking about a business model, obviously. But that can’t be your number one concern. If it is, you will almost certainly produce a crappy service that eventually fails, because no one goes there.

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Four second- place winners will receive $5,000 in AWS credits and all qualified participants will receive $25 in AWS credits. Amazon will judge entries on originality and how they use the pay-as-you-go technology from AWS.

"Of the many things that have surprised us along the way, perhaps the biggest has been how quickly so many start-ups have started using AWS. The fact that our services have no up-front costs and are pay-as-you go allows small businesses to focus on innovating and growing, instead of on raising capital and engaging in the heavy lifting needed to build out a back-end infrastructure," said Adam Selipsky, Vice President of Product Development and Developer Relations, Amazon Web Services.

Contestants must submit the online application by October 28,2007. Five finalists will be announced in early November. Each one will be profiled in an online video on the AWS Web site where registered developers will be able to vote on which finalist they think is the best. The winner will be announced in December.

To be eligible for the contest individuals need to be residents of the U.S. or privately held companies based in the U.S. that have not generated more than $10 million in annual revenue.