Jun052009
Hed Kandi DJ Competition Fails To Impress
A few weeks ago, I was mooching around the Hed Kandi web site and saw that they were due to release a competition soon. It was billed to be the mother of all competitions where, in a nutshell, the prize would be a residency with Hed Kandi, playing at parties all over the world and living the jet-set lifestyle.
This competition really appealed to me and I got quite excited about the prospect of jetting around the world with some of the top DJs playing for such a well known brand.
So I had a look at their website this morning and saw that the details for entering the competition had been released. What would the rules be? How would they be judging this competition for the ultimate prize? I read on to find out.
Whoever gets the most votes, wins.
I’m sorry? What was that? Whoever gets the most votes, wins??? What kind of stupid competition is that? Allow me to explain.
To enter the competition, you have to create a Hed Kandi page on Facebook. This page is then used to describe all about you, have some press releases, some videos, mixes, releases, biography and so on. There will be a button on the page where, when clicked, will give you one vote. The idea is to get as many votes as possible to make the top 10 leaderboard. If you are on the leaderboard when the competition closes, then you have a chance of winning.
It doesn’t really make sense to me. If Hed Kandi are looking to take someone around the world with them, if they are looking for a DJ to represent their brand, surely they would want to pick a DJ based on their skills and not how many friends they have, or how deep they roll.
By running the competition in this way, it is not impossible for Hed Kandi to have a top ten leaderboard of bedroom jock wannabes who happen to have an entourage behind them.
This has really upset me. I thought this would be a good competition to enter because I think I might have the skills that they are looking for, but there is no “competition”, no comparison of talent and I am reluctant to get pipped at the post by some kid who happens to have over a million “friends” on myspace.
As marketing campaigns go however, it has to be said that this is very clever of Hed Kandi. This is a great way to get other people to do their marketing for them and they are really using the social networks to promote and enforce their brand. What better way than to create a popularity-based contest in order to get people spreading the word and marketing the Hed Kandi product for them.
So from a marketing angle, I genuinely applaud you Hed Kandi, you have found a way to really harness the web of today and use it to your advantage.
But as a DJ, I feel cheated and I fear that each and every day this industry is starting to become less and less about how talented the DJ is and more and more about how many people walk through the door.
If you like, you can enter the Hed Kandi competition here.
