Saturday, December 12, 2009

Never underestimate the social media value of the little black dress



The MTO-W Pageant 2010, originally uploaded by roberrific.

This is a photo from the Miss Teen Ontario - World (MTC-W) pageant, which is a popular event and a prelude to The Search for Miss Teen Canada - World in downtown Toronto in July 2010.

While the idea of the beauty pageant is not new, and has often been dismissed as a thing of the past, in its revitalized format it is as popular as ever in certain circles.

And now, through innovative use of Social Media, the beauty pageant is alive and well and thriving thanks to the MTC-W Contestant Blog Army. In the dog eat dog war of beauty pageantry, it takes an army to come out on top.

In an attempt to take the pageant to the next level, the MTC-W organizers hired FRANK to come up with ways to tap into the power of social media to scan the nation for the country's brightest MTC-W hopefuls and to share the stories, the joys, the triumphs, the egos and the agonies with all who might care.

Our electronic community shares the adventure of the little girl from Smalltown, Alberta being discovered by MTC-W, flown in to Toronto and competing for fame and glory in pictures, video and stories. The genius of FRANK's innovative social media strategy lies in the boost in Page rank (search engine ranking popularity) generated by the competitive energy of fifty-four bright, young and beautiful bloggers. Essentially, our MTC-W blog army shares the experience better than the competition’s websites could ever hope to accomplish on their own. We have provided a hard working digital venue for photo, video and story telling—100 percent original content that you could never buy and the thirst for which never runs dry.

The 2009 Miss Teen Canada-World pageant came out on top of all others in Canada because of an intricate social media network of OnSugar blogs, photos and videos posted by the reigning beauty Queen, plus the 54 contestants in the pageant. In just ten days we signed up over 20,000 members to our VIP database and had over 10,000 votes cast in just a few days for the people's choice awards.

Its not all about swimsuits and glamorous dresses. What good would all of this be without some kind of social responsibility thrown in for good measure. the Miss Teen Canada-World pageant is an excellent and model opportunity for pursuing commerce in aid of social purpose. In 2009 the organizers set a goal to raise $10,000 for Free the Children, an international charity that empowers children in North America to take action to improve the lives of fellow children overseas. Through our efforts in 2009, the contestants collectively raised over $49,000. Wow. Now that is something to be excited about.

Siera Bearchell, the reigning Miss Teen Canada-World is doing an outstanding job representing her title, getting out there and raising awareness for some excellent causes. In this me to we video, Siera speaks out on behalf of Me to We Style to promote the Challenge Your Style Competition—an effort to mobilize youth to help raise awareness and funds for causes of their own choosing. You Go Girl!

The moral of this story?

Never underestimate the power of social media and the little black dress.

We are back at it for 2010, with a whole array of innovative ideas and executions that we expect will deliver a breakthrough performance for the MTC-W pageant in the coming year.

Do you have any stories you can share with us about how Social Media changed the landscape? Feel free to chime in here, share your victories and your defeats. Who knows, you just might help someone else make a difference in the lives of others less fortunate than we are.

1 Comments:

Blogger rob said...

Good work. I missed this post but its a good message and very well delivered FRANK.

February 16, 2010 at 7:19 AM  

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