Creative competitions judged by 'creativity' or not?

Pinkzie

Hi all! Just wondering if any of you bother with competitions where you have to be creative. I have just saw a promotion outcome with people complaining about the winners entry on the companies Facebook page. It was a drawing competition to design a character for Jackpotjoy, the terms and conditions stated creativity would be judged.

I did enter the competition for fun and although not optimistic about winning I was curious to see what they chose as the winner and 10 runner ups, I spent over a day on my design but don't feel sour at all just wondering from an artistic point of view how sometimes these results happen. I was surprised to see a rough sketch chosen as the winner and in the comments people were claiming it was very similar to a copyrighted character and they were also posting their own designs which looked like a lot of time had gone into them and thought/back stories of the characters/colouring/editing, they were brilliant and lovely to look at. Very well done to the winner who I see posted some comments feeling a bit bad. I don't like that they feel that way but it does make you wonder if these things are really worth the time with particular companies. I like the winners design but when compared to other peoples I do wonder if they actually went through the entries properly and read the stories people had made and judged by creativity.

I think it is important to remember just because you put time into something doesn't guarantee a win but it's always lovely when you don't win, to see a entry that the majority agrees is deserving. I really love creative competitions and before spending time on something do look for the 'Judged by creativity' t&c but sometimes it seems a bit vague and I have noticed conflicting terms and conditions in competitions in the past where sometimes 'creatively judged' and 'random winner' are used in the same terms and conditions. Any thoughts on these type of competitions?

snakepilsen

I tend to avoid comps from scummy companies.

Pinkzie

I should start doing that too, sometimes I see it happen with reputable companies though with these creative competitions so it's difficult to tell before entering. This one though, I should have known!

Snizza

I tend to enter them often as I like the opportunity to design something. You do get less entries to go up against also which is a benefit to you. But I've had the same issues regarding false winners being picked. I called out Currys for it in the past and they were forced to redraw winners, me being one of them. I have now just caught a website that sells trainers cheating on a design competition too. They seem to have totally made up a false entry so they don't have to give the prize out lol

mjm3346

Snizza wrote: »

I tend to enter them often as I like the opportunity to design something. You do get less entries to go up against also which is a benefit to you. But I've had the same issues regarding false winners being picked. I called out Currys for it in the past and they were forced to redraw winners, me being one of them. I have now just caught a website that sells trainers cheating on a design competition too. They seem to have totally made up a false entry so they don't have to give the prize out lol

Were the Currys ones false winners (ie non existent or employees) or did they just pick at random without judging?

Snizza

The Currys one was just them picking without judgement. The Express Trainers competition appears to be a Ghost winner, or so I suspect now.