Etsy Handmade Moment Winner

A few months back, I posted about Etsy’s Handmade Moment contest in the context of using your user base to crowdsource good marketing material.

We have a winner of that contest and in the spirit of closure, here it is. We will return to our regularly scheduled programming after this.

#VC & Technology

Comments (Archived):

  1. Dave Pinsen

    Interesting. I was flirting with the idea of commissioning an animated clip to promote a website, and the estimates I got from a couple of animators were in the ballpark of what Etsy spent in total on its prizes in this competition.Have you gotten any negative feedback about this contest from animators? I wrote a blog post recently mentioning a popular site for this sort of crowdsourcing and got a comment by someone saying there is a movement by some professional designers against it.

    1. ShanaC

      Pro’s basically do very high quality cleanup work, because they are devoted to cleaning up their work before and after the rend, and are on the best quality machines and plugins that they can afford. I doubt this was made with Renderman, by Pixar, and I doubt this person’s computer is actually a server or part of a server farm. Or has spare graphic cards with extra memory to handle bringing up the content quality so it can be displayed better.Animators are the only computer art group that have to deal with Linux, as a general rule, man…Graphic designers and other designers are a whole other world. I get the feeling you can tell when someone does a bad job. That doesn’t mean the price hasn’t come down because there aren’t a lot of bad jobs being sold, since a lot of people seem to be offering them as the tools become accessible…

    2. Mark Essel

      Shana know’s this space well. The great thing about contests are that they’re optional, and can aid in reputation building (the digital, ubiquitous resume).

  2. JeremiahKane

    Cool, I thought “ecologicalartist” or “robot get’s its wings” were the best. Now that the marketing material is crowd-sourced; the question is what do you do with it? Many of these ads are of the quality to be used for more than YouTube, Flickr etc.

  3. Alex Popescu

    What I find extremely interesting about these crowdsourcing ideas is not really about their financial aspect or the obvious benefits of crowdsourcing, but rather about the fact that it is one of the best ways to show that your community really counts and that you are open to see and promote your company through their perspective. Now, there are companies that are deciding the winners internally so they can make sure that the final message is fitting the company official message, while those loving and trusting their community are leaving the community itself to decide.

  4. ShanaC

    That was extremely well done. And that reminds me that I actually need to sit down and buy a bag from someone there to replace the last tote I got there…

  5. Henry Yates

    What a great ad. On YouTube it shows it was made by Daniel Kwan. I would be interested to know his background (student/pro/other?). I would guess most of the best entries would be student film makers – it would be interesting to know what cross section of entrants you received. Etsy must have a large arts school following – what a great asset.

    1. fredwilson

      I’ll see if I can find out

      1. Henry Yates

        thank you, much appreciated

  6. Mark Essel

    It’s a work of passion, the best kind of labors are those we do for free.

  7. markslater

    biiig up to etsy!-my new daughter stella’s walls are adorned with beautiful artwork from the etsy marketplace. For those who have not tried it – i would highly recommend giving the service a go – big fan of this investment fred.

    1. fredwilson

      :))

  8. Keenan

    It worked. I watched the video and now “I get it”. I will forward Etsy to my wife, my mom and others.Great timing with the Holidays approaching.

  9. konker

    fabulous work; especially significant for me as someone who was originally switched onto etsy via back channels. I believe the marketing push facetted as ‘regretsy.com’ was, and still is, a great success. It continues to provide social media afterburn, much more so than some comparable efforts. The very realistic portrayal of mockery is excellently executed by a marketing department at the top of its game. High fives and ‘vagina pillows’ all round!

  10. bobbyraykoch

    What I see,is a talent,which I wouldn’t have a clue,about how to even start. A work of art! I grew up with a “Brownie” camera from Kodak…. Wow,we have come along way.Remarkable….