#STYLISHGRETCHY IG CONTEST
So, on Monday July 25th, we decided that it would be pretty cool to have an Instagram Photo Contest to kick-off the 1st Worldwide Pop Up Shop for iPhone that opened on Saturday July 30th. Going into it, we had hoped for a few hundred photo entries, but by Sunday July 31st, we had received well over 1300 photo entries – beating out the Deftones’ Band record of just under 1300 photo entries during their Diamond Eyes Tour! Due to our overwhelming Instagram success, the STYLISH GIRL + GRETCHY Pop Up Shop, held on the STYLISH GIRL iPhone app, saw a 700% traffic increase during the 36 hours the pop up shop was open! It’s ridiculous how many countries around the world entered our iPhone pop up shop doors…
THE HOOPLA
Now, around Sunday evening, shortly before we stopped taking entries, we received a surprising email from The Instagram Team, notifying us that our IG account @gretchy had been flagged…! Shocked and in disbelief, we tweeted TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington in hopes that perhaps he could dig deeper and determine how WE could have received such a hateful email from our favorite photo-sharing app. @ARRINGTON never replied, but he did follow @gretchhackmann on twitter, so we’ll let this one go for now.
Instagram replied within the next few days after we expressed our shock and concern,
“Thanks for your explanation. We think your photo contest is great and are excited that you’re hosting it on Instagram. However, your account was flagged because multiple users flagged the unsolicited comments posted on their feeds.“
…Unsolicited comments? Would anyone like to come out of the shadows and state who would have flagged @gretchy on Instagram? Thanks.
THE WINNING PHOTO:
With the help of iPad apps Flipboard and Instapaper, we eliminated 1000+ dress pics, leaving us with around 100 stellar dress pics to futher judge and drill-down (email us if you want to know if you were in the top 100). As the contest called for “your best pic of you in a dress” we were very careful to choose the winner and made sure of several things before making our final decision:
1. the winning photo had to be of the young woman who submitted the shot;
2. the winning photo must not have been copied from another website (such as tumblr);
3. the winning photo had to have been taken in Instagram, not uploaded from a camera.
After another few days of detailed research, we opened up the top 13 photos to a public voting forum within Instagram where the #StylishGretchytop13 finalists could further campaign their images to bring in more likes from the IG community. With the help of her BFF @photoloverr, @allie96 received the highest percentage increase of photo “Likes”. Next we did the most obvious thing to do and Asked Michael Cohen. After receiving a highly-weighted vote from Michael Cohen (see our plea for Michael’s vote here) and his Ask Michael Cohen team, we came up with the winning Instagram Photo! So, without further ado, we give you Allison Stammerjohn of California!! Congrats Allie!
THE PRIZE
Winning Prize: Allie receives $200 to spend on a new dress of choice on GRETCHY (www.gretchy.com) as well as an editorial spread at the end of the month in Nubry Magazine! Allie will also receive perks to stay connected with STYLISH GIRL + GRETCHY throughout her collegiate future through blogging, fashion, trendsetting, and events! Congrats Allie!!
Top 13 Prize: All 13 finalists will receive a $10 gift card to GRETCHY (www.gretchy.com) as well as a feature in Nubry Magazine – to be printed and available online at the end of August!
THE FINALISTS
***in no particular order***
[…] also took advantage of the hottest photo-sharing app, Instagram (we held an Instagram photo contest back in July), whereby the brand handed over it’s @burberry Instagram account to the #1 most followed user […]