Zero Hero Competition - Mediatree

#1

At ---------, we believe there is enormous potential for our industry to improve its environmental standing and to mitigate and offset its impacts…

The competition

Moderator note: We do not allow unpaid competitions to be promoted on this forum. I’ve removed the majority of this post. Since so many others have responded, I’ll leave those responses as a reminder to other contest organizers not to post this sort of things unless everyone who enters the contest is paid for their time.

#2

In this forum English language is the medium of communications. It is so that posters understand each other.

#3

Wrong post Eriskay?
This one is worse. Obviously they can’t read the forum rules and don’t get why this is crap. I particularly like the part that the entry must be a vectorized .png or .jpg at 300dpi.
Dumb. As is anyone who enters it for the chance at winning a "CEO token of appreciation. " That and $5 will get you a small Starbucks coffee. If you didn’t get that token, you just wasted your time.

1 Like
#4

You’re wanting someone to design a character for your business and you only value this at a price of £850 in total?

You don’t value your business very well do you?

I’ve emboldened some problem areas in your guidelines

  1. You’ve given a RGB value for your company colours - and printing is typically CMYK or at least you should have a Pantone reference for your colour (or another colour matching system reference)
  2. You are looking for a Print Ready pdf - but refer to point 1
  3. The design in high-resolution (must be vectorised) is not possible, vector information doesn’t have a resolution, it’s scalable to any size - and there won’t be a minimum of 300 dpi as you don’t need it for vector work.

And again - I tell you you value your business at £850 but you’re not paying for talent or expertise - you’re paying for both.

The prizes are not worth it - and every chance not to win - and you can still use an entry for the character later in life if you wanted to.

#5

Don’t forget, the time of the CEO signing those certificates is worth probably that much again.

I’m sure they’ll counter with, “then don’t do it. I’m sure there are many people out there who would be happy for the chance to express themselves.”
And they would be right.
:grimacing:

#6

I’ve no issue with someone wanting to get involved in this. I actually know a guy that does character drawing for me all the time and he’s amazing at it, and he was only charging £150 for the characters. As I had a client who was willing to pay a lot more, I had to tell him to up his price he was way too cheap! And he did, and we still work together on character projects.

My issue is that the company isn’t valuing it’s own business and at £850 to be the face of that business? Maybe £8,500 would be a better number.

The winner will be inundated with requests to put the figure in different poses, on a bike, some sub-characters to support him - and they won’t offer a penny more.

This is a huge problem with this particular contest - they will want different poses. And currently only paying for 1.

#7

Hi Everyone,

Just to clarify: we are not looking to create any company designs and underpaying the person.
We do have our own internal design department.

Being a critical time, we just though to reach out the designer community especially students who are looking to opportunities to built their own portfolio and recognising the hard work and the intellectual property behind.

I understand the harsh comments and the critical point of view but as company we wanted to genuinely create something that could help others even tiny bit.

Thank you for your feedback and I think I will remove the posts as it might cause further misunderstanding.

Have a lovely day,
Letizia

#8

Hi Smurf,

I understand your assumption based on the bias that you might have form your own experience and I thank you for your feedback as I will remove the post to avoid further misunderstanding.

To be honest we are not looking to underpay or obtain any job for free, if you would have read and did your research about the company, you would have seen that we have actually our own Design Department and this it was just an opportunity for someone that might have just come out form Uni to built their portfolio. We will use only the winner design and anything else will be removed from our record but I understand the concern and I will publish the competition on a different platform, sorry.

Many thanks and I wish you all the best.

Letizia

#9

Hi PrintDriver,

Thank you for your comment, i see what you mean and surely this is the wrong place to post a genuine competition without any second aim.

In order to avoid further misunderstanding and create further confusion, I will remove the post.

Many thanks and I wish you all the best.

Letizia

#10

Well there’s no need to run away - it’s not up to me to research your company, you posted the competition to the public forum.

I, and others, have been down this road many times with plenty of contests posted.

It’s up to you to clarify your intentions - and I am not here to do research on behalf of others or to assume intentions - I am only asking you questions which lead to better understandings.

Contests need to be of substantial value with clear guidelines.

Thanks for taking the time to explain it further.

#11

Hi Smurf,

Thank you for the feedback.
I am not familiar with the forum culture, I think that people that respond to a post they are only the one interested.
As company, we never done a competition before and never a design competition. I’ll definitely use your comment as improvement point however, I am sorry to say but there is quite a lot of aggressive atmosphere and it’s not our intention taking advantage but i think this is the climax in this forum and as company we are not interested in reaching out the wrong audience.
Personal comment: I have been a freelancer too organising events and I had people taking advantage of me as I was learning the job but this never never brought an passive aggressive behaviour and never made me doubt about my capacity. If I wasn’t feeling evaluated I was just walking away if I could afford it. Also, in this forum seems that there is no space for learning or being genuinely inexpert about a specific filed.

I wish the best of luck to you all,
Letizia

#12

You say in one sentence that as a company you have never done a competition before. Then in another sentence say you were personally taken adavantage of. I see that as contradictory.

And there is no passive aggressiveness from me either, you have picked up on that incorrectly.

The common trend these days is to stick a compeition on the internet and let some students design something for us for a fraction of the actual value of it, whilst taking in so many other great ideas that others come up with and don’t win.

I wasn’t born yesterday, but some of the forum members are new to this - and it’s completely unfair to try and take advantage of their skills for your own personal gain.

I’ve seen fantastic competitions come up on forums in the last 20 years. But unfortunately they are far and few between. And unfortunately this one is not one of the better ones.

Take my tone whatever way you like - I am not interested in whether you think I’m aggressive or not.

But you really need to rethink your approach to this competition.

#13

I’m way too old and way too jaded.
I’ve entered contests in the past when the prize was something I wanted and the pool of entrants would be focused and relatively small. This wouldn’t be one of them.

There is room for growth. Maybe instead of posting that, you might ask the questions first. We’re all about answering questions before the mayhem begins.

#14

What I don’t get - and it was my main point in replying firstly to you - was that the specifications for the job are wrong and has errors in it.

Did your own design department not look over the specifications for the submissions?

It is incredulous that you have a design department.

I think there’s more to this than meets the eye.

#15

Hi Smurf2,

Thank you for your feedback, any and all is appreciated.

I hope to clarify to clarify any misunderstandings with my reply below:

The character is not to represent the business, as stated in the advert the character is to represent the sustainability department of the company. Sustainability and environmental causes is not what we do as a business but is something we want to push in our industry as we believe it is the most difficult challenge we face.

We have an internal design department but felt that this character design was a good opportunity to reach out to an audience that typically does not overlap with the finance industry. We also felt that it would be an opportunity for those starting out to develop their portfolios and designs.

  1. CMYK and Pantone reference can be derived from RGB. As stated, the colour does not hold significance to final judging but is provided simply as support.
  2. We define it to be print ready because we do not want to return to the creator to ask for more work, such as creating more poses. We require it to be ready as is. It is a competition and not a hiring application.
  3. You are correct, this may need to be re-phrased but is related to point 2. It must be print ready.

We are not valuing our business at £850. These are simply the prizes we concluded to be suitable for the winners. Once the winners are chosen, we will not use any other design for marketing or commercial purposes. Entries will be shown on our relevant platforms and we will acknowledge all designs and try our best to showcase these.

To reply to your most recent post, yes this is something that is a first for the company. We do not have experience with this community and try to take all advice on board. Our aim is not to take advantage of anyone nor use their ideas without permission.

Kind regards,

Christopher

#16

Hi PrintDriver,

Thank you for your feedback.

You are right about the files, it may be something we need to correct. To clarify, the output file is to be sent as .png or .jpg.

Our ‘token of appreciation’ is a certificate to confirm that the participant was in the competition and acts as a form of proof. Whether, this is of use to the winners is entirely up to them but as a company, we thought it worthwhile to provide an official confirmation.

Kind regards,

Christopher

#17

There are two of you?

#18

Haha not at all.

We are both part of Mediatree.

Kind regards,

Christopher

#19

No it definitely cannot be derived from RGB.

My initial post was to try and help you with your brief and understand what you’re asking.

The clear lack of understanding makes me know for sure there is no design department, nobody would give that advice.

But thanks for clarifying the other points - it’s a lot clearer to what you’re asking for now.

I appreciate you taking the time to explain it.

#20

@ZeroHero, I’m sorry but we don’t allow promotions for competitions on this forum. Our philosophy is that designers are professionals who must be paid for the work they do.

Would you expect your plumber, doctor or attorney to enter a competition, do the work then only get paid a small amount when you decided that they successfully outcompeted everyone else?

If you need a designer, search them out, look at their portfolios of work, interview them and then hire the person you think is the best fit for the job. Please do not expect people to work for free in a contest.