Berea’s Favorites contest was a huge success.
With over 200 participants, 600 nominations and a phenomenal 3000 votes, the very first Berea’s Favorites contest was more successful than ever imagined. The idea for the contest was the brainchild of BereaOnline.com Webmaster Chad Hembree (me) and Technical Service Manager Bob New in Dec. of 2002. The primary objective was to allow the public to show their appreciation to the businesses and professionals they use. The secondary objective was of course to promote BereaOnline.com by holding a contest that included participants from nearly every walk of life. In both respects, the objectives were achieved and it was almost immediately seen that this contest should be repeated annually.
After months of research and preparation, the contest started with a month long nomination process. This process was the hardest and the most educational for the BereaOnline.com staff. Originally, we decided on 60 categories. After several voluntary emails suggesting other categories arrived the first week, we began asking for participants to suggest categories. By the end of the month over 200 categories had been suggested and even though the deadline was up the nominations kept coming. The categories were narrowed down to a modest 128 and the contest was on.
The first question asked by many nominees that had never used BereaOnline.com was “Why should we try to get votes when we know the Bereonline.com advertisers are going to win?” The first response I wanted to give to this question was “Why don’t you become a Bereonline.com advertiser?” However, the honest answer is that while yes we took the opportunity to nominate the businesses that have supported us in the past, we cannot afford the bad publicity from running a bogus contest and this goes against both objectives set forth at the beginning. The votes were collected for an entire month while ads soliciting voters ran in local newspapers and on signs distributed to many nominees.
After the voting period was over the votes were counted and the winners decided. I want to personally thank all the participants for making this a success. I also want to congratulate the winners and thank them for obviously serving the Berea community in a positive way. Lastly I wish to thank the BereaOnline.com crew (Hannah Billings - editor, Bob New – Technical Services, Andy McDonald – Contributing Editor) for all their hard work and dedication.
Chad Hembree – BereaOnline.com Webmaster
