The judges votes are in and it’s almost time to choose your winner in the (unofficial) Saab ad competition. Before we get to the finalists and the all-important vote, however, there are a couple of things that have to be said.
First of all, I have to once again thank our sponsors for this competition. The whole thing started with me putting up $500 and the quality of the first few days entries grabbed people’s attention. In fact, they grabbed so much attention that sponsors continued to jump on board to the point where the prize offering more than doubled!
It wasn’t just corporate sponsors, either. A few regular readers of Saabs United – people just like you – loved the concept of the competition so much that they’ve added some money into the pot as well.
So, great thanks are owed to New Salem Saab, International Saab, ATS, transport services, SoonSaab, State of Nine, Maptun, Elkparts, Saab USA Parts, The Fudge A’fare and a couple of generous private donors.
–
Secondly, I want to pass on a huge word of thanks to everyone who prepared and posted an entry into this competition. Let me give you a perspective into how hard it was to select the finalists.
The judges were asked to submit between 15 and 20 finalists and the responses were much closer to 20 each (some were over). My hope that there would be enough multiple vote-getters amongst the three groups of nominations to make up a final group for you to vote on. It wasn’t to be. We didn’t get a pool of multiple vote-getters that was big enough to host a final, so I had to become the fourth judge, selecting a group of 15-20 of my own in the hope that my selections would back up a few of the selections made by our primary judging panel (which is what’s happened).
In going through the entries (nearly 500 of them!) with what I thought was a pretty selective approach, I ended up with over 60 first choice candidates. The process of whittling that down to 23 took absolutely ages. I’ve heard from one of the other judges that he spent nearly a full day working through his primary list of around 50 to cut it down to 20.
What does all this mean?
First, it means that there were a LOT of entries submitted that were of a very high standard. Having tallied up the votes and in preparing the images for display later today, I’m surprised at the quality of some of the ads that didn’t make the cut.
And second, it means that there could be a few disappointed people out there when the finalists are posted later. Please know that your work and your creativity is appreciated. Everyone who’s seen this competition has commented on the level of engagement and quality that’s come through it.
The four judges all had pools of around 20 finalists and only 14 have made the cut. There are probably 10 or 20 more ads that came very close to being in the final 14 but didn’t make it through for one reason or another – it really was that close. In fact, I’ve tried to find excuses to include a few in the final that didn’t make the numerical cut, but that would be unfair to those that did and the others that were extremely close.
What you’ll get then, are the multiple vote getters from the four judges’ respective pools of finalists.
If you’re not in there, please forgive us and know that you were quite possibly very close.
If you are in the final, then congratulations to you on your work and I wish you the best of luck in taking one of the three prizes.
