JScott Images Earns 1st Place in Iowa Marketing Awards

Members of the Independence student section stand behind a giant sign showing their excitement for winning #WeWantJScott. They were just one of many Eastern Iowa schools to help turn the contest into an award winning marketing campaign.

140 characters.
Three simple words.
One hashtag.

What started out as a fun contest to help create a buzz for JScott Images on social media--especially on Twitter--turned into an award winning marketing campaign recently when the contest earned two major awards during the Iowa Marketing Awards at the Professional Photographers of Iowa 2014 Winter Convention.

#WeWantJScott beat out many other great submissions and earned 1st place as the state's top marketing campaign for studio brand and it also won the coveted "Bootstrapper" Award as the top low-cost marketing idea by any photographer in the state!

Here's me receiving my awards with now former PPI President and current Master Photographer John Stalzer of Stalzer Photography in Marshalltown, IA.

I'm very proud that the contest was recognized by the state as its success was entirely based on Twitter users running with it and adding their own unique spin to the contest. I merely put it out there for the "Twittersphere" and let them run with it however they wanted and the results were incredible! (See examples below!)

The contest started the last weekend of August 2013 and is still currently running! I've shot for at least 10-15 different Eastern Iowa high schools, traveled hundreds--if not a thousand or so--miles in doing so and met countless amazing student athletes, their parents, their teammates building many new, strong relationships that I hope to build on thanks to #WeWantJScott.

Thanks to #WeWantJScott both my Twitter followers and Facebook likes have tripled! I am now currently just under 6,900 Facebook fans and 3,500 Twitter followers!

PRAISE: I'd like to send a huge THANK YOU to the following schools for helping grow the contest from the very beginning!

Independence, Wapsie Valley, Hudson, North Tama, Don Bosco, MFL MarMac, Edgewood-Colesburg, Waterloo Columbus, Charles City, Waverly-Shell Rock, Oelwein, Crestwood, South Winneshiek and Maquoketa Valley.

There were many others that took part in weekly contests but these were the PREMIERE schools that really took the contest and helped make it their own and I really appreciate it!

Students from Don Bosco High School ran with #WeWantJScott and with this tweet raised the bar for other schools wanting to win the contest!

#WeWantJScott Basics: For those of you that have never heard of my contest/marketing campaign, it's pretty simple actually. I have a strong photojournalism background so I really enjoy photographing sports--especially at the high school level.

I started off by announcing on Twitter that I was available Monday through Friday to photograph any sporting event that any school wanted me at and the only requirement was that that school (its students, fans, alumni, whoever) just had to out-tweet any rival schools wanting me for the same night! The only stipulation for the tweets was that they had to include some detail about it being for their school and the hashtag #WeWantJScott.

The contest has gotten to the point where mass emails are sent out so that schools increase their chance of winning! You gotta do what you gotta do, right?! =)

As the contest evolved (which happened very quickly) it went from being a contest about which school could send the most tweets (believe me, it became a challenge trying to count tweets after a while) to a contest where the school that sent the most creative tweets (including those with images and/or links to Vine videos or YouTube videos) would win me for that given night!

Sometimes you have to dress up as a team's mascot and surprise them on Senior Night to make your trip that much more memorable! (Taken at Oelwein.)

Right before revealing who the mascot is at Oelwein!

THE BIG UNVEIL! (It was super hot under there!)

HISTORY MADE: The North Tama Redhawks volleyball team! I photographed a volleyball game of theirs down in Belle Plaine. I still remember thinking on the hour long drive "I sure hope this worth it!" and it sure was!

That night with the North Tama volleyball team really got the wheels spinning with the contest as I started to realize how much high school athletes deserve good photos of themselves and one in which get shared on social media so that they don't have to sit around waiting for their local newspaper to run some in next week's paper.

These ladies ROCKED! I really appreciate them getting things going with #WeWantJScott!

Ramping Things UP! The contest really took on a life of its own a few short weeks following the North Tama volleyball game. It was here that I declared that Twitter users were going to have to "up their game" if they really wanted to win this. Getting 100-200 tweets from each school is neat, believe me, but it can be a challenge to get anything else done!

At this point I tweeted that in order for a school to win #WeWantJScott they were going to have put their thinking caps on. They were going to have to do something to really prove how serious they were about winning this thing!

Enter Hudson and Don Bosco!

Here's the actual tweet that I received from some VERY creative gals down at Hudson. To say it snowballed from here would be an understatement!

Don Bosco wasn't about to be outdone:

Does it get any more awesome than that?

Here's a mindblowing stat for you all to consider...during the 7-day period that Hudson and Don Bosco duked it out, #WeWantJScott made a HUGE impression on the Twittersphere:

Here are some of the highlights of the past few months of the contest so you can see just how crazy this contest has been and how creative Eastern Iowa students can be--even if it means not focusing during their school day! (Sorry teachers!) =P

There have been many awesome and creative tweets, Vine videos (too bad I can't upload any of them on here, I think you all would have really enjoyed seeing them!) as well as YouTube videos (same thing as those Vine videos...if I find links to some of them I'll make sure to update this blog post!).

From Don Bosco High School.

From Hudson High School.

From Independence High School.

From Waterloo East High School.

From Waterloo Columbus High School.

From Dyersville Beckman High School.

From Charles City High School.

From Edgewood-Colesburg High School.

ME WITH MY FANS! It's VERY important to me that I reach out and try to really connect with my fans, that's why I LOVE taking group pictures with them as much as I can! I remember being in high school and how neat it was to get to see other media types (around here it was John Campbell of KCRG-TV9 and Rick Coleman of KWWL-TV7) show up at your game. I don't think of myself as a "news reporter" in the traditional sense but I'll take whatever comes my way!

Here are some of my favorite images of me hanging with my fans thanks to #WeWantJScott!

Talk about adopting me as one of their own...Independence not only won #WeWantJScott (on many occasions for that matter) but they went above and beyond to make me feel part of #MustangThunder!

When I think of #WeWantJScott, Wapsie Valley immediately rises to the tops of the list for their crazy awesome idea to reserve me a parking space for their volleyball game! This was actually taken, in the freezing cold, after their game that they had me up at!