Wednesday, 28 December 2011

What You Need to Know Concerning The Next Baby Competition

By Jenny Long


Last October 2010, the Next retail company introduced the Next baby competition with the aim of finding the first ever 'superbabymodel'. The Next baby competition was opened for babies from infancy up to 36 months of age. The popularity of this baby competition managed to garner more negative buzz rather than positive.

With over half-a-thousand stores all over U.K. and Ireland and 50 scattered franchises all across Europe, Asia, and even the Middle East, it was a no-brainer that the Next baby competition would be drawing in a lot of attention and participation. The prices at stake are a 12-month modeling contract with the Urban Angels agency, 500 pounds worth of Next vouchers and an official photo shoot for Next and Prima Baby magazine.

The Next baby competition was a big hit and aroused interests of so many parents. However, this baby competition was surrounded with a lot of issues that the company did not anticipate. One major issue was that the entries had to be submitted via Facebook. There was an influx of participants and the event organizers weren't able to prepare in order to handle the situation. It also did not help that voting was also done online. Thousands of entries were submitted.

An even uglier situation arose when parents started to act aggressively just in order to get votes for their little bundle of joy. Some even created YouTube videos in order to attract more attention and more 'likes' for their baby's entry. Some parents even received hate mail from other participants because of this. What's worse for some parents is that their entries aren't even featured at all. Due to an overwhelming response, the organizers were having a hard time moderating the Facebook page and were not able to accommodate all entries as quickly as possible.

Another major problem for the Next baby competition arose when a mother got denied with her entry of her baby who has a birthmark on the face. Organizers supposedly rejected the entry saying that they do not accept children with make-up on.

What the organizers assumed as a very simple and enjoyable competition, turned out to be such a logistical nightmare that managed to completely tarnish the company's reputation. The Next baby competition organizers clearly lacked preparedness and strategy and they paid the price for overbearing parents.

Although the organizers behind the Next baby competition was clearly at fault, the overly aggressive parents also need a bit of blaming for how messy the baby competition turned out to be. These parents took the competition to a whole new level of competitiveness just to have their baby's one-way ticket straight to fame.

The Next baby competition was merely an avenue to showcase babies' natural charms and innocence but somehow, it shone the light on how these beauty competitions become an arena for superficial aspirations.

There's nothing wrong with the concept of the Next baby competition, it was just a case of mismanagement and the itch for fame.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment