Do you need $25K to fix your home?
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Do you need $25K to fix your home?
TEXT OF STORY
Doug Krizner: Not that we needed it, but there’s another sign of how bad the housing market is. It has to do with YouTube and a troubled home-improvement store. Lisa Napoli has more.
Lisa Napoli: Home Depot’s earnings tanked 20 percent in the last quarter, what with the subprime mess and all.
So to drum up some business, the big box hardware store launched a contest on YouTube: To win a $25,000 gift card, you have to make a video explaining how you’d use it to improve your house.
Here’s one entry:
Home Depot Contestant: [To the tune of “Jingle Bells”] “And our washing machine / We found it in the trash / We’d like to get a nicer one / If you would give us cash!”
Bruce Hollander creates promotions and contests. He says user-generated content is a good marketing tool:
Bruce Hollander: The word is involvement. That’s a tremendous advantage, rather than just having you write a name on a piece of paper and sending it in for a sweepstakes.
So far, videos uploaded in the contest have had 80,000 views — 2,000 hours of free promo.
In Los Angeles, I’m Lisa Napoli for Marketplace.
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