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’s goal was clear and simple: to find a baby supermodel. However, things did not exactly go the way the organizers planned and they were not exactly prepared for how it really turned out. What probably could’ve played a big role in its not-so-nice turnout was that it was a large-scale baby competition set in Facebook. There was a sudden surge of responses and entries from very eager parents and the organizers weren’t able to anticipate and prepare for such a huge number of participants within a very small amount of time.
Parents started to act very aggressively online just to get votes or Facebook ‘likes’ in favor of their little angels. Some created various gimmicks such as making videos and posting on YouTube to garner more attention and votes. Parents started going against each other and it even reached a point wherein they were actually sending and receiving hate mails from their fellow participants. Imagine thousands of entries, and the organizers were simply struck with awe and were not able to respond quickly.
It also did not help when Next had to issue a public apology to a mother whose entry they rejected because of her baby’s huge birthmark on the face. It wasn’t so much anymore of a logistical problem, now Next was faced with a case of discrimination to babies.
What Next thought as a very clear-cut and simple baby competition turned out to be a logistical nightmare. The organizers behind the Next baby competition were not able to fully strategize and create plan B and perhaps a plan C if in case things would go out-of-hand and it was very unfortunate for them that things did indeed go way out-of-hand.
Both the organizers and parents are to blame for what mess the Next baby competition turned out to be. This competition proved that there are really superficial parents who would give anything for their babies to have their 15 minutes of fame.
The Next baby competition was supposed to be a healthy competition showcasing babies’ natural charms. However, it seems that the “beauty pageant attitude” carried on to this competition as well and it did not turn out as expected.
The Next baby competitions truly had a positive goal-at-hand—and maybe next time, they’d be better equipped and prepared.