GoPro Awards offers $5 million a year to video-makers

That’s why the company is launching the GoPro Awards today, a program it hopes will inspire the creation of more and better content, and which could hand out as much as $5 million a year in awards to people making the best videos with GoPro cameras like those in its Hero line.

These videos can be just about anything you can think of, whether it’s catching a seriously huge wave while surfing, cooking your favorite dish or an adorable moment with a pet. It also doesn’t matter if you are a newbie or a professional filmmaker.

GoPro’s SVP of Entertainment Zander Lurie told Adweek the GoPro Awards initiative is not a “contest or a gimmick – it’s an ongoing campaign” with no current end in sight. But GoPro thinks there are a lot more videos that aren’t tagged. “A key component of our programming strategy is user generated content”, continued Woodman.

This basically means that the person who shot the photo or video can do whatever they want with it but the company can also use it for anything GoPro related and for that they will be paid accordingly. “It’s good for our community, it’s good for our business, and it’s good for us”.

Indeed, there are more than 15 million owners of GoPro’s high-tech camcorders who share a huge amount of content every day on social-media channels-chiefly YouTube.

GoPro will give awards for outstanding photos ($500), raw video clips ($1000) and video edits ($5000) in a variety of genres, including action, adventure, animals, family, motorsports, music, sports, science and how-to, and travel. Mr. Lurie said the company chose to bifurcate the video submissions because doing so “really widens the aperture of stuff we can see”.

The model somewhat mirrors what YouTube does with their subscribers, providing revenue in a few capacity with the creator of the content. The GoPro Awards seems to be a win-win for both the brand and its consumer – creating a network of endless, fresh content where both the content creator and GoPro monetarily benefits.

Adweek responsive video player used on /video. Eventually GoPro may license submitted photos and videos to other companies like ad agencies and other brands, in which case GoPro would share that licensing money with the creators, Mr. Lurie said.