What You’ll Need to Know Concerning The Next Baby Competition
Posted by Jen Young | Posted in Pregnancy & Baby Info | Posted on 18-01-2012
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One of Europe’s most popular retail brands created a model competition for babies. The NEXT baby competition started last October 2010 and was created in search for the ‘superbabymodel’. The NEXT baby competition was opened for infants up to 36 months of age and created quite a lot of buzz, both positive and negative nationwide.
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.
True enough, the Next baby competition was a big hit and aroused interests of so many parents. However, this baby competition was hounded with a lot of issues that the organizers did not expect. One major logistical mistake by the organizers was to conduct the competition 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 and it came to a point wherein they had to close the site for a while in order to gather more staff to respond to the many entries.
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.
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 medium in which to highlight babies’ natural grace, charm and innocence through a very friendly competition. Logistical miscalculations and the need for superficial aspirations got in the way and ruined what was planned.
The Next baby competition truly had a positive goal-at-hand-and maybe next time, they’d be better equipped and prepared.
In just several minutes you are able to enter a baby modeling contest and win your child income as well as a scholarship. Due to the web a baby photo contest is extremely effortless to entry.


