GoPro Celebrates Five Year Anniversary of GoPro Awards
Five years ago today, GoPro introduced GoPro Awards – an always-on program created to reward camera users with monetary awards and gear for sharing their best GoPro photos, raw video clips and video edits to be considered for inclusion in GoPro’s social media, video programming, marketing materials and more.
Since its launch, GoPro Awards has received nearly 1 million photo and video submissions from 180 countries and provides the platform for the annual Million Dollar Challenge highlight video, which received 42,000 submissions last year. GoPro Awards has become core to both the GoPro Community as well as the company’s media and marketing strategy.
“We created GoPro Awards to celebrate our customers’ creativity and to drive awareness of their awesomeness,” says GoPro founder and CEO Nicholas Woodman. “Our customers are some of the most interesting people in the world and GoPro Awards is our way of thanking them for their ongoing contributions to our brand.”
Through the awards program, GoPro has connected with amazingly talented creators who have had the opportunity to work with the company on projects, speaking engagements and more. One of which is former IT worker Andrews Santana. Andrews started using GoPro in 2014 and became heavily involved in submitting to GoPro Awards. With the exposure and money from awards, he is now a professional content creator capturing GoPro content for DJs, resorts and TV hosts and shares educational tips with the GoPro Community in Brazil.
“I started submitting to the platform in 2015 and got my first GoPro Award in 2016. The team at GoPro saw my submissions coming in consistently, and they liked how I was also educating people on Instagram about how to improve their photo and videos,” Andrews explains. “Since then, I’ve received 10 GoPro Awards, was invited to the 2019 GoPro Creator Summit, and received an award for the 2019 Million Dollar Challenge. The GoPro Awards program has challenged me to create more and more content!”
Over the years, thousands of awarded photos and videos have been shared with GoPro’s global social audience of more than 44 million people and licensed for various marketing materials, including the GoPro website, product packaging as well as advertisements, billboards and product launch reels.
Arguably the most impactful GoPro Awards success story comes from the now-annual Million Dollar Challenge, which invites GoPro users from around the world to submit video clips using our newest cameras for the opportunity to earn an equal cut of $1 million if their submission is included in the final product highlight video. The Million Dollar Challenge was introduced in 2018 with the launch of HERO7 Black and has become one of the most highly anticipated events amongst the GoPro Community. This year’s Million Dollar Challenge featuring HERO9 Black is in full swing, with submissions being accepted through Dec. 4.
To commemorate the five-year anniversary of GoPro Awards and help inspire HERO9 Black users around the world to submit to GoPro Awards and the Million Dollar Challenge, the GoPro Training Team and Andrews Santana are co-hosting a live stream at 10 PM IST today, Oct. 14, to provide tips and tricks for capturing award-worthy content that will catch the eye of submission reviewers. A recording of the live stream will be available on GoPro’s Facebook page after the event.
GoPro also released a new video tribute highlighting its Top 10 Favorite GoPro Awards moments. From “how did they do that?” activities—like glacier water skiing and a cliff wall rope swing to tug-at-your-heartstrings moments like the resurrection of a kitten and an in-flight proposal—the video will give you ‘all the feels’ and demonstrate what GoPro Awards is all about.