National Geographic is one of my favorite things on the planet. My grandfather had long bookcases that ran the length of the upstairs hallway at his house and they were filled with back issues of National Geographic. I would pull them out and read them from cover to cover whenever I would visit. The bright yellow spine is of the most iconic things inside my brain.
And my father has continued the tradition by giving me a subscription each year at Christmas. I get the postcard wrapped up and it is still by far one of the best gifts I get. And my children get the magazines for their respective ages. I watch the NatGeo channel and follow them on Twitter. I think you get where I am with them as a brand. I am all in.
So I was kind of excited to get an email from them asking me to enter their annual photo contest. Now I am sure that they have run this for many years but this was the first time that I chose to take an interest in it. But this is where the story goes wrong. Like I said – I got all excited about this one night last week and knew just the photo that I wanted to submit. By now you may have guessed that it is the one above. I took this shot about two years ago while I was out visiting my mother at her ranch in the middle of West Texas. I went out for a walk with the camera took the time to lay on the ground and follow this small creature of the earth for some time. This is the result of that endeavor. So I got the photo exported and went to the site and filled out all of the fields on the submission form and was ready to upload the photo to throw my shot in the ring with much more talented photographers than I just because I thought it would be fun.
But then it happened. I hit the paywall. They wanted me to pay $15 for the chance to play the game. Like I said – maybe that’s the way it’s always been done. But they lost me. Why would I pay for this?? I understand barriers. I understand costs. But they lost me.
The world has changed. We no longer need permission. I don’t need to pay you to enter your contest. It should be free and so I closed the tab and quit the browser.
This is the shift that has happened. And not just to me. To the everything. It took me a while to get my heard around it but now I get it. How quickly I was able to move on to something else after a lifetime of branding was a strange thing to realize.