Contest Announcment Smoke on the Water - North Alabama

$$$$$$$$$$$

Congrats on your event! We need more of these backyard shows.

I wouldn't spend too much time or money on advertising beyond your local media - your prize money isn't enough to pull cooks from more than a county away.

Have u posted it on the Alabama BBQ trail. We do a lot of the comps on this trail. There several on the trail around u.

Would this be good one for first timer usimg udss gona have to put green in turn in box this is not but about hour from house keep info coming

Sent from my DROID X2 using Tapatalk 2

Brandon,

Thanks for putting this together. You've gotten some good advice from CivilWarBBQ. I might add for you to try to get a simple web site made up, describing the event, date, etc. For goodness sake, please don't use a dark blue or lime green background with bright red or yellow text.

Then you can setup a Facebook page, link to the website and also post on your's and the Event's Facebook page with a link to the website. Hopefully people will share it or talk about it and cross-post and link to it at other forums.

You might get Channel 19/31/48 to mention it during their "local happenings" in their newscast. I think this might only occur on Saturday mornings, but I'm not sure. I know Robert Reeves from WHNT is a Judge at the Jack and might take an interest in doing some extra promotion for it.

Now, allow me to step up onto my soapbox:

I mistakenly chose to do a "little backyard type competition" in Fort Payne last September. I used to live there and we still have a residence there. It was a neat deal where it could be just me and my 12 yo daughter there cooking. As I'm sure you aware in these smaller towns, there's generally a group of folks that "run things". No different in this severely UN-organized competition, SSDD.

There appeared to be somewhat of some minor organization as far as rules, but turn-in times were "around 2:30 pm"... Meaning the person who was in charge of judging walked around and basically said "go ahead and turn in your ribs". There was no clock, no 3rd party to accept boxes, no turn-in window, etc.

Chicken was strictly 1/2 a chicken and I'm not sure if they specified a maximum number of ribs, but I believe the minimum number was 6. I put 8 in the box to somewhat fill it up.

At the end, there were no scoresheets handed out nor was there a single scoresheet with the complete tally. They stood in the middle of the circle of teams, called 3rd, 2nd, 1st in Chicken and Ribs, handed the scoring tally sheet (handwritten) to someone and walked off. The teams had to stand there and look at all the cumulative scores and then figure out the placing in each category.

No halfway formal stage presentation, etc. There was a significant crowd from "the public" standing around the circle....meaning there was an "audience" that was there to see the awards.

There's no sour grapes here but it was very disappointing to see 2-3 teams that run with the "in" crowd in Fort Payne take home all of the money.

What I'm saying...don't let the jackhole local politicians and their cronies get in it and select the winners before Friday morning. If you don't have a game plan together for scoring, producing score sheets (to give to the teams) and a halfway decent awards ceremony planned, do so. Feel free to PM me and I will be glad to give advice.

I might even try to do this. I'd love to have my daughter to the chicken and ribs on her own with me just there to get stuff set up. Unfortunately, it is the same date as a KCBS competition here in the Atlanta area...

Does the Alabama BBQ trail website still exist? Everytime I try to pull it up I get nothing

It's never too early to start a BBQ competition - about 14 months out is a good mark if you plan on recruiting sponsors. Advertising is a different story. Start your word of mouth and free Internet stuff 3 months in advance to give teams a chance to get you on their schedule, then at about the 3-4 week mark hit your public promotions hard, using your local news and papering the town with flyers.

i work at the boat dealership in grant, if i can do anything to help or help promote let me know, i will be there.

You also might try going by Stokin the Fire at Sloss in Aug this year & speading the word to some of the teams there. You might pick up a few that don't know about your contest but there's bound to be a couple that already know about it & are considering it.

Here is the only Web link I could find http://www.alabama.travel/events/stokin_the_fire_bbq_festival_-_web_submission

But like most internet dealings in AL, this is what you get when you click Sloss' page...

http://www.slossfurnaces.com/stokin/