I have never been a fan of Arizona Foothills Magazine Best of The Valley popularity contest disguised as Awards, but today Visionyard Studios Photography took things to a new low. They are actually scamming the Arizona Foothills Magazine Best of The Valley Best Photographer- Weddings category by having a contest that reward the individuals that vote the most with cash. Seriously, if they win this award – Tim Stansell & Visionyard Studios Photography is a scam.
I have no dog in this fight, I’m just pointing out Tim Stansell & Visionyard Photography trying to game the system.
If your work is good, and I’m not saying Visionyard Photography doesn’t produce good work, you’d think you would be confident in winning on your own merits, not by cheating. I can’t believe Arizona Foothills Magazine (a publication I consider credible until today – see note at bottom) hasn’t put a stop to this voting scam.
The funny thing is – I guess this voting scam works. Visionyard Studios Photography has won awards similar awards to Arizona Foothill’s Best of The Valley (or did they pay off voters there also) as it says on their site.
I can see why a company would want to win Arizona Foothills’ Best of The Valley Award for Best Wedding Photographer. It could mean a spike in business with more bookings, more revenue and maybe even a cool little badge on their website, but to go ahead and buy votes seems rather low brow. I’m not sure if this is something I’d want to see out of Best of The Valley Best Photographer- Weddings award recipient or someone I’d hire.
To Tim Stansell, Visionyard Studios Photography and eveyone associated with this charade – I’m blown by this scam tactic, try winning honestly.
[NOTE: This article was brought to the attention of Arizona Foothills Magazine twice. It was posted on their Facebook wall along with some discussion about the Best of The Valley pay for votes problem. Arizona Foothills Magazine deleted all comments and the corresponding link, which leads me to believe that Arizona Foothills Magazine endorses the Visionyard Studios Photography voting scam.]
[Note 2: Visionyard Studios Photography has issued a statement through a Facebook status update and withdrew from the Best of The Valley contest. Please read their comment below or view their Facebook page.]
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{ 15 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks again for having such a strong opinion on the contest. It has already helped by bringing more attention to our business.
Wow, apparently you didn’t read that correctly Tim, the scam he referred to is YOUR PAYING for VOTES! You have made Visionyard Studios the scam, not the contest.
What’s worse, is you seem proud. That is just sad.
We saw this happen on a large scale with The Pepsi Refresh Contest. Charity pitted against charity for prizes of 10 to 250k use of voting bots, bogus email and Facebook accounts were used. When Pepsi was confronted they hired a consultant who performed minimal investigation. Pepsi then added a paragraph to the rules with a warning about bogus voting, yet changed the process not a whit. Sad to see this at a small community level.
Rob – It sucks, there’s no doubt. The problem on with the smaller scale contest, is when someone like the company in question actually wins, the consumer only know that they’re an award winning (blah blah blah) and are fooled into thinking it’s a legitimate award – which in turns sways their purchase decision. If there isn’t a panel and a criteria and applicants are judges on their own merits, it’s a popularity and lame.
Tim is a great photographer but it sounds like a really bad decision to “buy votes.” Come on, win with talent and integrity, not bribes; this isn’t politics. I’m disappointed to see this tactic from a photographer who shouldn’t need it. In addition, if the magazine is looking the other way then that speaks volumes about their credibility.
Voting is typically bullshit anyways… have you heard of presidential elections? I mean who says those are honest? :)
I mean seriously who fucking cares… these things have always been about who’s a better bullshitter and in these terms who’s a better spammer. Some contests can be gamed programmatically… not that I know anything about said actions, however it can be done. Maybe next time we’ll just make you win :)
It seems that Chadwick is winning anyways but I wouldn’t let it get to you man. Next time we’ll just out smart em ;)
First of all, we want to apologize to the other photographers and their fans for any negativity that we have caused by having our own contest in which we offered a cash prize to voters.
After much thought and consideration, and because our integrity is very important to us, we feel that it is best if we remove our business from the voting contest.
Thank you all for your honest opinions of the contest and question of hosting our own contest to motivate our fans to vote for us. We agree, it does seem dishonest and we are sorry for that. We did not consider what this looked like from the outside, and are humbled to hear what others have said about us.
In no way, did we intend to cheat or be dishonest. Our sincerest apologies to you all.
Tim & Shauna Stansell
Visionyard Studios Photography
This “expose” is ridiculous! Tim and Shauna are the best and their work speaks for itself. There is nothing wrong with doing something nice for people who take time out of their busy schedules to vote for you. As Tim’s comment illustrates their integrity is more imporant to them than any title. However, the next time you choose to throw stones from your glass house please think twice. These are highly professional individuals and you publicly disparaged them without ever considering whether there might be a logical and undramatic reason for Tim and Shauna’s kindness. I guess malice promotes blogs better though. Kudos to Az Foothills for just deleting your garbage.
Thank you for the comment, sorry that you feel that way.
From Chuck Reynolds comment:
It seems that Chadwick is winning anyways but I wouldn’t let it get to you man. Next time we’ll just out smart em ;)
It makes me sad for you Greg, your only motivation for all of this was to help another guy, who was in the lead anyways, win. You didn’t hurt Tim’s business, but you got a whole lot of people not to like you or this Chadwick guy. Who you gonna take down next? I’m sure you will or might have already written a “blog” about the next competitor.
It’s so funny to me how you got so worked up about all of this based on facts that are simply not true, which I’m pretty sure gets people fired in real journalism. If he were paying for votes, sure, that would be wrong and he would have gotten eliminated by the magazine. But he was simply doing a fun contest for his fans who would vote for him with or without the contest.
Kerry thanks for the comment. Hurting Tim’s business wasn’t the goal of this post, the goal was to expose an underhanded tactic to pay voters. I see that Visionyard though of it another way, but all in all it’s the same thing. Don’t like me fine, don’t like any of the other photographers fine, but you should like the fact that this “Award” is now being competed on within the rules of fair play. The fact I reported in my post were/are true – sorry if you can’t see that.
In my opinion, a contest for “best of” should be won because your clients felt that you were amazing to them, and did a wonderful job and yada yada yada. No one said that these people don’t deserve to win. They very well could have, and they make beautiful photographs. But to make it fair, everyone should have either PAID their client who voted the most, or everyone should have NOT paid. Obviously, these people realized how it looks to the people they are competing against. Calling out another nominated professional, who IS following the rules is uncalled for. Everyone was nominated for a reason. Because they are all awesome. It was quite BIG of them to realize their mistake, but don’t hate on the next person in line, who isn’t paying people for votes.
Hey Greg they withdrew. Time to remove the slanderous post calling their entire business a scam. Unless the traffic is helping you out?
Thanks for the update. Please note I didn’t say anyone’s business was a scam, I simply pointed out that the voting practices were.
Brides out there: I remember spending long hours online reading reviews about potential vendors before hiring anybody. Please, regardless of the content of this post/validity of Best of the Valley Awards/etc., don’t let this blog post influence your decision to consider Visionyard. They are extremely professional and kind, their work is amazing, they pay attention to detail and really, really listen to you. We were really happy with their work and they made our day run smoothly–and we absolutely love our photos. Tim & Shauna’s work speaks for itself. And the fact they withdrew from the contest speaks for their integrity.