Today we changed our name, because we are so much more than audience voting.
We’re excited to share our new name and how we came to this decision.
Our company’s Founder & CEO, Paige Williams, is a filmmaker whose films won multiple Audience Awards at film festivals. In 2013, the Montana Film Office decided to spin up three YouTube channels. The film office called on Williams for advice on how to get content for the channels. Williams suggested that they didn’t just need video content, but also to drive an audience. Why not run audience voting for the video submissions? Thus, Audience Awards was born. Our company was bleeding edge early (preceding Quibi by seven years) and now we do so much more than audience voting.
How we got here
As our customers’ needs have evolved, our business and products have evolved right along with them. As we’ve grown to provide more opportunities for filmmakers and businesses to connect, we’ve had to ask ourselves whether the name Audience Awards will continue to serve us in our new capacities to provide even more opportunities for filmmakers. We took our time with this question, involving our members, our coworkers, our community, and our customers.
We weighed our affection for a name that we’ve been proud to carry against our responsibility to prepare our company for the future. In the end, we agreed that as we grow to serve up more opportunities for our community, we need a name that ensures that everyone knows that we are more than audience voting.
What’s Changed?
We have become a leading video marketing platform for agencies, brands, distributors, studios, and small businesses to connect with thousands of filmmakers to discover emerging diverse talent and source new IP. Creative disruption is part of what has always differentiated us, and it’s in everything that we do. We found that our name was mismatched, so we once again embark on creative disruption – even within our own company. We don’t want our brand to feel misnamed any longer, so we created a new name.
On April 5, 2020, we will change our name to AudPop.
Therefore, Theaudienceawards.com will redirect to audpop.com. AudPop proudly takes its place next to two other digital properties beloved by our community, AudNews and AudFest. Our new name allows us to scale so that we can serve our community and bring our mission to more customers. Since the beginning, connecting filmmakers to opportunities has been our mission.
What’s Coming
As a result, we believe that our new name will help accelerate our mission to connect companies to even more creatives in unique ways. In addition to the new name change, contests will become campaigns and companies can now crowdsource videos from their customers. We have introduced lead generation capabilities to create new sales leads for companies, and filmmakers can find distribution deals for their feature and short films, web series, and television pilots.
When we launched this rebranding initiative, we had no idea that coronavirus was ahead. In fact, had we known, we likely would not have made this change. But now that it’s here and we see the impact of the pandemic on entertainment and small businesses, we realize that our platform, community, and our new name are made for this moment. As film festivals look for online solutions, companies seek to engage their customers in an authentic way, and OTT channels’ viewership skyrockets, AudPop is in a prime position to connect the dots between companies, filmmakers, and audiences.
URLS will redirect to AudPop.com.
Check out our current open video campaigns accepting submissions here.
