The Contest

As some of you know, Davids Tea has a Mystery Tea Contest each year. They put out a blend for sampling and ask customers to submit names, based on the taste and ingredients in the tea. This year’s tea was a white tea blend of pineapple, melon, and mango. So, I was one of the customers who submitted names.

Coming Up With The Name

I believe the company got hundreds of names, as one customer announced on Twitter that she alone had submitted 35. The name I came up with occurred to me after tasting the tea at the Gastown store and having the clerk remind me how much Davids Tea likes puns (last year’s winner was “Mint to Be”). I was trying to think of words that rhymed with “melon”, rather than mango, as Davids Tea already has a number of mango-related names. Believe me, nothing good rhymes with pineapple.

Helen rhymes with melon. Famous people named Helen: Helen Keller, Helen Hayes…Helen of Troy! Thus, “Melon of Troy” was born and submitted to Davids Tea.

Making It To The Top Ten

After I sent in “Melon of Troy”, I kind of forgot about the contest. However, I wanted to vote when I saw a reminder notice on Facebook. I looked at the list of the top ten names and “Melon of Troy” was there! I was so elated. I’d been having a rather dull week and this surprise made things much better.

I started campaigning for “Melon of Troy”: sending out Tweets, posting on Facebook, e-mailing my friends and family, and even making an announcement in my graphic design class. I connected with a young woman on Twitter who tweeted that she was the originator of “Honey-I-Dew”. I was really impressed by such a creative submission and liked it almost as much as my own, and certainly more than the other options.

Finding Out I Didn’t Win

Tonight, on the way home from my Photoshop class, I found out that “Honey-I-Dew” won. I am a bit disappointed. Not because I didn’t win 250 grams of the tea, which frankly I didn’t like that much, but simply because it’s nice to have your creativity validated. I hope the nice young woman from Montreal who won is happy and will smile when she sees “Honey-I-Dew” on the Davids Tea wall in 2015. I am going to try not to wince. Maybe, I’ll just avert my eyes from the white tea section and remind myself that there’s always next year. 

Thank You For Voting and What I’m Up To Next

I’d like to thank everyone who voted for “Melon of Troy”. It was nice to have support from so many friends and family members. As that great sage Clarence from It’s a Wonderful Life says, “No man is a failure who has friends.”

So, in terms of entering contests, I will still continue to enter contests as I see them, but the main contest I will be a part of is National Novel Writing Month. Basically, I will be writing 1667 words per day in the month of November. By the end, I should have a novel the length of The Great Gatsby, if not the quality. I win if I complete the required number of words by the end of the month. What do I win? A few discounts from online sites and the legitimacy to buy a t-shirt that says I “won” off the website. What I really win is the chance to cross off a bucket list item. I very much doubt I will show the novel to anyone when it’s finished. Yet, I’ll know I did it and it will stand as a relic of my perseverance, if nothing else.

Note: At the start of November, I will post a link if you’d like to follow my progress.