Free Photo Booth Sponsorship for Events: How We Did It

The first line of MY4CUT PROJECT #01 was: "We're giving away photo booths. Just send us one story." Entries opened on Wednesday, August 26 and closed on Sunday, September 6. Winners were announced on Wednesday, September 9.

The reason was simple. We wanted to put at least one booth somewhere that really needed it. The first plan was to pick five places and send each one a MY4CUT Mini. We said setup takes about a minute once you clip in an iPad.

We listed the kinds of stories we hoped to hear: a home that needs a family photo, a school before its last festival, a shop opening this month, a place where neighborhood kids gather. It didn't have to be grand, and it could be a story we hadn't thought of.

Everything about prizes and sponsorship below is a record of what we did then. It isn't an offer that is open now.

One DM to @my4cut.official on Instagram was all it took. People could leave the story as a Reel, a post, a blog entry or a comment, then send us the link or a screenshot.

If posting in public felt like too much, they could skip it and write the story straight into the DM. Private accounts and DM-only stories were read the same way. We said no one needed to write well or edit a video well.

It didn't have to be your own story either. A line like "there's a place like this in my town" or "I'd like to give this to my teacher" was accepted as a recommendation.

Likes, followers, views and editing skill did not count. Neither did whether the story was posted publicly. The announcement said every story got the same 100-point scoring sheet.

We looked at three things: why that place, what scene the booth would create, and whether it would keep being used. The winners post splits it a little further.

We first said five places. After reading the stories we couldn't cut it down to five, so we sent booths to more places. Even then, some stories were left over.

Many of those were weddings, festivals and sports days, which are over in a day. A booth given to them would go into a closet afterward. So we changed it to a rental sponsorship that covers only those dates. According to the announcement, we charged no rental fee and no round-trip shipping, and a pickup driver collected the booth afterward.

The places that got booths included a middle school art class in Busan, a daycare in northern Seoul, a youth culture house in Gochang, a small church's youth group in Pyeongtaek, a psychiatric rehabilitation center, and someone preparing a laundromat in Laos.

The conditions were two things: one review Reel after using it, and a photo or video of the booth in use. A Mini is built around an 11-inch iPad, and the iPad was not part of the prize or sponsorship.

Apart from the story project, the clearest example is the Salam Seoul Festival at Cheonggye Plaza on September 4. It was a one-day event aimed mainly at visitors from the Middle East. Bongchu Jjimdak ran a promotional stall, and a MY4CUT mini booth went in as a sponsorship.

The setup was simple. We sent one mini booth for the day, and the condition was to share photos from the event. Two Bongchu frames were loaded into the app, and people picked one on screen before shooting.

The stall had a menu board, lucky-draw capsules, the mini booth with an iPad, and a sign that read Snap, Scan, Save. You shoot, scan the QR on the screen, and save the photos to your own phone.

The four-cut result images in our card news were recreated with AI to protect people's portrait rights, so we don't use them here. The photo below is from the venue.

Because a Mini holds an 11-inch iPad, the receiving side brought their own iPad. Not much else was needed. In one church youth group's use, they had one iPad and one desk. They didn't even run an extension cord.

One tap starts a countdown and it takes four shots. The person who usually takes the photo can step in too, and the photos are saved to each person's phone by QR. The back row made it in, so even the pastor fit in one frame, and the video caught someone saying he loved it.

To check you haven't missed anything for your own event, the event photo booth checklist goes through it in order. You can see real setups in the field cases, and the Mini itself is covered in the mini booth intro.

Story entries closed on September 6, and every term in this post is as it was then. The last line of the announcement said: "If you have an event with a date, DM us anytime." Questions came in through DMs to @my4cut.official on Instagram.

Regular rentals are laid out on the rental page: 50,000 won per day plus 5,000 won shipping, with the iPad separate. Whether something became a sponsorship or a rental was decided together, based on the event's date and situation.