Dukascopy is clearly targeting an interesting vertical – young women – but also the young men who will want to follow proceedings.

Recently we’ve been writing about interesting and unique promotions that FX brokers come up with, in an increasingly crowded world of FX marketing, bonuses and promotions. We covered the IronFX win-a-trip-to-Vegas contest, and the Liquid Markets earn-bonus-interest trading incentive. Both of those contests were directly aimed at increasing the trading activity of clients, which clients needed to do to be eligible for the trip / bonus interest.

Now comes something a little different. Swiss FX broker Dukascopy has launched (no kidding!) the $250,000  Miss Dukascopy contest. Women of all ages can enter, in what seems to be a beauty-and-brains contest. In addition to providing pictures, contestants will be asked to post FX-related blogs, participate in live ‘Dukascopy TV’ events, answer FX-related questions, post videos on certain topics, etc.

The Miss Dukascopy winner will be the woman chosen to be most popular, by having the most visitors and followers, in a vote to be taken in November. And it is a winner-take-all contest, with Miss Dukascopy receiving a $250,000 shopping spree. There will be smaller consolation prizes given to the next 35 participants.

So why the contest? There doesn’t seem to be any link to trading incentive in the contest. But the eventual Miss Dukascopy and her co-participants will be doing a lot of hard work between now and November in bringing a ton of visitors to the Dukascopy website. Which Dukascopy, of course, will attempt to convert into new trading clients.

Will this work? Perhaps. But it surely is an interesting and innovative marketing idea. For more on the contest see miss.dukascopy.com.

For more on the global Forex industry see the LeapRate-Dow Jones Forex Industry Report.