Man, I hate to start this blog off with a negative post but there’s big contest news today and it ain’t pretty. Butterfinger announced the four finalists in their “Nobody’s Gonna Lay a Finger on My Butterfinger” video contest this morning and the results are kind of inexplicable. The grand prize in this contest is $25,000. Usually when that kind of money is at stake, filmmakers bring their A game. I was looking forward to seeing some really great entries but there were few to be found.
In all, Butterfinger received more than 300 videos for the contest. That’s a pretty great response. If you’re not familiar with how this contest was run, there were 4 self-explanatory categories:
- Workplace Shenanigans
- Sweetest Kung Fu Moves
- Epic Fail
- Best Use of a Gadget
The submission period ended last week and Butterfinger picked one video from each category to go on to the finals. “The Finals” in this case are 22 days of public voting. The video with the most votes wins the 25K and the runners up each get a grand. Oh! And all for entrants get a year supply of butterfingers!
Click to watch the four Butterfing finalists
Now I actually think the different categories was an awesome idea. It assured a nice variety to the entered videos. I’ve been following the contest and I probably watched about 200 of the entries and I have to say, Butterfinger picked some not so hot finalists. All the winning entries are so…bland. Butterfinger didn’t exactly have a stellar field of entries to choose from though. I saw some real stand-outs but for the most part most entries ranged from OK to freaky-bad. Usually in a contest like this you’ll see a good number of funny, slick entries made by semi-professional filmmakers but for some reason, the semi-pros seemed to stay away from this contest. Maybe because the winner would ultimately be decided by a public vote?
If you go by the judges’ criteria I can’t understand how any of those four videos made it to the final round. Not one of them has a laugh out loud moment and they’re not especially original. If a real ad man were to pitch these four ideas to Butterfinger for real commercials, none of them would ever make it to air.
And the other contestants in the contest seem to agree. Check out some of the comments that have been left on the site:
Posted by Rochelle
BF reps must be living in a hole. I can’t believe the choices. All of us have been waiting for these 4 pieces of crap. Really??? None of the vids are even funny. I thought that was a vote for 25% Creative? No. Use of BF? Not too great. WOW!!!
Posted by remnantstudios
Weak guys…
Posted by ericmehlbrech
omg this contest is sad. I’ve watched all the finalists and even though mine is not one… I still felt there were atleast 50 better videos than the 4 chosen.
Posted by jason
I seriously doubt anyone in their right mind would voluntarily vote for any of these videos… I urge the judges to re-evaluate their choices.
Posted by ianchristy@
Crap. total crap. I hate butterfingers. I ate one for this stupid contest and they do this. Never buying a butterfinger again.
Posted by solo_neb
WOW!!! Are we serious???? is this what we get a slap… I say this is a fix, I think the four finalists are the lil’ boys of the Butterfingers CEOs… At least STAY TRUE TO YOURSELF BY PICKING THE TRUE TALENT THAT ARE LESTED ABOUVE…. BUT YOU KNOW WHAT WE JUST GOT TO MOVE ON, BUT WE’LL BOYCOTT EVERY PRODUCT MADE BY NESTLE, AND WE’LL SPREAD THE WORD!!!!
Obviously there are some disappointed filmmakers leaving comments but you know you may have made some bad calls when your choice of video contest finalists inspire people to boycott all of your company’s products.
Anyway, you can visit the Butterfinger website and see the videos and vote for the best of the bunch. If you entered this contest and didn’t make it to the finals, don’t feel too bad. I’m guessing the four finalists are all going to spend the next 22 days sitting at their computers, registering fake yahoo accounts so they can vote for themselves over and over and over. Hey…that’s what I would do!
Posted in 
I think it’s a failing on butterfingers part with the general rules of the contest – too specific. When a contest gets so specific on what the entries and categories need to look like, there’s no room for fun.