On Friday, Fidelity Investments announced the 5 finalists in their “Be the Green Line” video contest. The idea for this one was quite unique; people were supposed to pretend to be an actual green line and then give someone advice or guidance. It’s a play on Fidelity’s current ad campaign where financial advisers help investors plan out their future via a “Green Line” to their goals.
Anyways, guess what? Your pal Beardy is one of the 5 finalists and I could use some help. If you have a youtube account, I’d greatly appreciate it if you could view my entry and then rate it 5 stars (or give it a “like” if you’re using youtube’s new layout) Instead of playing the green line myself, I created an odd, muppet-style green line puppet that ran around giving tips to random strangers. Here’s my video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wD1IGGFKZwU
Now if you’re a regular reader of VCN you’ll know that I usually advise against entering contests that involve online voting. But the Fidelity contest is a very rare example of how to incorporate voting into a contest without rewarding cheaters. According to the “Be the Green Line” rules, Fidelity could have picked as many as 10 finalists and then after a public voting period, judges would pick the winner out of the 5 videos with the highest scores. But Fidelity saved all of us finalists a ton of grief by only picking 5 videos for this round! So there won’t be a big ugly fight to make it to the top 5. And mercifully, the voting period is only a week long which is just right if you ask me.
The rules say that the judges may or may not take youtube ratings into account when picking their winner. So I feel compelled to do a little campaigning. Plus, it looks like one or more contestants are having their friends down-vote my video! So now I have to try and get my score up as a matter of principle.
If you are so inclined, you can check out all 5 finalist videos here: http://www.youtube.com/user/BeTheGreenLine
Thanks in advance for any 5-star ratings you wish to bestow up on my puppet opus!
Posted in 
Tags: 
I watched all 5 videos and Beardy, I think you have a really good chance of winning. Good luck, I voted for you.
I voted for you, though I must say I don’t think that’s your best work.
Dan, I think yours was the best of the bunch. I’d say your main competition is the one where the suicide girl goes dress shopping. It looked very pro but the green line in that one seemed kinda annoying and the red line seemed way more fun. So it’s kind of the opposite message of what they should have gone for.
I gave you 5 stars so if you win, remember to send me my cut!!