If you’re not familiar with the contest site Tongal.com, they do contests in various stages. First comes the concept phase where anyone can pitch an idea for an entry. Judges pick their favorite 5 ideas and then filmmakers are supposed to go out and shoot an entry based of the selected concepts. Binaca recently ran a contest through Tongal and it had a prize pool of $7,000. But a lot of people got a slice of that pie. The first place video got $3K and the first place concept got $1K and then all kinds of other people got smaller amounts. I guess it’s cool that so many people get to win something but I prefer contests that offer a few big prizes rather than a ton of smaller prizes. For instance, in the Binaca contest, the guy who won 5th place in the concept phase got only $50. But the $3000 winning entry used his idea. The concept creator did get a bonus $150 because of that though. Still, $200 for the winning idea seems kinda low. Here was the 5th place pitch by Chip Bolcik:

“My concept is a ‘March of Time’ commercial showing how everything changes through time except the need to have fresh breath before a kiss. Binaca has been around forever. Let’s show how people through the ages have always used it before a kiss.”

And here’s the winning video based on that idea by John Jones:

First Place. Prize: $3000

More winning concepts, videos and other prize-winning stuff here:  http://www.tongal.com/app/contestDetail.action?id=25