This summer, asked their facebook fans to “Submit a humorous and original video demonstrating the determination, hustle and spirit you and/or your team bring to your favorite and fun “HARD SPORTS” activity, such as (but not limited to) kickball, dodgeball, ping pong, Ultimate Frisbee, or cornhole*.”  There was a public voting period but it was only run to determine a set of 20 finalists.  Then a panel of judges picked the top three winners.  First place was $10,000 to be used to support the winners sporting endeavors.  Second place was $5,000 and third was $2,500.  And as a bonus, the 17 non-winning finalists each recived a mike’s hard lemonade “Sponsorship Kit” that included stuff like Mike’s T-shirts, sweat bands and gym bags plus some sporting equipment.  Each of these kits had an AVR of $500.  So it was a pretty sweet runner-up prize.  Here’s the video that took the top prize.

Grand Prize Winner.  Prize:  $10,000:
 

Not too shabby. I really admire the fact that these guys decided to shoot in the rain. It really added to the wackiness of the video. If it had been me, I would have canceled the shoot for sure. So good for them for going for it.

Overall, this was a really nice of example of how to run a GOOD video contest on facebook. Yeah, there was public voting but there were 20 finalist slots so anybody who really cared could have made the second round pretty easily. And as I said, judges picked the winners so Mike’s was able to avoid pissing off a bunch of their fans by letting some cheater win the grand prize. And 17 runner up prizes worth $500 each really showed that Mike’s actually respected and appreciated all of their finalists. If by chance some contest organizer reads this post, I hope you’ll take a lesson from this contest. It was fun and fair and a good model to follow. The rules are still online if you want to read the fine print for yourself.

*I’m going to assume (and hope) that they type of corn-holing they are referring to is a game of bean bags.