We’ll get back to covering the Taxslayer contest fiasco next week (actually, I managed to work some taxslayer stuff into this post after all) but for now I thought I’d cover a video contest that actually has its act together; the 2010 Skinit.com Spotlight video challenge.

I was really impressed with last year’s skinit video contest.  It went very smoothly and they got a ton of great entries.  I even posted an interview with one of the contest organizers and soon after, I got word that an even bigger version of the contest was planned for 2010.  Well, Skinit certainly delivered on their promise.  Last year the grand prize was 10 grand.  This year they are giving out SIX prizes of $5,000 each plus one grand prize of $20,000.  Yesterday, everyone who is on the taxslayer mailing list got an e-mail reminder about the nearing contest deadline.  One of the many reasons I’m annoyed about the cancellation of the taxslayer contest is that instead of shooting TWO entries for them, I could have spent my time making entries for the Skinit contest.  Well, there’s still 16 days to go and my “skins” are in the mail, so I should be able to get an entry in at the last minute.

One thing that really amazed me about last year’s skinit contest was that they actually TOLD YOU WHO WAS JUDGING IT!  If you enter a lot of contests you know how frustrating it is to not know who was passing judgment on your work.  In the reminder e-mail, skinit once again announce who this year’s judges are:

These people are all happy because the don't work for taxslayer.com

That e-mail also did crazy things like give handy tips you could follow to keep your entry from being disqualified.  They also included <gasp> an e-mail address you could send questions to!!  The taxslayer contest not only didn’t provide an e-mail address for questions, their website said that any questions you sent them will be ignored!  In fact, the entire taxslayer contest site had kind of a rude, adversarial tone to it.

I never really thought about this before but I guess you can see a lot of the organizer’s personalities in the contests they set up.  As I’ve learned, the head of the taxslayer contest is a mean, rude jerk who likes to ignore contestants and (allegedly) mock them and harass them.  The one time I got him on the phone I could hear anger in his voice…before he hung up on me, I mean.  The head of the taxslayer contest, Daniel Eubanks is also in charge of taxslayer’s auto racing endeavors.  So I suspect that the annual video contest is just a hassle that he gets stuck with every year.  Maybe that’s why the contest rules were so confusing.  Maybe he was sick of the contest so he sabotaged it so that the company would drop the idea already so he could get back to blogging about race cars!

The people at Skinit though seem to actually enjoy running their video contest.  They clearly respect the people that are spending time and money to make commercials for them.  Unlike taxslayer, they seem to actually want people to enter their contest.  OH!  You know what?  I think I get it; the people at skinit are probably really used to working with artists because that’s who designs all their skins.  So they understand how creative people think and how they deal with things like requirements and deadlines.  But the people at Taxslayer (AKA Rhodes Financial Services) are all money-minded people who live in a world of facts and figures.  Daniel Eubanks probably never has to deal with creative people.  That must be why it was so easy for them to cancel their video contest!  Obviously, their NUMBERS told them the best thing to do would be to cut their losses and maybe pick up a few entries on the cheap later in the year.  They clearly didn’t care about wasting a bunch of filmmakers time and money.  It wasn’t their time and money so why should they worry about it?  Their reputation might take a hit but right now, they’ll save a few grand.

Ahem…anywho, you’ve still got about two weeks to get your skinit entries in.  Head here for more details:  http://www.skinit.com/landing_page.php?id=TVspotlight_home

But don’t worry, you don’t need to be a special effects genius to enter. You don’t actually have to show Kong in action. Instead, you can focus on the aftermath. Check out this promo video to get a feel of what they’re looking for.

Now, I’ll be entering this contest and if you enter because of this blog post and wind up beating me, please let me know so I can crush you with my giant monkey foot. $15,000 in prizes are up for grabs and the deadline is June 7th, so you’ve still got lots of time to get down to (monkey) business. Ha!

LINK:  http://zooppa.com/contests/king-kong

See that headline on the top left?  “EPA Contest Seeks Videos Promoting Government Regulations…”  It always suprises me when I see video contests mentioned in the media.  But I never thought I’d see one posted on the Drudge Report.

I saw that EPA contest listing the other day and actually thought about entering it.  It never crossed my mind that it was political in any way though.  I guess it is kind of weird to hold a pro-government regulations video contest but is it really something conservatives need to get all pissed about?  (check out the comments on the article.  It’s nothing but angry, anti-government, anti-EPA stuff from Drudge readers)  To build on what the article says, government regulation is what keeps the asbestos out of your house, the lead out of your kid’s toys and the cyanide out of your drinking water.  Hey….that’s actually not a bad line.  Maybe I will enter after all.  In your face, Drudge!

Do a google image search for "April" and you'll get this and a ton of porn

April is finally here and two big contests have deadlines this month. The first is the perennial Taxslayer.com commercial contest with the hard-to-forget deadline of April 15th. There are two big prizes in this contest; first place gets $15,000 and second gets $5,000. The other deadline to remember this month is April 23rd. That’s for the Godaddy commercial contest. Godaddy’s giving away more than $175,000 in that one so you might want to ad it to your calendar.

Since both the taxslayer and godaddy contests require contestants to upload their videos to youtube, it’s really easy to check out the competition. So let’s see what’s been submitted so far.

Let’s start Taxslayer. According to that contest’s rules, contestants must upload their entries to youtube and tag them “Taxslayercontest2010.” Doing a search for that tag yields just ONE, solitary result. Here it is:

Remember for this one, contestants are required to submit both a 30 second and a 15 second version of their entry. You can watch the 15 second version of the above ad here.

As we’ve mentioned before, Taxslayer lowered their prize amount and instituted some new rules this year. And it looks like those changes have scared everyone away. I had pretty much decided not to enter but if no one else is going to enter, maybe I should after all?

The Godaddy contest on the other hand has already received a whole bunch of entries. You can scroll through them all here: http://videos.godaddy.com/Super-Bowl-Video-Contest.aspx

But how about I save you a lot of time and just show you the three best entries so far. These three seem to be the only ones slick enough for TV:

EDIT:  Looks like I missed one.  Someone left a link to this entry in a comment.  It’s very slick but it’s kind of odd because it seems to be sort of a parody of the sample entry that godaddy produced:

As you can guess, a lot of crazy shit has been submitted too.  This video for instance is just plain WRONG. I think Chris Hanson needs to pay a visit to whoever came up with this idea:

If you shoot an entry for either the taxslayer or the godaddy contests and want to show off your work, e-mail us a link or just leave it in a comment below. We’ll post some more of our favorite entries later this month.

Well it only took 8 months but our little site here has finally crawled far enough up the google ranking ladder that people searching simply for “video contests” can actually find us.  Consequently, I’ve been getting a bunch more press releases from companies looking to promote their video contests.  There are a ton of great sites that list new contests so I usually leave the announcements to them.  But if I get asked to promote a contest by an especially nice PR person, or if a contest seems especially cool, I’ll post it.  So expect to see more contest announcements in the future.  In fact, let’s do one now…

I just got an e-mail asking me share the details of the new Sour Punch video contest.  The e-mailer actually started his message off with “Dear Beardy” which put a smile on my beardless face.  So here are the details straight from the press release:

American Licorice Company today announced the launch of the Sour Punch “Punch Up the Video Contest” where contestants are asked to create a parody of their favorite TV Show or Movie by recreating a scene and incorporating Sour Punch into the dialogue or action.

Limiting their video submissions to three minutes in length, contestants can incorporate Sour Punch into the scene however they choose, whether it’s into the dialogue or used on set as props. One winner will be selected each week based on a combination of creativity and public votes/views. At the end of the contest submission period on July 25th, one of the weekly winners will be selected as the Grand Prize winner.  Each weekly winner will take home a $100 Visa gift card. The Grand Prize Winner will take home a Flip HD Ultra Video Camcorder and a $1500 Visa gift card.  There is no limit to the number of videos an entrant can submit. For complete contest rules visit www.sourpunch.com.

At first I wasn’t going to promote this contest since it seemed like the winners were going to be chosen by mostly by a public vote…and those contests are ALWAYS won by people who figure out a way to cheat.  But reading through the rules, I found this breakdown of how the a videos’ score would be tabulated:

Sour Punch Judging Criteria

• Creativity (50%)
• Quality (40%)
• Public Appeal (10%)

“Public Appeal” means a video’s “Popularity.”  And it’s only worth 10% of your score!  Now we’re talking.  5% of that is a video’s view count and 5% is its star rating.  That’s the way every vote-based video contest should work.  Contestants get just enough incentive to send links out and encourage their friends to vote but they don’t have enough incentive to cheat.  Perfect.

Though the top prize in this contest is only $1,500, entering would probably be worth your time.  Every week, for the next 20 weeks, one video will be selected (according to the judging criteria) and will receive a $100 prize.

Since most people will shoot their entries right before the deadline in July, if you shoot one now you’d probably have a really decent chance of winning 100 bucks.  Sure, that ain’t exactly a ton of cash but hey, we’re in the middle of the fricking Great Recession here.  100 bucks is 100 bucks.  And if you win, you go on to the finals and have a 1 in 20 chance of winning $1,500.

The Sour Punch contest site links to some of the “entries” that have been received so far.  But since the contest doesn’t officially open until Monday, I’m guessing those are just sample videos created by the company.  Still, if you’d like to get an idea of the kind of thing the are looking for, check out these Sour Punch parodies of the two most parodied films of 1994; Forrest Gump and Pulp Fiction.

http://www.sourpunch.com/videoContest/#/watch?v=30

http://www.sourpunch.com/videoContest/#/watch?v=31

Purchased by Turbo Tax. Price: $4,000

Several other videos won editor’s awards of $1,000 and $500. You can see those (one of them has a bikini girl in it!) here:

http://www.poptent.net/blog/2010/02/26/announcement-turbotax-purchase/

Top-Flight purchased 5 ads submitted by poptent users for $3,500 each. You can see all five here:

http://www.poptent.net/blog/2010/02/15/top-flite-purchases-5-poptent-made-commercials/

But here’s my favorite:

Purchased by Top-Flight. Price: $3,500



Incidentally, Poptent has four big assignments open right now; Becks Beer, Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream, 42 Below Vodka and Fed-Ex. The deadline for the Fed-Ex assignment is only 9 days away and only 23 videos have submitted. So this might be your chance to swoop in and get a big pay day. But…and this is going to sound crazy…I heard that the assignment pages for Becks Beer and 42 Below vodka are haunted!! I heard that when you click the “Accept Assignment button” a ghost flies out of your computer and tries to eat your face! That’s some scary stuff right there man. And I’m not just saying all this because I’m shooting submissions for Becks and 42 Below this weekend and I want to discourage you from submitting. I’m telling you because I know you love your face and are scared of ghosts.

For the third year in a row, Taxslayer.com is running their annual commercial contest.  I think I’ve got a decent idea for an entry and was looking forward to entering.  But this year, the rules of the taxslayer contest are so strange and complex that I think I might have to have to skip it.  It’s just giving me a weird vibe.  They’re asking contestants to provide a lot more stuff this year even though they are offering a grand prize that is $10,000 LESS than in previous years.  In 2008 and 2009, participants were supposed to submit one, 30 to 60 second commercial and one winner was awarded $25,000.  This year, the grand prize has been reduced to $15,000 and participants must submit TWO versions of their commercial; one that’s 15 seconds long and one that’s 30 seconds long.

For the first time though, Taxslayer is also giving away $5,000 for second place.  But last year, after the contest ended and the winner was picked, Taxslayer turned two other contestant’s entries into commercials.  So those people probably got $5,000 a piece at least.  Plus, Taxslayer paid to have all three of last year’s selected videos re-shot by professionals.  So while they are giving out more official prizes, they will be spending probably at least 20 grand less on this year’s video contest.

If you entered last year, you already know that the a lot of contestants were not happy about the winner that Taxslayer’s judges picked.  Here it is:

2009 Taxslayer Winner.  Prize: $25,000

No offense to the maker of the video and friend of VCN “HappyJoel” Moss but that video had zero production values.  It was a funny idea and he gave a good performance but everyone who entered the contest assumed that the whole point was to make a real  Taxslayer commercial that would air on TV.  After all, they aired the 2008 winner on TV exactly as it was submitted.  (click here to see that one.)  The 2008 winner featured a guy in a real knight’s costume riding around on a real horse but the 2009 video featured a guy in a plastic knight’s costume and a print out of the taxslayer logo on his toy shield.

Taxslayer received tons of really great, professionally made entries.  Any number of them were good enough to put right on TV.  My own entry didn’t turn out so well so I didn’t expect to win at all.   But when they announced that the Press Conference video has won, I was still shocked.  Taxslayer explained that they loved HappyJoel’s press conference idea so much that they decided to pick him as the winner and planned to pay a production company to shoot a professional version of the ad.  (See the remake that’s now airing on tv, here)  But that explanation just caused a lot more frustration.  If taxslayer wanted to re-shoot the winning ad, why didn’t they just say so right from the start?  I personally spent A LOT of time and a little bit of money shooting my taxslayer entry last year and I did it because I thought that I was supposed to shoot something that was “tv-ready.”  That’s what a lot of people thought.

So this year, I was looking forward to the contest because I thought they would be just looking for IDEAS for good commercials they could re-shoot. When I heard that the prize had been reduced by 10 Grand, I assumed that they were for sure just going to be looking for ideas.  But then I read the 2010 rules and now I have NO IDEA what those people want from us!

Here’s Taxslayer’s video that outlines the official rules of the contest:

The video says that in addition to winning $15,000 this year’s winners “may be broadcast on national television as part of the 2011 taxslayer.com commercial campaign.”

OK, SO WHAT THE HECK DOES THAT MEAN??  Do they want slick, ready-for-TV commercials or do they just care about cool ideas since they plan to re-shoot them anyway?  Since the prize is so much smaller and since they re-shot 3 entries last year we should obviously save our money and make simple “Sample” ads, right?  But if that’s the case, why do they want one 15 second version and one 30 second version?  And why in the name of God do we have to submit copies of our entries on BETA TAPE?  They would only need a BetaSP copy of an ad if they were going to show it on TV.

It seems like Taxslayer is trying to hedge their bets.  If a contestant submits an ad that’s slick enough to air on TV, Taxslayer will save a ton of money if they pick it since they won’t have to re-shoot it.  But just in case they don’t like any of the high-production-value entries they get, they want to still have the option to re-shoot the winning ads.

And here’s another weird thing about this contest; First place gets you $15,000 and second gets you $5,000.  But Taxslayer will use both of those ads in their 2010 commercial campaign.  So the second place winner is getting a seriously raw deal!  Since both 1^st and 2^nd place videos will probably appear on TV, Taxslayer should purchase them both for the same price.

But there is no guarantee that Taxslayer will actually show any of this year’s entries (or remakes based on entries) on TV.  Nothing (that I saw) in the official rules say anything about the winning ads appearing on TV.  That is because Taxslayer doesn’t want to be contractually obligated to air any commercials.  They say the winning videos MIGHT air on TV and they only say that in the rules video.  They probably will air at least one winner but it’d be nice if they were willing to commit to that in writing.

Oh!  I almost forget the icing on the cake.  The ultimate winners of the contest will be picked by taxslayer’s judges.  But they will pick the winners from a pool of 20 finalists.  Those finalists will be determined by view counts and star ratings on youtube!  So if you even want to be considered, you better already have a decent number of subscribers and nice, deep social network.  Hey wait a second…I run a blog that gets thousands of hits a month!  Maybe I should enter.  If I appealed to VCN readers for support I should at least be able to get enough views and votes to land in the top 20.  Hmmmmm….

Like I said, I’ve been looking forward to entering this year’s Taxslayer contest.  But there are so many other HUGE contests running right now I’m not sure I should spend my time and resources on one that is so vague about what they want.  I wanted to write taxslayer and ask them to clarify some of their rules but I couldn’t find any contact info on the contest site; just an e-mail address for submissions and the rules say “this email address is for submissions only, we will not respond to questions or other communications.”  So I thought maybe I’d just ask my questions into the ether of the internet and see if anyone else had any theories about what exactly taxslayer is looking for.

Unless Taxslayer comes out and clarifies their rules, I think I’m going to pass on this one.  Or maybe I’ll got for it…I don’t know. Anybody out there plan on entering?

Unless your Internet has been down for the last week or two, you’ve probably heard about Godaddy.com’s huge, new commercial contest.  It’s one of the absolute, best video contests I have ever seen.  First off, the prizes are huge.  Third place wins you $25,000, second place is $50,000 and first place is $100,000.  Second, many big-money contests host all the entries themselves.  But for this one, participants just submit their entries via youtube.  So unlike last year’s Doritos and Butterfinger contests, no entries will disappear in the depths of the sponsor’s servers and contestants won’t have to wait for days for their videos to appear online.  The only catch is that you have to sign up for a goddady account, which is free.

I think the thing I like best about this contest though is that the top three winners will be picked by Godaddy judges and not by a public vote.  That means the quality videos actually have a chance of coming out on top.  But the folks behind this contest did something else very smart.  Visitors to the site will be able to vote for their favorite entries but those votes have no impact on which videos win the top prizes.  Instead, there are smaller (but still pretty good) prizes for entries that are the “audience favorites.”

The deadline to enter is April 23^rd so you still have a good, long while to get your submissions in.  To kick things off, the Godaddy team created a sample entry.

Godaddy sample entry:

Here’s what the godaddy team had to say about their sample entry:

“If we expect you to make a commercial for the GoDaddy.com Commercial Contest, we should be able to make one ourselves, right? This is an idea we (Go Daddy’s Social Media Team) put together to give you an example of a potential submission for the contest. Of course, we’re not eligible to win. Also, our example’s a bit longer than the 30 second limit…”

I think it’s funny though that the sample video is 16 seconds longer than the official time limit.  Just goes to show how hard it is to keep an idea under 30 seconds.  Having their “social media team” create a sample entry is just the kind of thing that gives me a good feeling about a  video contest.  It shows that the sponsor is holding the contest partly for the fun of it.  I’ll tell you, not only will I be entering this contest, I plan to throw everything I got at this one.

Important Note! If you live in New York, Florida or outside of the US, don’t bother entering because you ain’t eligible for some reason.  Check the official rules for more details about who can enter.

There are a lot of video contests that I regret entering last year.  Some of them were terribly run, others wasted contestants time by requiring them to shill for votes and still others yielded winners that were so inexplicably bad that you couldn’t help but wonder if maybe the whole thing had been rigged.

But there’s one 2009 contest I regret NOT entering; the Skinit.com TV challenge. Skinit makes sticker-type things that are designed to fit any kind of electronic device you can think of.  Visit their site and you’ll get what I’m talking about:  Skinit.com.  Anyway, I was so impressed with their contest that after it ended I reviewed it in an article called “Profile of a Great contest: Skinit.com.”  I interviewed a nice representative from Skinit for that piece named Shreya and last week, she e-mailed to let me know that Skinit had just announced that they were bringing the contest back for 2010 and that it was going to be even bigger than last year.

And she wasn’t kidding.  Last year, the first place winner took home $10,000, a runner-up got $5,000 and the winner of the best storyboard entry also go $5,000.  This year, there will be 6 categories: 1. Consumer Electronics ( 30 sec) 2. Consumer Electronics (60 sec) 3. Tailgate Packs (30 sec) 4. Tailgate Packs (60 sec) 5. WallSkins (30 sec) 6. WallSkins (60 sec)

One winner in each category will get $5,000 and then one overall winner will be awarded and extra $20,000.  And as a bonus, the winning entry (and maybe even some of the runners-up) will have the chance to be shown on TV.

Last year, I entered just about any contest I could find if I thought I had a chance of winning.  But this year I’m really trying to focus my efforts.  And the skinit challenge is just the type of contest I love coming across.  My favorite contests are those that provide lots of opportunities for people to win.  It’d be awesome to win $25,000 but winning 5 grand would be pretty sweet too.  The only thing that worries me is that the rules say that “popularity/public vote” will be one of the criteria used to determine the winners.

Hopefully it will not be a significant factor though.  I don’t care how much money is at stake, I’ve pretty much sworn off all video contests that let “the public” pick the winners because those winners invariably turn out to be whoever has the largest social network or the time to vote for themselves over and over and over.  But based on the skinit rules, it doesn’t seem like this is going to just be a popularity contest.

The deadline to enter the contest is still 99 days away so there’s lots of time to plan for this one.  I for sure will be entering and I’m planning on going completely overboard….assuming I can think of an idea, that is.

3. Doritos Please by “Senor Queso.” Video #1614

This video is just mind-blowing. I can’t even imagine how much time, money and effort went into create what might be the most amazing video contest entry EVER.

And I hope it doesn’t win.

I’d be amazed if this spot didn’t make it to the final six but I think it would be a bad idea for Doritos to pick it. Why? Oh come on….you know why.





If “Doritos Please” aired during the superbowl, at least 50% of the people who saw it would immediately think the same thing; “Hey, did Doritos just rip of the Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the world commercials?” Obviously, those two spots are very, very different. But that is the reaction I had when I first saw it, it’s the reaction friends had when I sent it to them and it’s the reaction many commentors have been having over on the contest site.

It’s important to note that “Doritos Please” was created by the same team that created one of last year’s finalist videos, Too Delicious. They didn’t make it to the superbowl and I’m guessing they vowed that 2010 would be their year. It’s an amazing entry and a valiant effort but Dos Equis did the cool, world-traveling latin guy thing first. I predict it will make it to the finals but if I were a Doritos judge, I’d pass on this one in favor of something more original. But how can they?? Wouldn’t they feel bad considering how much work and money went into this entry!? And it’s from someone the CTSB team probably already knows well so it’d be tough to say “sorry guys, thanks for working so hard but once again, you’re not going to make it to the superbowl.” So I think that sentimentality will ensure this spot will make it to the top 6 but if I were Doritos, I’d leave it out. It just makes us “average joes” look like we can’t come up with our own original ideas.


2. Kick Hunger by “Silveroaks.” Video #1669

This is one of my favorite entries but it too just happens to be a little too similar to a series of commercials that are already on the air……





But unlike “Doritos Please” I think that this Hunger commercial is different enough from the Weight Watchers commercials to earn a pass. People will make the connection but at least there’s a nut shot and that will probably win folks over. I can see this one making the top 6 and even the superbowl.


1. Animal Cruelty by “jwsvboda.” Video #5503

If it were up to me, this spot right here would get the first spot in the top 6. It’s funny, new, unique, subversive and it even manages to look and sound like a professional ad. But it’s just rough around the edges enough so that viewers will appreciate and understand that it’s not a multi-million dollar, Madison avenue created commercial. It’s slick but not too slick and it’s got a dog who gets revenge against a jerk who was trying to abuse an animal. Who wouldn’t rate a commercial like this really well?

So here’s Beardy’s big prediction; Animal Cruelty will make the top 6, it will make it to the Superbowl and it will place in the Top 3 of the USA Today Ad meter poll. It has just what it takes to rank well during polling. It’s funny early and gets funnier as it goes on. As soon as viewers see that shot of that dog lifting up his collar, every dial in the ad meter poll will go all the way to “This is great” and it will stay there for the rest of the spot.

So there you go folks. If you have seen or made a spot that you think I’ve overlooked, leave a link in the comments of this post. If I see one that really blows me away, I will add it to our list.