There are currently three commercials airing on TV promoting Quizno’s “5 4 3″ deal and in classic Quizno’s style, they feature crazy animation and weird animals singing about tasty sandwiches. The first ad you’ve probably seen; it features 3 kittens singing to the tune of Three Blind Mice. (link) The other two ads you might not have seen yet since they just started airing. Amazingly, these two new Quizno’s ads were created for an assignment on poptent.net. The commercials are so slick and so well made that 99.999% of the people who see them on TV would never even guess that they were made on spec by freelancers. I actually think both commercials are better than the one Quiznos themselves produced. Here they are:
Purchased by Quiznos. Price: $7,500
Purchased by Quznos. Price: $7,500
Amazing stuff. Now let me tell you, Quiznos got one hell of a deal here. I’m going to guess that $7,500 is just a fraction of what it cost to create the original singing kittens ad. That’s great for Quiznos but kind of not so great for filmmakers. $7,500 is a lot of money but it’s certainly the lowest payday I’ve ever seen for a in this type of situation. Normally in video contests or poptent-style open assignments if the sponsor intends to use the selected video on TV the price tag is somewhere between $10,000 and $25,000. Just off the top of my head Doritos, Taxslayer and butterfinger all paid $25K for video contest entries that made it to air. But like I said, $7,500 is still a big pay day and for an up-and-coming professional, the real prize is getting your work on national TV. Still, I hope Quiznos sends those guys a couple free gift cards. Actually, forget the gift cards. The guys who made those two ads should be allowed to walk into any quiznos and demand free sandwiches. If I were them, I’d go in and be all like “Don’t you people know who I am!? I’m the guy that made that Quiznos commercial where that heavy metal cat screams about sandwich deals motherF$%#*er! So give me a free Tasty Torpedo before I tear this place apart!!”
Toyota Canada recently announced the winner of their Hosers-Only (my term, not theirs) Toyota 4Runner contest. Contestants were supposed to make a video explaining why they loved 4Runners…or something. It wasn’t really clear. The thing that caught my eye about this contest is the way Toyota picked their 10 finalists. 9 finalists were picked by judges and 1 was picked by a public, online vote. That type of finalist selection is a great way for a sponsor to have their cake and eat it too. Anywho, here’s the video that wound up winning the top prize.
This summer, Klondike is running a series of video contests called the “Everyman Challenges.” The first challenge was to show how a real man packs his car. Grand prize was a brand new (though unspecified brand of) SUV. Here’s the winner.
Pack the Car Winner. Prize: New SUV
Most of the contestants filmed themselves packing their cars in creative ways. But these guys basically ignored the “challenge” aspect of this contest and just jammed in as many shots of Klondike bars as they could. Klondike judges pick the winners so I guess it was a smart move.
Last week, Skinit.com announced the six winners of their 2nd annual commercial contest and I have to say, I’m pretty disappointed with the results. Scratch that. I’m not disappointed…I just feel like an idiot. For months I’ve been promoting the Skinit contest and encouraging V.C.N. readers to enter because I thought it was a great example of a fair and smartly-run contest. But in the end, the judges made some decisions that are just totally inexplicable. In last year’s installment of this contest the company picked several high-quality winners and then aired three of those ads on television. I exchanged some e-mails last week with a representative from Skinit and she said the company plans on doing the same thing this year, though they haven’t decided yet which of the 6 winners they’ll air.
However, I don’t see how they could air any of this year’s winners on TV. Some of the selected ads are just not technically good enough. But the big problem with Skinit’s choices is that of the 6 category winners they chose, at least 5 of those videos don’t actually feature the products they are advertising.
The “Skins” that Skinit sells aren’t exactly cheap; “Wall Skins” and “Tailgate Skin” packs go for about 100 bucks each. Still, a lot of filmmakers plunked down the cash and ordered those products so they could use them in their ads. But Skinit decided to reward a lot of filmmakers that didn’t even care enough to actually buy their products. At least 5 of the winning videos either used only stock images of skins from the Skinit website or they faked their “skins” with green screens and graphics. (I say “at least 5″ of the 6 winners don’t feature real products because I’m unsure about this one. I THINK those are real “tailgate Skins.”) Anyway, check out this video that won the “60 Second Tailgate Skin” category to see an obvious case of CGI skins:
Category Winner, 60 second Tailgate Skins. Prize: $5,000
That’s actually a very excellent commercial and will probably be one of the ads that wind up on TV. But would that be a smart decision for Skinit.com? The “Skins” in this ad are clearly graphics that were inserted during editing. Would Butterfinger ever pick a winning commercial that featured digital candy bars? Of course not. If the product has to be faked to be included in the ad, the consumer concludes that there must be something wrong with the appearance of that product. I mean, the whole point of “skins” is how good they look, right? Here’s another example of what I’m talking about. This is the winner of the “30 second wall skin” category:
Category Winner, 30 Second Wall Skins. Prize: $5,000
The idea is cute but again, it doesn’t show you the actual product. There were tons of really great, high-quality commercials submitted to this contest. Couldn’t the judges find any they liked that featured real versions of what they’re trying to sell? Even the two “Electronic Device” category winning videos are Skin-less and a cell phone skin is only like 10 bucks. The judges’ decision to pick so many videos that faked their skins or that only used stock images comes off as an insult to all the filmmakers that actually cared enough to purchase and feature the products they were supposed to be promoting.
If the fake-skin issue was the only problem with the results of this contest, I probably wouldn’t even mention it. But the Skinit judges also did something that I really hate; they picked a winner that clearly should have been disqualified because it violated the rules. And not only did they pick that video as one of the 6 winners, it actually won the grand prize of $25,000. Of the 170+ entries they received, here is the commercial that Skinit felt was the best of the bunch. It was submitted to the “60 second Wall Skin” category. See if you can spot the issue that should have gotten it disqualified:
Grand Prize Winner: Prize: $25,000
Ok, you were probably too distracted by the quality of that ad to notice anything that should have gotten it disqualified. I don’t think I will ever understand how a group of judges could all agree that the above video was the best entry that they received. Wasn’t the point of this contest to pick a winner that could air on television? I’ll admit, the idea for this ad is cute but its technical issues are just impossible to ignore. It’s just not at all pleasing to look at and the green-screened in “wall skin” looks very unnatural. Probably the weirdest thing about this ad though is that the dubbed in, out-of-sync audio gives the whole thing a strange, creepy vibe.
But besides the technical issues, there’s another reason this ad will never air on TV. And it’s the same reason it should have been disqualified. Check out this screen grab from the start of the video:
Hey! There’s a commercial in that commercial! The editor of that ad obviously worked hard to disguise all the billboards in the Times Square scenes but there was just nothing that could be done to discreetly blur out the Hyundai Tuscon commercial that was playing behind the lead actress in the opening shots. I just re-watched the entry and noticed several recognizable billboard for the musicals Chicago, American Idiot and Promises, Promises too. (check the first shots of the “wall skin.”) All of those show images and names are copyright-protected and trademarked. Here’s what Skinit’s official rules say about such things:
Each Submission … must not infringe any party’s intellectual property or other rights; it must be suitable for display and publication on national television
Each Submission must not contain any copyrighted works (other than as owned by the Entrant, group or any individual member of the group).
Submission may not contain or refer to any company/brand other use third party names, logos, or trademarks other than Skinit, Inc. and Skinit.com.
Skinit reserves the right in its sole discretion to remove or blur or to ask the applicable Entrant to remove or blur any non-material elements (e.g. logos on clothing, vehicles, devices, images in the background, etc.) rather than disqualify an otherwise compliant Submission.
According to Skinit’s own rules, that video should have been rejected when it was submitted. Then (at their sole discretion) Skinit could have asked the creator of that ad to blur out the SUV commercial and the billboards and resubmit. They didn’t do that though. Instead they let a video with hardcore copyright issues into the contest and then awarded that video the top prize. Copyright infringement is no joke folks and you don’t get a pass just because you’re not a “professional” filmmaker. If Skinit aired that ad on tv they would get sued. Actually, Skinit and the person who made that ad could get sued RIGHT NOW by Hyundai. (That’s a Hyundai Tuscon ad playing in the background) The creator of the ad used footage and trademarks that Hyundai owns in a video and sold the work for $25,000. And Skinit is featuring the ad on their website even though they know they have no right to display some of the copyrighted material in that ad.
Before I wrap up this post I’d like to mention one thing; I can’t blame ANYONE for winning a video contest as long as they do it fair and square. Just because I feel that Skinit should have picked some videos that featured their real products that doesn’t mean the folks who did win this contest should be anything but thrilled and proud about their accomplishment. It’s not their fault at all that the judges made some bad decisions. In fact. I’m sure every category winner is way more upset and confused about Skinit’s choice for the grand prize than I am. Now that I think about it, Skinit doesn’t even explain WHY they picked the videos that they did. I’m really curious as to why they thought they Times Square ad was better than the other 5 category winners. It’d be nice if they actually explained their choices on the website. Actually, it’d be nice if they just listed the names of the winners on the site. Since all the entries had to be uploaded to the Skinit youtube channel, and since Skinit didn’t name any of the winners, we have no idea who made those ads. It just looks a little suspicious. Just 3 weeks ago I saw a really fishy video win a local Chicago video contest and so I googled the name of the sponsor (a local charity) and the name of the winner. Sure enough, the winner of the $20,000 contest prize performed every year at an annual party the charity held. They knew the filmmaker so well they were even helped throw an event in her honor after someone defaced one of her art projects. So if Skinit would at least tell us WHO won their contest we could check to make sure they don’t like, you know…work for them or share the same last name as one of the judges.
But I digress. You know what, I’ll end this post on a positive note. Here’s the entry that’s probably my favorite of the winners. What’s really funny is that the guy who made this ad just won a $15,000 runner-up prize in the Godaddy commercial contest and he used the exact same character in both entries. Here’s his godaddy ad: http://www.video.me/EventShow.aspx?vid=3391
Category Winner, 60 Second Consumer Electronics. Prize: $5,000
The Aflac 10 second video challenge is a great example of the type of video contest you should absolutely, positively stay away from. Sure, the grand prize was $25,000 but unless you’re an internet celebrity you didn’t stand much chance of winning this one. The problem with the Aflac contest is that no matter how awesome your video was the only way to have a shot at the grand prize was if you got enough votes to get you into the top 10. And according to this article 180 entries were received and more than 69,000 votes were cast. That’s 383 votes per video! I’ve followed the voting of a lot of video contests and I’ve learned that with a few high-profile exceptions like the Crash the Superbowl contest, strangers won’t take the time to register and vote for some contest video they have no stake in. One reason strangers do vote for entries in the Crash the Superbowl contest is because they give Superbowl tickets away every day to one random voter. But I don’t think Aflac awarded any such voter prizes.
So….video quality was totally irrelevant in the first round of this contest. That means there were only two ways for a filmmaker to have a chance of winning. Either they had to already have a pretty serious online following that would unite to propel them into the top ten or they had to vote for themselves over and over and over. The fact that “69,000” votes were cast in this contest isn’t something to brag about. That is a crazy high number and it’s a tell-tale sign of cheating. The average vote count per video was 383. How many people out there even KNOW 383 people, let alone 383 that will take the time to vote for your goofy Aflac commercial?
If you know how video contest work, the numbers here are very suspicious. But to most folks, it sounds like Aflac must be doing a great job connecting with the much sought after, social network crowd. Check out this quote from the article I mentioned:
“The passion of the contestants who creatively used their own social networks, generating hundreds of thousands of page views and millions of impressions, combined with their knowledge of our products blew us away,” said Aflac Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer Jeff Charney. “It is clear that people are starting to get to know Aflac and are beginning to learn that we are more than a household name; we are a household need.”
That right there is why you shouldn’t enter video contests like this. Because this wasn’t a video contest. This was a SOCIAL NETWORKING contest. Your entry in the contest was just an excuse for you to send out links to Aflac’s website. They cared about “page views” and gauging the public’s knowledge of their products, not quality entries. So why in the world would you ever want to spend time and energy making a video for a contest like that? Aflac had to realize that they were holding a contest that would encourage people to cheat to win it. I’m guessing they actually wanted cheating to happen because the more votes were cast, the more “connected” with web-users they would seem.
180 entries is about what the Skinit.com video contest got and they also had a grand prize of $25,000. So I guess 180 entries is a pretty good estimate of how many submissions a contest of this size should get. So…before you go entering a “video contest” like this, ask yourself; do I have a large enough social network to get more votes than 171 other people?
The video that won the Aflac challenge is very well made. It’s not insanly awesome though. I have to wonder, what video would have won the $25K if Aflac gave the prize to the BEST entry?
First Place. Prize: $25,000
Did anybody enter this contest? Anybody know what you had to do to register to vote? Or if you could vote more than once? If you have any info, leave a comment.
Did you watch the Indy 500 on Sunday? Nope, me neither. But I had a good excuse, I was out shooting an entry for the Skinit.com contest. But if you did happen to watch the race on Sunday then maybe you caught the reveal of the winners of Godaddy.com’s first commercial contest. If you didn’t catch the reveal well, I guess it’s a good thing you have the internet. Here they are:
Godaddy has the winning videos posted to their “video.me” site and videos there are stupid hard to embed. So to watch the winning ads, you’ll have to click here: http://videos.godaddy.com/Super-Bowl-Video-Contest
Of the 10 finalists that were announced a few weeks ago, “Go Momma” and the “Get Online Rap” were two of my favorites so I’m glad to see them win. And I’m guessing that marketing nerds across the web were amazed and impressed that godaddy’s top choice was so different that the type of ads they usually put out. To quote Godaddy’s own press release, Go Momma was uncharacteristically “Cleavage-Free.” The ad has aired a few times on TV so keep your eyes open and you might just catch it. I bet Godaddy is going to wind up airing it a lot. As well they should. I think Go Mamma is easily the best GoDaddy commercial ever because instead of being a confusing, PG-rated strip show, it actually explained what Godaddy.com does!
But the big news isn’t really WHO won this contest…it’s HOW MUCH was won. Here’s a quote from that Godaddy press release I mentioned:
“Five Honorable Mention winners will receive $15,000, raising the prize winnings to $250,000, which makes Go Daddy’s “Create Your Own Commercial” contest the highest guaranteed payout of any commercial contest in advertising history.”
Wow. So apparently, Godaddy was so impressed with their finalists that at the last minute they decided to give 5 other videos “Honorable Mentions” awards of $15,000 each. Wait a second…if there were 3 big winners and 5 honorable mentions, that means 2 finalists didn’t get $15K. Man, sucks to be them! (You can see all the Honorable Mention Winners here.)
And there’s some other news to report; the mystery of why this was called Godaddy.com’s Super Bowl video contest has been solved! Turns out the contest was announced on Super Bowl Sunday and it was never Godaddy’s intention to actually air the winning ads during the big game. I follow video contests as closely as pretty much anyone around and I didn’t hear about the godaddy contest until a few days after the superbowl. So the name of the contest never made much sense. Why start a “Superbowl” video contest right after the game just ended? But now that the whole thing is over it’s pretty clear that Godaddy was attempting to out Doritos, Doritos by creating their own, bigger version of the Crash the Superbowl contest. Maybe next year Godaddy will call their contest “Crash the Indy 500.” Or maybe not…that pun is only funny until a racer dies in a flaming wreck.
So is Godaddy gearing up to try and overtake Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl contest as THE must-enter video contest of the year? You know, I certainly hope so. I sort of think the Crash the Superbowl contest has run its course. Yeah it gets bigger every year but a video contest that gets 4,000 entries is just out of control. Godaddy only got about 500 entries but the average quality of those videos BLEW AWAY the average quality of the 2009 Crash the Superbowl entries. Doritos ads have been done to death and it’d be great to see another company step up and make a grab for the title of the Ultimate User-Generated video contest. In fact, I’d like to see Godaddy run this contest again this fall and air the winners during the actual Superbowl. If Doritos does the Crash the Superbowl contest again, it’d make for a great story. Not only would the media be interested in who won each contest, they’d cover the unofficial contest which would be to see which company would air a better User-Generated ad.
Whenever I’m screwing around on the Internet and I come across an interesting video contest, I bookmark the website and stick it in a folder. So anytime I’m looking for something to blog about I scroll through those old contest sites and see if any new winners have been announced.
The “Reinvent Riunite” contest has been in my “Closed Contests” folder for a long, long time. The site says the deadline was December 31st but I think the winners were just announced recently. As the name of the contest will tell you, the goal here was to Reinvent Riunite. If you’re over the age of 40, you probably remember the very 80’s “Riunite on Ice” commercials from 25 years ago. If you’re under the age of 35, you probably only know that Riunite exist because Cleveland Brown once mentioned that he doesn’t always come home with that “Riunite on ice, that’s nice” mentality on Family Guy. So Riunite is in serious need of an image update for 2010. The wine company put up $10,000 for whoever could make an ad that would best appeal to 21st century consumers. Here’s the ad they selected:
Winner: First Place. Prize: $10,000
That was a well shot, nicely edited, ad that featured good, original music. But did Riunite really need to reach out to “the people” to get an spot like that? Any 2-bit local production company could plan, shoot and edit that type of web commercial for about 5 grand. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a perfectly fine ad but why hold a video contest and give away $10,000 if you just want a commercial that’s perfectly fine? Ah screw it, it’s too nice outside to care. It’s memorial day weekend! And you know what…that ad makes me want to bring some riunite to the Bar-B-ques I’ll be going to. So there you go, the commercial worked on me.
A long overdue congratulations goes out to VCN reader Tim Oliphant and his wife for making it to the finals in the Ultimate Job in Ireland video contest. Back in February, Tim won first place in the Louisiana Hot Sauce video contest with an especially good entry, so he seems to be on quite a roll. Here’s the official description of the “Ultimate Job” contest:
“To celebrate the launch of Ireland’s most exciting destination wedding and honeymoon website, The Irish Times have teamed up with Runaway Bride and Groom to find the right candidate to do 6 months of research… researching the most romantic and ultimate wedding and honeymoon venues around the world – with their partner.
They are looking for the right person (and their partner) to research and test out the most romantic and ultimate wedding and honeymoon destinations all over the world and then report back with their verdict (on the place, not the partner!) to their boss, 4,000 miles away.”
For making it the finals, Tim and his wife got to travel to Ireland to compete against 9 other couple in a series of challenges to determine the winners of the big “job.” Another couple wound up winning the grand prize but a free trip for 2 to Ireland is a pretty sweet consolation prize. Here’s the video that got Tim and his wife to the finals:
Ultimate Job in Ireland Finalist. Prize: Trip to Ireland.
And here are the folks who won the whole thing. Remember, the tasks they had to perform in Ireland are what won them the grand prize. This video is just what got them into the top ten.
Ultimate Job in Ireland Winners. Prize: 6 months of travel and 20,000 Euros.
Wow, I just read that they shot that with a camera phone! They just posted their first official video blog and it looks like the sponsors gave them an actual video camera to work with from here on out.
Ok, color me impressed. The deadline to submit to the Pillsbury “Crescent meals” commercial contest was May 10th. But all four winning entries were announced on the contest site, Zooppa.com just one week later. One…week…later.
Anyone who’s entered a video contest before understands why that’s amazing. Video contest results usually take for-freaking-ever to be announced! I’m still waiting to hear about one contest I entered that had a submission deadline in mid-March. That lightning fast Pillsbury announcement becomes even more impressive when you consider that Zooppa received 84 entries for this competition. Sure, each video was only 15 seconds long but that’s still a ton of videos to go through. And Pillsbury actually plans to air the first place video on TV so they couldn’t have made their decision lightly. I saw something on the Zooppa message board that seemed to indicate that most of their contest results are posted really, really soon after their deadlines pass. One of the most frustrating things about video contests is that we filmmakers are expected to deliver our work by a pre-designated deadline but sponsors usually have no obligation to announce results by a specific date. If I’m going to lose a contest, I’d like to know as soon as possible. Finding out that you lost a contest after 2 months of waiting and wondering and hoping really, really sucks so it’s nice to see a contest site that makes fast results announcements a priority.
Here’s the ad that won the Pillsbury contest. The rules for this one were tight. Each video could only be 15 seconds long and the ad had to show “mom as a character” and include shots of “Pillsbury crescent dogs.” The winning ad is pretty good so I think the quality of this video might have made the decision easy for Pillsbury:
First Place. Prize: $10,000 and ad will air on TV
$5,000 in other prizes were given to 3 runners up. You can see all the winners here:
I didn’t realize that Godaddy was going to let the public know who made the finals of their ginormous commercial contest but I checked the website today and they had 10 “Finalists” listed. They also announced that the winner and a few of the runners-up will make their debut during the Indy 500 on May 30th. Man, godaddy is smart. That seems like the perfect event for this kind of unveiling. Plus that’s a long friggin’ race so they’ll probably air a lot of the finalists.
Every one of the videos that made the top 10 are pretty solid. And there’s a nice variety to the finalists. Some are “sexy” and some are goofy but they’re all funny. There’s only one kind of amateurish video (the one about the super powers godaddy can give you and it made me chuckle) but there rest of the videos are 100% pro all the way. They are as slick as can be. Hey, $175,000 is at stake so it’s only fitting that the commercials look professional. But all the folks who shot entries in their basements with their flip cameras will probably be mad that they only picked slick productions.
Like I said, I enjoyed all the finalists videos. They’re all funny but none of them really hit it out of the park. So I was impressed but not blown away. But people really outdid themselves and it looks like some people spent a lot of cash on their productions. You can see all 10 finalists at http://videos.godaddy.com/super-bowl-video-contest but here are my 2 favorites:
The “Get online rap” is pretty good too but I can’t find it on youtube. The public voting period is also over now and you can see which videos won the “community” prizes for having the highest scores. Remember, those prizes are stuff like laptops and cameras. Here’s the video that wound up being the hightest rated:
Christ, what an asshole. As you can guess, the annoying jerk in that video is a youtube celebrity who got his legion of tween followers to vote for him. I’m sure the folks at Godaddy are quite relived that they didn’t let “the public” pick their $100,000 winner.
5/9/2010 UPDATE: An astute commenter pointed out that the only non-slick finalist I mentioned has already been named the winner of the OTHER godaddy commercial contest. If you like contests enough to actually read this website, you probably already know that Godaddy ran two video contests concurrently. There was the big $175,000 contest and then there was an alternative contest run on the contest site zooppa. The prize in that one was only $3,000. For some reason, people in other countries and certain states (NY and FL I think) weren’t legally eligible to enter the big contest. So that everyone could have a chance to enter, the second contest was created. Some sneaky filmmakers submitted their commercials to both. That seems like bad form to me but I guess it worked for the guy who made the “superpowers” ad. It’s as simple as can be but it’s well written and well perfromed. Check it out:
Winner, Godaddy’s ZOOPPA contest. Prize: $3,000
So….this was a video contest about ass cancer. It was sponsored by the Colorectal Cancer Association of Canada (say THAT five times fast) and the goal was to create a PSA that would encourage people to get screened for the aforementioned disease. I like really weird, quirky contests so I was very, very close to entering one this. I had two hilarious ideas but I never actually filmed them. That’s because the ideas were a little too hilarious. When creating a PSA about the human butt, you have to strike exactly the right note. Did the winning video hit that note? You be the judge:
PSA contest winner. Prize: $2,500 (Canadian)
The end is kind of like a cliffhanger, isn’t it? The guy just stood there and I was expecting something to happen…but nothing did. I once had a screenwriting teacher that said that an effective final scene should leave the audience imagining what happens next. So I’ve got to hand it to the director of the winning PSA. He got me to imagine what happened after the screen went black.
The “Think Fed-ex first” assignment over at Poptent.net closed last week when the brand purchased three user-created ads for $5,000 a piece. All three ads are pretty good but this one is just genius:
Purchased by Fed-Ex. Price: $5,000
That right there was more memorable than any commercial I saw on TV all week. One reason I really like spec ads and video contest stuff is because you never know what you’re going to get. That’s probably why so many marketing people like contests too. Would a big money ad agency ever have the nerve to pitch a spot to Fed-Ex called “Human Head?” This seems like the kind of idea that a bunch of pros would joke about and then shove in a file because the client might think it was too dark. But when you shoot a project on spec you’re feel to do whatever the hell you want because you have nothing to lose. 99 out of 100 times, the results are a mess and the creator misses the mark. But when off the wall ideas actually work, the client winds up with something far more interesting than the average old commercial.
You can see see the other two purchased ads over on the Poptent blog. The one with the Teddy Bear is especially amusing.
If you read our post on monday about the EPA’s new regulation-themed video contest, you’ll know that there are a few people out there that feel that the government is basically trying to control our lives and government-sponsored video contests are just another one of their propaganda tools. (check out the comments on this article about the contest to read the thoughts of some seriously pissed people) Elsewhere on the web, a frequent video contester has even called for filmmakers to boycott the EPA contest. I have seen tons of video contests run by government agencies (the EPA alone seems to do like one a month) so I’m really surprised that folks just noticed this was going on. Common sense tells me that government agencies are going to receive X amount of dollars a year for PR no matter how much people complain. If they’re going to spend the money, at least some of it will go to filmmakers if they hold video contests. In fact…one could argue that government-run video contests actually SAVE taxpayers money. For example, the EPA just ran a PSA contest about fireplace safety. (you can watch the submissions here) The winner of that contest will get $2,500 and their video will actually air on tv around the country.
Do you know what that means? It means the federal government was able to but a national PSA for the bargain basement price of just $2,500! So the “Learn Before you Burn” contest sounds like a win-win-win situation to me. The government gets to save 10’s of thousands of dollars on a PSA, a independent filmmaker gets a little cash and a lot of exposure and maybe a few more people won’t die in fires.
While we’re on the subject of contests sponsored by Big Brother, I thought I’d post there results of the “USA.GOV” contest. It was held to increase awareness of what people can get done with USA.gov. Here’s the winner. It’s pretty neat and features a catchy little tune:
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:
About two weeks back I blogged about Dortios’ Canadian video contest, Viralocity. The objective was to come up with a name for Doritos’ new mystery flavor chip and then make a video explaining the suggestion. The winner was to be determined by points that were earned by how many views, stars, tweets, posts, links etc a video got.
The maker of that video apparently has an online fan base so big that his other entry was also ranked #3. But the Viralocity contest ended last Wednesday and the next day Doritos announced that another video had scored the most points and was the winner of the $100,000 prize. Aside from the money, Doritos is also going to name the mystery flavor the winning suggestion. Here it is:
First Place. Prize: $100,000
That’s an amusing video and Spice 2.0 is a decent name for a chip. It’s especially appropriate considering the nature of the contest. So Doritos really dodged a bullet here. What would they have done if the racist entry had managed to stay in first place? Would the company really want to stand up and say “Congratulations to our winner, Peter Chao for his hilarious video about how funny Asians are when they try and speak English!”
I’m glad the racist New Moon parody video didn’t win but….you can’t help but wonder if maybe that video had some “help” slipping into second place. After all, the point system Doritos devised is complicated and contestants don’t get a full accounting of where all of their points came from. This reminds me of the movie Election. Remember that one? Matthew Broderick was the teacher who ran the Student body president election? And Reese Witherspoon was the perfect, horrible candidate Tracy Flick? Matthew Broderick’s character was in charge of officially counting the ballots and after he realized Tracy had won by one vote, he just crumpled up two of her votes and declared the nice guy she was running against the winner. If Doritos wanted to rig this contest it would be just as simple as crumpling up (or adding) a few thousand electronic points. If they did that, who would ever know? Just maybe the head of the contest and one IT guy.
But I don’t think that happened. I’m sure the Spice 2.0 guy won fair and square. Peter Chao probably slipped out of first because he exhausted his fan base early on. The Spice 2.0 video was funny and topical so it kept getting passed on.
So I don’t believe that Doritos did anything unfair here. But fans of Peter Chao do. If you check out his and Doritos-Canada’s Facebook pages you’ll see a lot of angry comments from them there. The hilarious irony is that many of them are accusing Doritos of racism! They suspect that Doritos rigged the contest because they didn’t want the winner to be Asian. Sometimes, when I see how stupid some of the people of the Internet can be, I fear very much for our future.
Whatever happened, don’t feel too bad for that racist goofball. His two videos scored 2nd and 3rd place and so he should be receiving $15,000 and $10,000 prize. Lots of other cash prizes are going to people who scored well. You can see all those winners here:
Any video that scored 14th place or better will get at least $1,000. Most of the videos aren’t too great though since this was a contest about “viralocity” and not quality. That’s just one reason why running this kind of social network-fueled contest is a bad idea. Another reason is that everyone who didn’t win walks away pissed at the sponsor. Just go to Peter Chao’s facebook page and look and see how many of his 100,000+ fans are screaming “Boycott Doritos!”
The Age-Related Macular Degeneration (AMD) Alliance announced the winners of their AMD Awareness video contest this week. This was a big one. First place was $10,000, second was $2,000 and third and fourth place was $1,000 each. The point of the contest was pretty straightforward; make a video explaining what AMD is, what the symptoms are and encourage people to get tested. Here’s the winner:
The AMD website said that “more than 40” entries were received for this contest. Since this was kind of a serious topic, that’s a pretty good number. After all, shooting a PSA about people losing their vision isn’t really as fun as making a Butterfinger commercial. Still, I’m surprised more people didn’t go after this one. Since there were 4 cash prizes, anyone who entered would have about a 1 in 4 chance of winning at least a thousand dollars. And you’d have a 1 in 40-something chance of winning 10 grand. Those are amazing odds when you think about it.
If you’ve entered a few video contests but never won one, the best advice I can give is for you to pick your battles more carefully. After watching so many contests play out I’ve realized that most filmmakers who do enter these contests set their price tags way, way too high. I don’t understand why hundreds of people are winning to gamble a Saturday afternoon shooting an entry for a huge-money contest but shooting an entry for a $5,000 contest isn’t worth their time. Just look at the Crash the Superbowl contest. 4,000+ people entered that one last year because millions of dollars were up for grabs. People spent lots of money and time making amazing entries that only had a 1 in 675 chance of making it to the finals. And this year, all but 1 finalist entry won a big cash prize after they scored well on the Ad meter. So the other finalists walked away with just $25K in cash.
So what is smarter to enter? The contest where you have a 1 in 40 chance of winning $10K or the contest where you have a 6 in 4,000 chance of winning $25K…and then a 1 in 2 chance of having your commercial air during the superbowl…and then a 3 in 60 chance of being rated one of the top spots of the game and winning the BIG money?
Seems like every marketing guy and their momma is trying to entice us Joe Handycams into shooting ads for their company these days. There’s a lot of cash and a ton of prizes waiting to be won in online video contests and if you have even a smidge of writing, shooting or editing skills, all that awesome stuff could be yours. So you guys focus on winning ‘em and we’ll cover the aftermath of your glorious victories and/or pathetic defeats!
Video contests can get pretty ugly. Organizers do not always want to play by their own rules, other contestants flagrantly cheat and poorly run competitions cause frustrations for everyone. Wish you could bring a problem to the attention of a contest’s organizers but you’re worried that you might be branded a no-good troublemaker? We can help. Let us know about your problem and we’ll try and kick a little ass on your behalf. E-mail us at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.
