Last fall, I found a contest sponsored by Fed-Ex called the “Why I need a bailout” video contest. Apparently, Fed-ex’s rival, UPS was lobbying for a bailout and the contest was designed to mock them. Fed-ex even built a whole website dedicated to making fun of “The Brown Bailout.“  The concept for the site and the video contest was harsh and kinda mean-spirited…so I knew I had to enter. The idea was that you were supposed to explain why you needed a bailout and Fed-Ex would give 5 people a thousand bucks each. Plus, every finalist would get 100 bucks!

Normally I don’t enter contests with such a low top prizes but since there were 5 prizes up for grabs and I figured it’d be worth a few hours of my time. So I wrote, shot and submitted what turned out to be a really good entry. But I had been a little too eager to enter this one. I read the rules after I submitted and realized I probably had just wasted my time….

The 5 winners were to be determined by a public vote.

Crap. Fed-ex was supposed to pick 10 to 30 finalists and the public would vote for their favorites. Turns out they only got like 30 entries and so everyone got to be a finalist. All humility aside, my entry was easily the best. Hands down, all the way, the best. I sent out links to friends and tried to get some votes. But immediately I noticed that the scores of certain videos were surging upwards. To vote, you had to enter your name and some other info, fill in a CAPTCHA and the hit the “VOTE” button. But I, and about 10 of the other finalists quickly realized that if you cleared your web browser’s history and then refreshed the page, you could vote again and again and again. And here’s the most outrageous part…the contest’s rules in no way forbid voting for yourself as many times as you wanted! In fact, the rules actually said You can vote for your favorite video as many times as you want!! A free-for-all was inevitable.

yuck.

After a few days of trying to get votes, I gave up. All I could do was watch in amazement as some of the other contestants added hundreds of votes to their scores a day. In the end, the top 5 winners had thousands of votes. (and some of the losing videos had fewer than 50!) Going at a steady pace, re-peat voters were probably able to post 5 votes a minute which means they spent dozens of hours voting for themselves over and over and over. It was interesting to see some of them give up one at a time. Certain videos would get hundreds of new votes a day and then suddenly, their vote counts stopped going up. The 10-way race went down to a 9-way, then a 8-way, then a 7-way race. The people I felt sorry for were the ones that voted for themselves more than a thousand times but could never catch up to the people who eventually made the top 5.

It was obvious to anyone who looked at the contest site that the winners had cheated (well, technically they hadn’t “cheated” since re-voting wasn’t against the rules but it certainly looked like cheating) I tried to contact Fed-ex and got no response. I got an e-mail announcing the winners and that was it. But the winners were so embarrassing (seriously, some of them were like cell phone quality videos shot in dark rooms) and the cheating was so flagrant that Fed-Ex pretended like the whole thing never happened. They removed all the videos, hid the contest page and didn’t even mention the results on the “Brown Bailout” blog (they had been hyping the contest there for weeks.)  All links to the contest page had been removed from the site but I had bookmarked it.  They did list the winners but…and this blows my mind, there is no way to actually watch the winning videos.  What kind of video contest doesn’t even give links to the winning videos??  A really crappy one, that’s what kind.

On the bright side, at least they did send me my 100 bucks for making the finals.

A few weeks back I saw a listing for BlueBerry Muffin Tops’s “Blast of Blueberry” video contest and thought about entering for about half a minute. But then I saw in the rules that the sponsor would pick some finalists and then the “public” would vote for the winner…and that winner would only get a $1,500 prize. The logistics of that contest flashed me back to that sad, Fed-Ex “Brown Bailout” contest. That one sucked so much that I was too embarrassed to even write about it here when it went down. With those dark memories fresh in my head, I back-paged away as quickly as I could from the Blueberry Muffin Top site and thought to myself “I sure feel bad for the suckers who are going to enter that contest.”

Turns out, one of the suckers who entered that contest is a fan of VCN! A reader named Matt wrote me and explained he had made it to the “BBMT” finals. His entry is definitely one of the best and I voted for it. You can too by clicking here:

http://blueberrymuffintops.malt-o-meal.com/videos/

You have to register to vote of course. Matt’s entry is the one that has the thumbnail of a test subject talking to a scientist.  Here’s a direct link:  Matt’s Video.

Matt’s certainly going to have a tough time winning this one. If you’ve ever entered a vote-based video contest you know that money makes people go fucking apeshit crazy. Sure, $1,500 is a lot but some contestants will spend dozens and dozens of hours registering and voting, registering and voting, registering and voting just so they can win a little cash.

I’ve entered a few vote-based video contests over the years but Fed-Ex’s Brown Bailout contest was the last straw for me. After that one ended, I decided never again to enter a contest where the winners were picked solely by “public vote.” Really, it just isn’t worth the effort to pester my family and friends to vote for my video if some jerks are just going to sit at their computer all day and vote for themselves over and over. So heed my warnings; if a contest is letting the public pick it’s winner, DO NOT ENTER.

One thing I love about video contests is that a lot of them have really bizarre premises.  Take for example the “Are you an Avodisic?” contest sponsored by Mexican Avocados. First, it’s always a little funny when PR people try and promote basic food items like pork or Wisconsin cheese.  But this contest gets even weirder when you read the details.  They were looking for people to make short films about avocados that portrayed them as being sexy, sensual “love fruits.”  The promo video for the contest literally featured a talking avacado wearing a garter belt that moaned orgasmically as “she” explained the official rules. (sadly, that video seems to have been taken down.)  UPDATE: One of the “PR people” behind this contest apparently has a very good sense of humor.  He wrote me today and mentioned the orgasmic avocado video could be found here:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_IOhGX_IYRQ.  The video is safe-for-work but the audio isn’t!

The contest ended recently and it looks like a lot of people entered.  As you can guess, most of the entries were really, f&*%ing, weird.  There were three categories in the contest; Best Recipe, Most Entertaining and Most Original.  One winner in each category was selected and those winner each got $2,000.  You can see all the winners here:

http://www.avocadosfrommexico.com/avodisiac/Index.aspx

But here’s my favorite of the three:

Winner, Most Original.  Prize: $2,000.

I’m amazed at the amount of work some filmmakers put into their contest entries.  The guy who made that video explained on youtube that the entry is made up of more than 500 still photos.  Check out this making-of video to see just how this guy managed to pull of such an awesome entry:

Since the dawn of man, pistachios have been just these tasty little nuts that always happened to be around exactly when you were craving them.   No one ever planned ahead of time to buy Pistachios, they just appeared when they were needed.  But last year, a brand called “Wonderful Pistachios” decided this had gone on long enough so they started putting Pistachios in pretty bags and then marketed the f&*% out of them with commercials featuring Z-list celebrities like Levi Johnston.

One tier of the company’s marketing campaign was a commercial contest.  Wonderful Pistachios picked 10 finalist videos and then let “the public” decide the best one.  First place was good for $25,000.  The people have spoken and here’s the winner:

First Place.  Prize: $25,000

Some of the finalists were pretty lame so I’m kind of surprised the public vote yielded a decent winner.  The video’s got nice production values, fancy editing, good music and lots of nut shots (you know, shots of nuts.)  So it’s a job well done.  But I think the guy that made THIS entry got robbed:

Runner up.  Prize:  $500.  Prize declined by filmmaker

Apparently, the director of that entry thinks he was robbed too.  His name is Michael Boudin and he’s won more that $60K in various video contests.  I know that because a few weeks ago, Films4Prizes.com did a video Q&A with him.  You can see it here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXT77SZHU3s

After the winner was picked, Michael was offered a $500 runner-up prize.  He turned it down though.  I’ll cash just about any check that comes my way but I think he made the right call.  As Michael explains on youtube, he believes in his concept and plans to re-shoot the idea for a different contest.  If he had accepted the 500 bucks, Wonderful Pistachios would have been able to do whatever they wanted with the video, concept and script.  Basically they offered to buy it for a few hundred bucks and said “no deal.”

So think about that the next time you see a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo in a contest’s official rules that state that all entries become the property of the sponsor once you submit them.  That’s total B.S.  Your work is yours until you SIGN over your rights of ownership.  You always have a right to say, “No thanks” and you shouldn’t accept just any amount a company offers if you don’t think it’s a fair price for your work.

Santa Beardy says: "Merry Christmas to all the non-jerk asses out there!"

Thanks in large part to the Crash The Superbowl contest, traffic to our little blog has really been on the rise lately.  And the good news is, it looks like many readers are sticking around.  So if you’re new to the site, thanks for checking us out!  And if you haven’t done so already, why not subscribe to our RSS feed?

It’s been really great hearing from our readers (well, our readers who don’t think I’m a “douche pumper”) and if you’re enjoying the site, please feel free to throw your voice into the mix and leave some comments.  I especially like hearing from other regular video contest entrants so if you’re feeling friendly, drop me a line, introduce yourself and tell me about your contest track record.  I love hearing about success stories so if you want to do some bragging, go for it.  We may even want to cover some of your victories here on the blog.

But the thing we are most interested in hearing about are they ways you’ve been screwed by a contest!  Have you sat and watched helplessly as some jerk-ass cheated their way into a victory?  Know of a contest organizer that’s been ignoring their own rules?  Are you starting to suspect that a company is never going to actually pay you the winnings the owe you?  Well let us know!

Video contests have become so popular, so fast that the scene is pretty much a lawless, disorganized mess.  If you see someone who is obviously voting for their own video over and over in a vote-based contest or if you suspect that a company is screwing filmmakers out of what they’ve eared, what could you do about it?  Well now you can tell us.  Companies hate negative press, even if it comes from a Podunk little blog like ours.  It’s easy to cheat or to mess with filmmakers when you think no one will ever know what you’re doing.  But if we call out these people in public, there will forever be a record of their crappy conduct on the web.

Just a few weeks ago a filmmaker e-mailed me and explained that a video contest site had been jerking him around for almost a year.  He won a $500 prize from them that they would just never pay up.  He e-mailed them over and over and he always got the same response “Sorry, we’ll send the check out ASAP!”  He told us that other users of the site were having the same problems.  We e-mailed some users of the site and before we could even start writing out story, the company in question contacted us and asked what was going on.  Long story short, that dude has his check and an apology about 5 days later.

So please folks, use this site as a tool for keeping jerks in line.  Maybe you want to complain about a contest but you’re worried about wrecking your chances of winning.  Well if you find yourself in such a circumstance, let us know the details and we will consider lodging a complaint on your behalf.  As always, you can contact us at VIDEOCONTESTNEWS@GMAIL.COM.

Again, thanks to everyone out there for checking out the site.  Merry Christmas and of course, good luck!

I haven’t been spending much time working on this blog because Beardy has been hard at work making his own entry for the Doritos Crash the Superbowl contest. The thing is pretty much done I think so hopefully I’ll be able to upload it this weekend.

With just 2 days to go before the deadline, more than 1,000 entries have been submitted and some really high quality entries have been coming in. The production values have gone through the roof in the last week but that was expected. I’ve seen a good number of entries that, if they were shot for a different video contest, would win easily. But…I only seen one, really, REALLY great entry so far and I suspect that it won’t even make the finals. If I had to pick 6 videos that were going to make it to the finals, I bet I’d get 4 of them wrong.

As I said, the videos are getting better but I think most people are missing the true point of the contest: To get a top spot on the USA Today ad meter. That means a perfect video would appeal to as many people as possible. But I’ve been seeing tons of good videos that would turn off a large portion of the audience. Dudes might love watching chip crumbs fall down the cleavage of a beautiful woman, but are women going to score that high on the ad meter? And sure, some people might thing liking doritos dust off of a sleeping dog is ingenious but that will just completely gross out some people. The thing that amazes me the most though is the amount of violence against women I’ve been seeing in the videos. Ok, a shot of one girl tackling another if one thing but I have seen many good videos ruined by shots of women getting hit, tackled, and even punched in the face in realistic ways by MEN. Doritos might be looking for edgy spots but there are some lines that just shouldn’t be crossed.

This might be a little late to help anyone who plans to enter the contest this year but let’s take a look back at the kind of videos Dortitios DOES like. Here are ALL the finalists from the two previous years that Dortios held the Crash the Superbowl commercial contest.

2007 Finalists

Aired During the Superbowl:

Aired During the Superbowl:

2009 Finalists

Aired During the Superbowl and won a million bucks:

Aired during the Superbowl:

Well, we’re getting down to it. If you haven’t shot your entry for the Crash the Superbowl contest but are still planning to do one then you are really cutting things close. About 460 entries have already been submitted so far and let me tell you people something….over the last few weeks I’ve watched every, single one of them! Well, technically I watched at least a few seconds of every entry. After about 5 seconds it’s pretty obvious which commercials are serious entries and which ones aren’t.

So after all these weeks and after watching hundreds of entries, here’s my big conclusion: There are some good spots but I wouldn’t be surprised if none of the videos so far posted make it to the finals. The quality of the submissions is going up and every day now, at least a few decent commercials appear on the site. But out of 460 entries, there isn’t one I would point to and scream, “winner!”

However, in the next 7 days, I’m guessing you’ll see at least 500 new videos get posted. Once it gets to the point that 100 videos a day are going up even I’ll probably have to give up trying to watch them all. Still, don’t let that big number scare you. Seven days is a long time and so if you have an idea, just go shoot it already!

The million dollar winners of last year’s Crash the Superbowl competition were recruited by Doritos to make some tutorial videos for contestants. They’re actually really great videos. If you’re new to video contests I recommend you watch them all. They’ll give you a lot of tips about how to tell a funny, fast, well-produced story in just 30 seconds:

1. Intro to the Crash: http://vimeo.com/6646967
2. Crush the Ad-Meter: http://www.vimeo.com/6985731
3. 30-Second Joke Telling: http://www.vimeo.com/6986471
4. Pro Spot on Crash Budget: http://www.vimeo.com/6986535
5. Copyrights and Wrongs: http://www.vimeo.com/6986562
6. Film Making 101: http://vimeo.com/6956378
7. Practice Makes Perfect: http://www.vimeo.com/6986591

Here’s my favorite installment:

30 Second Joke Telling

Good advice for any contest entry you plan on shooting. Keep it short and hilarious.

Companies love holding video contests for lots of reasons. But probably the biggest benefit for them is that for just a few grand they get dozens or sometimes hundreds of free commercials for their products posted to the web. They may only feature the winning video on their website but what about all the non-winning videos? Those are still on the web promoting the featured company for FREE.

So it always confuses me when a contest won’t let you see the other videos that have been submitted. Maybe they think that people will be discouraged from entering if they see that lots of greats entries have already been posted. They do sort of have a point there. If you’re thinking about shooting an entry for a contest the smart thing to do is size up the competition first. In a bigger competition like the Jim Beam Remake contest there might be an entire website dedicated to showcasing submitted entries. But usually, contest rules just say you should upload your video to youtube and send them a link. In that scenario, all you have to do is go to youtube, search for the name of the contest and you’ll see all the other entries.

But sometimes video contest organizers just want to keep the videos as a surprise I guess. For instance, a few months back I entered the Careerbuilder.com “Hire My TV Ad” superbowl commercial contest. You had to upload your entry to Carrerbuilder’s youtube account and then the videos were all set to private until the submission period was over.

So what do you do when you want to scope out the competition when the submitted videos aren’t available for public viewing? Or what if the rules state that you can upload your video to ANY video hosting site. What can you do then?

You can go to Truveo, that’s what you can do:

http://www.truveo.com/

Truveo is an ingeniously simple idea for a website and it’s a perfect tool for video contest addicts. It’s a video search engine that scours the web for videos that are relevant to your search term. Whether your competition uploads their videos to youtube, vimeo, myspace etc etc etc, you’ll be able to find them. Filter the results by “most recent” and you’ll almost certainly see nothing but entries for the contest you’re in or thinking of entering.

But what about the careerbuilder scenario? When the contest organizers keep all the entries private Truveo won’t be able to find them. Well creative types have a need for their work to be seen. I know I do. So when a contest keeps the entries private, I always upload my video to my own youtube account. Turns out, a lot of people do the same thing. In my own experience, whenever I shoot a video contest entry everyone who was in it or who helped with it want to know when they can see the finished product. Are filmmakers supposed to tell their collaborators to wait a few weeks until the contest organizers unveil all the entries? Of course not. We just throw our videos up on the web somewhere and send links just to our friends and allies.

So even if a contest’s entries aren’t up for public viewing yet you should still be able to find a lot of them thanks to truveo. And as a bonus, filmmakers who are especially proud of their work seem to be the most likely to post their videos to their own channels and video accounts. So not only will truveo help you find your competition, it will help you find the BEST of the submitted videos.

Our Editor: Beardy McContest Winner

I know what you’re thinking; “Video Contest News?  WTF is this supposed to be?  Aren’t there a ton of websites out there that list video contests already?”  Well yes…yes there are.  That’s why we ain’t doing that.  You might find an occasional listing here but those will only be for contests that are begging to be entered and won by someone with a tiny sliver of talent.  For the most part, this website will be dedicated to providing something that is lacking on the web; commentary and news about video contests.

These days it seems like every marketing guy and their momma is trying to entice us Joe Handycams into shooting ads for their company.  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!

But you’re a busy guy/gal/contest winning robot.  There are roughly 103,628 (editor’s estimate) video contests open at any time so how are you supposed to stay on top of them all?   How many times have you wondered what video eventually went on to win what contest?  A million?  And how many times have you wondered why the heck a contest was being run so crappily?  A billion maybe!?  Well wonder no more.  Not only will we be posting results but we’ll also be digging up news about how and why video contests are being run the way they are.  So you guys focus on winning ‘em and we’ll cover the aftermath of your glorious victories and/or pathetic defeats!

In the meantime, if you have some video contest news that you think we should be covering, drop us a line at VideoContestNews@gmail.com.