Get in my belly!

Over the years I’ve seen a billion contests where the winner gets to become some kind of spokesperson for the brand.  But I almost never enter them because I don’t want go around and lie and say stuff like “I love Miracle Whip so much I put it on everything I eat” or whatever.  But for once I actually found a product that I would be happy to be associated with; Mrs. T’s Pierogis.  I eat those f-ing things like nobody’s business.  My family is polish and every Christmas eve of my whole life we’d get together and eat homemade pierogis.  They’re pretty damn amazing and for me it’s always the best meal of the year.  Then when I was in high school I discovered Mrs. T’s pierogis.  Of course they weren’t the same as the ones my Nana used to make but hey, they were still pretty tasty.  (I like ‘em with sour cream and applesauce.)  I can’t even imagine how many boxes of Mrs T’s I’ve gone through over the years.  My love for pierogis is so intense that it’s become a running joke among my friends.  We even have “pierogi parties” and every summer we go to the world famous “Pierogi Fest” in Whiting, IN.  Yes I’m serious about all of that.  There really is a thing called Pierogi Fest and it’s fun as hell.  Mrs. T’s always has the biggest booth and they even hire a guy to walk around in a pierogi costume.  Oh my God, if I win this contest I bet I could hang out with the Pierogi Man!

But I’m getting ahead of myself.  A few weeks ago I saw a listing for the Mrs’ T’s Virtual Pierogy Chef Video Contest.   The instant I saw it I literally said out loud “I have to win this.”  So I shot an entry and on Monday I found out I made the top 5!  Now there’s a 2 week voting period to determine the winner.  The grand prize is $5,000 plus a year’s supply or pierogis!  If I win I’ll be required to take some cooking classes and shoot some more videos for Mrs. T’s which actually sounds kind of fun.

Click here to see my entry (and vote for it!)

There’s still 10 days of voting left so this is still anyone’s contest.  If you’d like to help me out, please follow this link and vote for me to be the King of Pierogis!!

https://www.facebook.com/MrsTsPierogies/app_213982452041670

You have to scroll to the bottom of the page to see my entry.  And if scrolling doesn’t work, that means you’re not scrolling right.  You have to move your mouse over the goofy “frame” in the middle of the page and then scroll down.  Thanks for the votes and as always, if you ever need votes for your own entries, be sure to let me know.

5/18/12 UPDATE:  Well crap.  I’m now 99% sure that there is cheating going on in this contest.  At about midnight last night the contest site crashed and displayed a “503 Error.”  That’s the kind of error you get if your site gets too much traffic too quickly.  So I suspect that someone tried to run an automated voting script last night and it accidentally crashed the site.  It also seems like there’s just some old-fasioned self-voting going on.  I e-mailed the PR company running the contest and told them what I think is happening.  Apparently they’re going to call me in a bit.  Until the problem is fixed, I’m going to stop hustling for votes.  But if you still wanted to vote for me it couldn’t hurt.
 

“You don’t need a big fancy camera to shoot an entry.  Just grab your flip cam or iphone and have fun!”

What the sponsors fail to mention is that if “production quality” is part of the judging criteria, the little video you shot with your cell phone probably won’t stand much chance against the slick entries that were shot with DSLRs or HD video cameras.  But as I learned from the video I’m about to post, you actually can get pretty decent footage out of an iphone if you follow a few simple steps.  This tutorial was shot for the youtube channel FilmRiot which is filled with lots of helpful how-to videos.  If you have an iPhone, this video is definitely worth checking out.  But take note: It does start with a lot of yelling and some cheesy but realistic gun play.  So you probably shouldn’t watch this one while at work or while babysitting.
 

 

The top prizes in this contest are $10K and $5K and I think I might actually have a decent shot.  There is a public voting phase to determine the Top 25 videos though.  After the voting is done, judges alone will chose the top winners.  I didn’t think I’d really need to hustle for votes for this contest but Ecos wound up getting almost 90 entries!  So if you’ve got 5 seconds to spare, I’d appreciate it if you could click on this image and vote for my submission.  And if you’ve got 35 seconds to spare, you can even watch it if you’d like.

Click to view and/or vote!

Today is the first day of voting which happens to be a sunday.  And that’s kind of unusual because most contests start and finish their voting phases on week days.  When the voting went live this morning I posted a request for votes on my personal facebook page.  But then I stopped and thought about the timing of my request; how many people would actually see it?  How many people are even on facebook at 10AM on a Sunday?  I don’t like to bombard my facebook friends with a ton of video contest vote requests so I only ask for votes a few times each contest.  (If all your facebook posts are about contests, you’re friends are just going to get annoyed and block or limit your posts.  So a ton of requests can really backfire on you.  Plus like I said, it’s just annoying and not cool)

So if I’m only going to ask for votes 2 or 3 times, I want to make sure I post those requests at the right time.  But what is “the right time”?  Basically what I want to know is, when is facebook busiest?  Unfortunately, Facebook isn’t saying.  And that’s not surprising because if they actually came out announced the best time of day to post something, every company would start posting stuff at that time. But it seems that this question does have an answer.  A social Network Management company named Virtue conducted a study of facebook activity about a year and a half ago.  You can read a breakdown of the study here but it looks like the best time to post a vote request (or anything, really) on facebook probably is…

2:55PM on a Wednesday.

According to the study, facebook is constantly getting a ton of traffic.  But there is always a spike in activity around 3pm on weekdays.  You should try and post just before 3:00 because a lot of people sign in right at the top of the hour.  (Maybe that’s when the TV show they were watching ended or maybe that’s when their afternoon break begins.)  This spike happens every day but Wednesdays are usually facebook’s busiest day of the week.

According to the study, posts that are done in the morning actually get seen/liked/shared more than afternoon posts.  But a vote request isn’t a typical facebook post.  In the morning people are signing into facebook right at the start of the day.  9:00AM is not goof-off time…it’s a time to sign in really quick to check messages and skim the news feed.  By late afternoon, people are signing into facebook because they’re bored.  So you want to get your vote requests in front of people who have some time to kill.

Keep in mind that if you live LA but all your family and friends live back in Chicago, you should probably post your requests at 3:00PM Chicago time.  Oh and by the way, as it turns out the weekend really is a bad time to post anything to facebook.  These days, only about 30% of employers block facebook so most people spend time on the site while at work.  So you can post a vote request on a sunday morning (like I did today before I saw the Virtue study) but it won’t get you too many clicks.

Oh and PS:  Happy Mother’s Day from VCN and Mark Wahlberg!

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Anyways, like I said, Ringo is cool.  And the video he made to announce the winner of his contest is pretty funny.  You can tell that someone probably just pulled him into his backyard to shoot this.  Then even though a incredibly loud plane flies right overhead, Ringo kept going.  So one take was all that Ringo had time for.  But he does say something pretty perfect at the end that saves the whole video:
 

 
And now here’s the music video that won the contest.  As you’ll hear/see, this was a really hard song to make a video for since there were long breaks where there weren’t any lyrics:
 

 
You can read the details of the contest or see more entries right here.  Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love.
 

And that always kind of surprises me.  It’s just not very good strategy.  I understand that gigantic cash prizes can be exciting but the odds are really stacked against you in those big contests.  Consequently, most of the people who write me say they’ve never won a video contest before.  I even heard from one guy last year who said he had entered about 80 video contests but had never actually won one.  And that’s pretty messed up since video contests are so ridiculously easy to win!

If you want to win a video contest, you just have to employ a little STRATEGY.  Filmmakers should definitely enter huge long-shot contests but you should never put all your eggs in one basket.  If you want to actually start winning contests you need to think SMALL.  It seems like most video contest filmmakers want to make one big, quick payday.  That kind of plan almost never works out.  (However the guy who won a million dollars in this year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest with his commercial “Man’s Best Friend” had never entered a video contest before)  If you only go after prizes that are say, over $25,000 you’re probably just going to waste a bunch of time and money and eventually get frustrated and quit.  If you want to turn video contests into a steady source of income, you have to get your first win under your belt as soon as possible.  Not only will a win boost your confidence, it will get you hooked on the feeling that comes with winning and inspire you to enter more contests.

So if you’ve never won a video contest before, it’s time you got your first win out of the way.  Next time you’re on onlinevideocontests.com, scroll past all the big money contests and look for contests with prizes under $1,000.  Go through those and look at the details carefully.  Then pick the one that sounds like you would have the best chance of winning and enter it.  You might just be the only person who does.  You see…most people are naturally lazy and greedy.  I don’t mean that as a slam against the human race.  It’s just they way we are.  The vast majority of people will look at contests with $500 or $250 prizes and figure it’s not worth their time to enter.  But that’s not logical.  If you enter the Crash the Super Bowl contest, you will be in the running to win up to one million dollars.  But your odds of just making the finals are about 1 in 1,200.  So if you enter The Crash, you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars and dozens of hours entering a contest you will almost certainly lose.

On the flip side, if you enter a tiny contest that almost no one will enter, you can spend nothing and have an incredibly decent shot at winning some cash.  For example, every year Apartments.com runs a big video contest to find the “Roommate of the Year.”  A ton of people always enter and one person wins $10,000 plus a year’s worth of free rent.  But this year, Apartments.com is also running a small weekly contest in conjunction with the big contest.  People are supposed to get on camera and in 30 seconds demonstrate what makes them a good roommate.  The prize is $250 per week.  I came across this contest about 2 weeks ago and believe it or not, Apartments.com got ZERO entries the first week!  All somebody had to do was spend an hour shooting and uploading anything and it would have won.  But nobody bothered.  By the second week, only 2 people had entered and the sponsor had to pick a winning video that was just shot with a camera phone.  I’ve won a lot of very nice video contest prizes in my day but I’m not an idiot.  I knew this contest would be an easy 250 bucks so I entered and I won last week.  Click this image to see my video:

Click to watch!

I happen to think that was a pretty hilarious entry.  But quality didn’t even matter because no one else entered last week!  My only competition was this video which had been submitted the week before.  It took me about 2 hours to shoot, edit and upload my entry.  My only expense was a $12 pizza which I of course got to eat later.  So basically, I earned $125 per/hour on this contest.  Now, I probably win 5 or 6 small prizes like this every year.  (The day I won this contest I got another $250 check in the mail from a different contest.)  An extra $1,500 can really change your life so those little contests are absolutely worth your time and attention.  Think about it this way; if you need some extra money, would you rather spend 20 hours a year entering small video contests or 182 hours a year working a part-time, minimum wage job?

If you’re excited by this idea, I have some good news for you.  There is still one more week left in Apartments.com’s weekly contest.  The deadline to enter is this wednesday at noon and once again, no new entries have been received all week.  So if you shoot and upload an entry ASAP you’ll probably discourage other people from entering and you’ll win.  I’m telling you, there is a $250 bill on the ground….go pick it up:  http://www.roommateoftheyear.com/video-shorts

The Apartments.com contest is just the tip of the iceberg.  There are always a few tiny contests like this running.  Most people don’t bother to even look at the details of these contests so they never see just how easy they are to enter.  Hell, right now Monster energy drinks is running a video contest to find a new “intern.”  The first 250 people that enter win $100 in swag.  They’ve only gotten about 100 entries so far.  All you gotta do is sit in front of a camera for 60 second and talk about Monster and BOOM….you just won your first ever video contest prize.  Here’s the link to enter.

Good luck, everybody.  If you actually enter and win either of these contests let me know!
 

For example: this week, Poptent announced that Garnier-Fructis was purchasing 6 videos that were submitted to their recent “Live Fearless, Look Amazing” assignment for $7,500 each.  The company was only obligated to buy two videos but they were so happy with the results the decided they could use 4 more.  All the selected entries are pretty good.  I especially like this one and not just because it features a cute girl in a bikini.  The director made a great call and mounted a camera (a GoPro I assume) on the star’s surfboard.
 

 
Here’s another impressive entry.  It’s a simple little video but I was kind of amazed by the concept.  A Poptent member actually shot a Garnier-Fructis ad about gay men “living fearlessly” and the company it.  That’s kinda cool, isn’t it?
 

 
In all, Garnier-Fructis only received 73 submissions to this assignment.  So if you entered, your odds of making a sale were just 1 in 12.  I think Poptent really needs to encourage more brands to commit to buying multiple videos.  If a company has a budget for as many as 6 videos, why not promise to buy at least 3 or 4?  More guaranteed purchases lead to more and better submissions.  By playing it safe, brands are actually sabotaging there chances of getting high quality ads.  This time the sponsor lucked out and got some really good videos.  But if Garnier-Fructis had promised to buy 6 videos right from the start, they probably would have gotten 200+ submissions.