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!!”

I’ve explained the contest to a few friends and they’ve all seemed kind of baffled by the amount of work that would be involved in entering. But it’s less complicated than it sounds, I think. If you’re considering entering, you might want to head to godaddy.com to see a bunch of examples of the kind of “TV” and “Internet Only” ads Godaddy has done in the past. Like this pair of videos:

That first one is the 30 second version of a commercial called “Speeding” that aired on TV. It ends with a graphic that says “see what happens next at godaddy.com.” The commercial contestants are supposed to do is also supposed to end with a similar graphic. The second video is the extended, Internet-only version of “Speeding.” It’s 2 minutes long and the first 30 seconds are the same as the 30 second commercial (minus the “see more now at godaddy.com tag.)

To see more of these types of official godaddy commercials, CLICK HERE and go to the “Video Archives.”

If video contests have an off-season, I guess it would be the summer time. There hasn’t been much news for me to report so for the last few months contests and this website have taken a back seat to other projects. For example…if you look to the right of the screen you’ll see an ad for the documentary I directed. It finally just got released on DVD so if you feel like seeing a crazy movie about self-professed nerds rapping about comic books and video games, check it out.

Anyways like I said, my focus has been elsewhere lately so a few days ago a reader had to clue me it to an especially big piece of news that I had somehow managed to totally miss. Godaddy is holding ANOTHER video contest and it’s already up and running! That’s kind of shocking when you consider that their first video contest ever just ended about 2 ½ months ago. (winners were announced on May 31st) Well Godaddy must have been really pleased with the results of their consumer-generated experiment because not only are they running a “summer” installment of the contest it will officially be the BIGGEST video contest in history with a guaranteed payout of $600,000 in prizes! First place gets you $250,000, second gets 150,000 and third place is good for 75,000. And if that wasn’t enough, FIVE runners-up will receive $25,000 each. That is seriously amazing. Plus, Godaddy won’t commit to airing the winning ads on TV but they imply on the contest website that they probably will do just that.

But extraordinary prizes require and extraordinary effort. Last time, all you needed to do was submit a 30 second commercial for the contest. This time, here’s what you need to do to enter:

• Create a 30 second commercial for godaddy.com. The last 5 seconds of the ad though must be a video supplied by godaddy that says “See more now at Godaddy.com.”
• Create a 60-90 second follow-up to your commercial (featuring the same characters) that will be featured on Godaddy.com
• This one is optional: If you are really feeling ambitious you can attempt to make THREE commercials and THREE web-only shorts. If you win, and if godaddy wants to use your “campaign” you will receive an additional $100,000.

Even if you skip the “campaign” stuff you’re looking at creating about TWO MINUTES of content with zero guarantee it will pay off. Wow. That is a huge gamble and I don’t think a ton of filmmakers have the nerve to try and pull it off.

Once you get past the basics, the requirements get even more interesting. Check out this instructional video godaddy posted about entering the contest. I can’t embed it so click the image to watch it on the godaddy site.

If you didn’t watch the video and just continued reading, let me recap what that hot blonde girl had to say. Right off the bat, godaddy wants to make it clear that this contest is for “aspiring or actual TV commercial makers.” Later in the video, they say something that I have never, ever seen a video contest sponsor say before. They explain that your video must be TV quality and if you are planning on shooting your ad with your cell phone or your dad’s old camera, you need to come up with a new game plan.

In most contests (Crash the Superbowl being the most obvious example) tons of people enter who have no chance in hell of winning because they don’t understand that the sponsor will only pick winners that look like real TV commercials. So godaddy seems to be intentionally discouraging novices from entering. I think that’s very big of them. Most contest sponsors are happy to let people waste time and money making entries that could never win because of technical reasons. I guess they do this because later they can boast about how many entries they got.

Last time, Godaddy received a little more than 500 submissions for their commercial contest. I’m really interested to see how many they get this time around. I’m thinking maybe 100? But of that 100, most of them will be pretty damn good.  So the big question remains: Should you enter? It’s a tough call. To help you decide, try taking this little questionnaire:

1. Do you have access to an HD camera that can shot TV-quality video?
2. Are you willing to spend at least a few hundred dollars shooting your submission?
3. Do you have the talent, time and energy to create 2 minutes of video content between now and September 30th.
4. Do have access to pro-level lighting and audio gear?
5. Do you know people who can use pro-level lighting and audio gear?
6. Do you have a really, really, REALLY good idea for an ad?
7. Are you crazy?

If you answered NO to any of the above questions you should probably sit this one out. Me, I think I’m going to go for it. I have what I think is a very good idea and in fact, I might even go for the “campaign.” If I do though, it’ll probably be the only video contest entry I’ll be working on for the next 2 months. In fact, if I do godaddy I’ll probably have to skip the Crash the Superbowl contest.

Speaking of…the timing of this contest and the prizes offered really make it seem like Godaddy has decided to make their contest THE user-generated video contest of the year. Doritos usually announces the start of the Crash the Superbowl contest in September so Godddy has managed to beat them to the punch. And last year, Doritos gave each finalist $25,000. Isn’t that money going to look like chump change now that Godaddy has raised the states so astronomically high?

Oh, one more important thing to note. ALL winners in the Godaddy contests will be picked by judges. Last time, Goddy let the “community” pick some of the winners and of course, most of the videos that won the “popular vote” weren’t great. You’ll be able to rate videos on the contest site but votes and ratings have zero effect on the final outcome. Nice.

For all the details about the contest, click here:  http://videos.godaddy.com/godaddy-commercial-contest.aspx

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.

First Place. Prize: A 2010 Toyota 4Runner

Man, this is really, really weird. Check out this trailer for what looks to be a God-awful High School Musical/Step Up style movie called Standing Ovation. I think this is probably the first movie ever to feature a video-contest based plot. I’ve read a bit about the film and long story short, a bunch of teenagers want to shoot a music video to win a one million dollar video contest prize.

Yeah, like I said, it looks horrible. Apparently this movie actually played in hundreds of theaters in the US but I’ve never heard of it. I’m guessing all the advertising was done online and aimed at sites that tweens frequent. The movie opened on July 16th and was dropped by most of its theaters by the next weekend. Here’s a bit of a pretty rough review of the film from the Chicago-area’s Daily Herald:

“Standing Ovation” is a spiritually bankrupt, morally reckless, ethically unhinged and emotionally vacant musical comedy about a group of tweenies who can’t act, sing or convincingly lip-sync.

This film deals in gay stereotypes. It traffics in token black characters. It advocates cheating. It condones revenge. It pushes the idea that money not only can buy happiness, money is happiness.

How this movie ever got into production will go down as one of the great mysteries of the world, along with where Jimmy Hoffa went.

You can read the full review here: http://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=394376

So anyway, the movie sucked I guess. But in a weird way I think it’s kind of cool that online video contests have become so mainstream that the dude who wrote Mannequin 2 would write a script about them (seriously, it was written by the guy who wrote Mannequin 2.) I’m tempted to netflix it just to see far off from reality it is. The Daily Herald review mentions that the film seems to encourage cheating. Wonder if the video contest in the movie picked its winners via a public vote. It’d be really bizarre to see a movie that includes scenes about vote-fraud in video contests.

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



Man, good for that guy.  If you’d like to see all 6 of the Skinit.com Spotlight challenge winners, click here: http://www.skinit.com/landing_page.php?id=TVspotlight_home

Click image to view

Yeah that was cute. Too bad it was a word for word rip off of a pre-existing viral video. Here is the much, much better original:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a blatant and despicable act of plagiarism in my life. But please, hold your hatred to the end because this story is about to get weird.

As soon as “Forest Chump” was announced as one of the winners in this contest, some keen viewer contacted the creator of the original Forest Gump in 60 seconds video (Will Tribble) and told him he had been ripped off. He (and lots of other Mofilm users) complained and to their credit, Mofilm reacted quickly. Here is the official statement they put out:

MOFILM would like to issue a direct apology to community involved with the recent Nokia MiniMo contest and Will Tribble.

It has come to our attention that the Critics Award winner “Forrest Chump” was not an original creation, as required by the terms and conditions of the competition but had been copied from Will’s Tribble’s “Forrest Gump in One Minute, in One Take“  This issue should have been dealt with as soon as it was flagged however it was not. We will be holding a full review of the administration of this competition.

We would like apologise unreservedly once more for this error. We didn’t realise that the film that we chose was a copy, we would have instantly removed the submission from the competition if we had. As it stands, the original winner has now had their prizes revoked and we will be announcing a new winner soon.

Will Tribble has also been invited to the London Film Festival as the guest of MOFILM and the One Minute One Take film will be shown during the MOFILM London Film Festival ceremony.

Though Mofilm said that Ms. Lyon’s prize had been “revoked,” it seems that they may have made this announcement AFTER she already got her free trip to Cannes. So did she get to go on the trip or didn’t she? I’ve done some checking at it looks like Ms. Lyon was in Cannes when Mofilm/Nokia decided to revoke her prizes. They then made that girl get on a plane and go home early. Damn….that’s cold.

But that girl is a despicable little plagiarist, right! So she got what she deserved! Well, maybe not. Check out this statement that Ms. Lyon sent to the website Adrants (among others) after they covered this whole debacle:

“I would like to make a statement regarding the alleged plagiarism accusations from the Nokia Minimo movie competition.

I was approached by a Nokia representative who asked me to remake any video in under two minutes for his Nokia assignment. I was unaware that this was a competition at the time and did not receive a brief. The representative also promised to give me a mobile phone in exchange for assisting him with his project. I never received the phone.

The Nokia representative was present during the filming of my video and after being asked several times if the film was OK to submit he insisted it was and persisted to show the actors the original video to direct them where to stand and what to do. At no point did the representative inform any of the people involved that the film was breaching the terms and conditions and I was led to believe that the entry was valid.

Further to this, Nokia became aware that my entry was based on another video three days prior to sending me on the trip to Cannes, but they still sent me on the trip and refused to act until the public outcry.

My name has been tarnished by this event. I have been branded a cheater amongst many other things too awful to write and I have yet to be informed of how Nokia aim to rectify this. I aspire to pursue a career in the creative media industry and this libel is a great hindrance to my progress to achieving the career I want. My efforts to expose the truth have been greatly subdued by Nokia and the rule of law seems not to apply to large powerful corporations in certain instances.

In conclusion, I would like to reiterate that basing my video on Mr Tribble’s creative work was done in ignorance. I was not aware that I was breaking any rules and the Nokia representative never informed me that I was doing so. I previously had no interest in submitting an entry but I was misled into thinking that I was merely helping the Nokia representative, he has since personally apologised to me for the way I have been treated.

Nokia has allowed my name to be dragged through the mud by shrouding the situation with half truths and even some out right lies in order to save their own reputation.”

If you’re a regular reader of this website you’ll know that when it comes to video contests, there is nothing I find more reprehensible than plagiarism. But this girl gets a pass. I believe what she said in her statement. If it wasn’t for a rep from Nokia egging her on I don’t think she would have copied the original video or even submitted it to the contest. Nokia has even confirmed that one of their employees was involved in the creation of “Forest Chump.”

Having continued to investigate the original minimo Critics Choice Award, it appears that one of our student team assisted in the making of the video, including offering their Nokia handset to shoot the short film and suggesting that the film was okay to submit to the competition. We are obviously very disappointed to discover that this has happened. While we believe that the original winner did not intentionally break the terms and conditions of the competition, the submission remains disqualified.

I have seen this “student team” member also referred to as being a member of a Nokia Street team. So…what exactly do we have here? A case of plagiarism? Yes, of course. But the big question is this; WHY WAS A REPRESENTATIVE OF NOKIA HELPING A FILMMAKER CREATE A SUBMISSION FOR THEIR VIDEO CONTEST? Did Nokia/Mofilm feel like there weren’t enough entries being submitted so they sent out a “street team” of students to encourage their friends to make entries? If these student reps were under pressure to increase the number of entries, is it any wonder that something like this happened?  In fact the plagiarized film, Forest Gump in One Minute in One Take fits the concept of this contest (remake a film in under 2 minutes) so well that it almost seems like it could have been the inspiration for the whole competition!  At the very least, Nokia/Mofilm had to have known about it since it seems they may have sent it to their street team members as an example of what their ideal entry would be like.

I’ve seen some contest sponsors try and pull some shady shit before but secretly helping filmmakers create entries, encouraging and ignoring a hardcore act of plagiarism and then passing all the blame and shame on to a seemingly innocent young filmmaker might just take the cake.

A VCN reader sent me a link yesterday to a really eye-opening Adage.com article about the big “user-generated” Godaddy video contest. Turns out that the commercial that came in third was created by a NYC based ad firm called The Night Agency. Their entry was entitled “Get Online Rap” and for winning third place they won $25,000. What’s weird about that ad is that it looks like a very slick version of a typical video contest entry.  Were the people behind it actually trying to imitate the “user-generated” style we’ve all started to become familiar with? Back when I thought this ad was just made by some random guy, I liked it. But the fact that an entire team of professionals was behind this commercial is a real turn off. I mean, seriously…a cheesy rap song? That’s the best a hip, New York ad firm could come up with?

From their website, The Night Agency looks to be a pretty serious company and clients include MTV, Hanes, Kmart, Heineken, Macys, Yahoo and many, many more. They certainly don’t seem to be hurting for business. In fact, one of the creators of the ad makes it sound like they just plan to throw their $25K in winnings on to their ever-growing pile of money:

Our third-place finish netted us $25,000 that we’re happy to deposit in the agency bank account.

That bothers me. In fact, this whole thing bothers me. Is it cheating for a professional ad firm to use their money and resources to try and win a “user-generated” ad contest? Not really. Is it kind of a dick move? Yes…yes it is.  From where I’m sitting, it feels a little unethical for professionals to enter video contests because it goes against the spirit of these competitions.  These contests aren’t just about winning money; it’s about giving non-pros a shot at success.  Sure, the sponsor is looking for quality videos and commercials but if all they cared about was getting good content they’d skip the contest all together and just hire a firm like the Night Agency to shoot them a commercial. The point of the contest is to award filmmakers money and OPPORTUNITY. And the prize of opportunity is wasted on companies that are already successful.  Winning third place (and even winning 1st place) probably won’t change the lives of anyone at The Night Agency and I doubt it will get them any extra business. In fact, I imagine they won’t even show their Godaddy ad to potential clients since entering a video contest might come off as a little desperate.

So why did the Night Agency decide to try and compete with amateur filmmakers in the godaddy contest? Well, apparently, they did it as an experiment. The company has actually created and run several “user-generated campaigns” for various clients so they wanted to see what the experience was like from the “user” side of the campaign. Now, I respect their dedication to their work but if they were really doing this as an “experiment” they should have tried to create a real “user-generated” (i.e. amateur) video. But instead of trying to replicate the typical video contest experience, they made a professional version of an amateur commercial. The rapper in “Get Online Rap” is a well-known professional eater (for serious) named Badlands Booker. He’s not an A-lister but would 95% of the people that entered the godaddy contest be able to hire any “known” personality for a project that might not even pay off? Of course not. So even though “Get Online Rap” looked and felt like a “user-generated” ad I’m guessing it was probably one of the most expensive entries shot for the godaddy contest.

If the folks at The Night Agency had been serious about their “experiment” they should have had the nerve to try and replicate he entire video contest experience. By that I mean they should have put a cap of maybe $500 (and that’s being generous) on what they could spend and only use gear and talent available to low-budget filmmakers.  If they had done that though, they wouldn’t have won even third place.  Without professional production values, “Get online rap” would have just been another hacky rap entry.

The Adage article I’ve been mentioning is really, really worth reading. It will give you an insider’s view of user-generated contests and the author lists reasons why the Godaddy contest was so successful. Most interestingly though, the article ends with a word of warning to other professional marketing types that the “crowd” is coming and soon, the pros are going to have to start competing with them:

So did we feel threatened by the high-quality responses this contest generated? Not really, no. But it’s not something we’re prepared to ignore either — and neither should any agency that’s interested in maintaining its accounts.

As younger, savvier marketing executives start calling the shots at the best brands in the world, the “relationships” more traditional-minded agencies rely on for their daily bread will matter less and less, and the quality of work will be the determining factor in who gets paid.

The fact is, with the increasing sophistication of consumer-grade equipment and its relative affordability, more people now have the ability to produce broadcast-quality material. The technical barrier is breached; now all that remains is the creative hurdle. Creativity can come from anywhere. Contests like this and other crowd-sourcing efforts, if well-orchestrated and providing the proper incentives, can make the cream rise to the top. And that means all agencies must push themselves harder than ever to make sure their milk has not gone sour.

Seriously, read the whole article, it’s worth it: http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=144332