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.

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.

Tony Stark unveils his new video contest voting system (I presume)

There are two big reasons to avoid video contests that let “the public” pick the winner.  The first is that registering for those contests is always an annoying time-suck.  You can only get your friends to go through that kind of hassle a few times before they come down with a serious case of voter-fatigue.  The other problem with vote-based video contests is that none of them are cheater-proof.  No matter how many legitimate votes you get there will always be some other contestant who is willing to stay up all night registering fake accounts and voting for himself over and over.  Those two problems lead to a kind of catch-22 scenario.  The easier it is to vote in a contest, the more cheating there will be.  And the more safeguards and ID checks there are, the harder it is for real people to cast legitimate votes.  This is a problem so complex that only one person could come up with a solution; Ironman!

The Tony Stark Innovation Video Challenge was created as a tie-in for the new Ironman movie and it has a neat concept.  Contestants were supposed to create videos that showed off an idea for an invention that could make the world a better place.  First place is $15,000 towards making your idea a reality.  The deadline to enter was yesterday though so if you have any world-changing ideas you might as well just forget them.

Friend of VCN and multi-contest winner HappyJoel entered this contest and e-mailed me his submission.  It’s quite good and features some very fancy, professionally made effects:

Voters don’t determine the winners for this contest but star-ratings do make up a percentage of a submission’s total score.  Joel’s video is currently in third place so if you’d like to help him out, click here to vote.

That link is worth clicking on just to see how The Tony Stark Innovation Challenge handles online voting.  Their system is quite ingenious.  Maybe you’ve heard a bunch of grumbling on the web about Facebook’s new privacy controls.  Facebook now lets websites access users accounts for a fee.  It sounds a little insidious but it’s mostly harmless.  You can opt out of this program by changing your facebook page’s privacy settings.  Anyway, the Tony Stark contest utilizes this new feature to register people to vote for their contest.

If you have a Facebook page and if you want to vote for a video you just have to click a button and poof, your facebook page is connected to the contest site.  Now you can rate videos once every 24 hours.  The once-a-day voting kind of thing is annoying but overall, the whole system is very impressive.  You register in one mouse click and its incredibly difficult to register fake accounts.  If you wanted to cheat in this contest you would have to:

1. Create a fake e-mail address
2. Create a fake Facebook account
3. Use a proxy server to disguise your IP address
4. Visit the contest site and cast your vote

That’s a ton of work.  And since votes only count for 20% of a video’s final score, it’s definitely not worth the trouble to cheat.  So if you see Robert Downey Jr, tell him he designed a really nice video contest voting system.  He won’t know what the hell you’re talking about but after playing Ironman he’s probably used to dealing with crazy nerds so I’m sure he’ll just smile and say thanks.

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 31^st 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 21^st 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.

Did you enter the 2010 Taxslayer.com video contest?  Are you SURE you entered?  Because according to Taxslayer, even if you submitted videos you probably didn’t “officially” enter the contest.  Based on a letter I recived yesterday from the Director of Taxslayer.com’s Growth Division, Darcel Walker, I now believe that this year’s Taxslayer video contest was a scam and that it was managed in such a way as to ensure that the contest would be voided due to lack of “official” entries so that the $20,000 in prize money would not have to be awarded.  In fact, the actions of representatives of Taxslayer were so egregious they may even constitute an act of fraud.

As we explained in our May 11^th post, Taxslayer.com Lies to Filmmakers, Cancels Video Contest 20 Days After Submission Deadline, the official rules of the 2010 Taxslayer.com video contest had a provision that gave them the option of “voiding” the contest if less than 25 entries were received.  Though approximately 17 people submitted entries by the April 15^th deadline, Taxslayer decided to exercise their cancellation option and not award any prizes.  This came as a bit of a mind-blower to me since I had spent roughly 50 hours and hundreds of dollars creating 2 entries for the contest after a man named Daniel Eubanks, the  head of the taxslayer contest gave me a written and signed guarantee that his contest would “definitely not” be canceled due to lack of entries.  You can read the e-mails he sent to me here.

Scan of the letter I recived yesterday from Darcell Walker of taxslayer. Click to Enlarge.

A good contract lawyer would tell you that the e-mails we exchanged constitute a legally binding agreement.  Mr. Eubanks knew that I would go out and make entries for the contest if there was no possibility it would be canceled and in exchange, I was promised the CHANCE to win as much as $20,000 for my efforts.  But taxslayer went back on their word, canceled the contest and denied me the chance of winning that I was promised.

In the real world, you can’t just promise someone something in exchange for work and then walk away when the time came to pay up.  So I did what any business person would do; I sent them a bill for my time and expenses.  Taxslayer did not take this well.  Mr. Eubanks, the head of the contest and Assistant director of Taxslayer’s Growth Division refused to respond to my calls, messages and e-mails.  He even hung up on me the one time I got him on the phone.  So I went over his head and mailed my invoice, a letter and copies of Mr. Eubank’s guarantee directly to the Director of Taxslayer’s Growth Division, Darcel Walker.  Yesterday, I received a response that was so despicable and so underhanded that I don’t know how the man had the stones to send it.  I’ll scan and post the entire letter but here is the most insulting part; turns out I can’t complain about the video contest because according to Mr. Walker, I never entered.  Here’s a piece of what Mr. Walker had to say:

“I have recently recived your letter and invoice for production services concerning our recent taxslayer.com video contest.  As you know, we canceled the contest due to lack of video submissions.  In regards to your entries, you never officially entered the contest. You were required to agree and accept the official rules of the contest, sign and mail a release form and mail a high quality AVI and a Beta tape for each entry.  We never received a signed release form, Beta tapes and a High Quality AVIs from you.  Therefore, you never officially entered the contest and were not consider eligible for the prize money.”

Did the taxslayer rules say that I had to declare via e-mail that I accepted the rules?  Yes.  Did I follow that instruction?  Yes.  Did the taxslayer rules say that contestants must MAIL a release form, an AVI file and some Beta Tapes?  Yes.  Did I submit them?  Of course not.  Why?  Well to start, the Taxslayer rules didn’t even say WHERE these materials should be mailed to. The release form didn’t have an address on it either.  And the official rules provided no contact info for anyone at Taxslayer.  The only e-mail address they provided was for submissions and the rules even said questions sent to that address would not be answered!  So even if contestants were expected to mail in tapes and releases and AVI files, how could they if the rules didn’t say where to send them and didn’t provide a phone number or e-mail address so that they could get that information?  But here is the main reason I didn’t submit a beta tape, AVI files and release forms: TAXSLAYER WAS TELLING CONTESTANTS THAT THEY SHOULD ONLY SUBMIT THOSE MATERIALS IF THEIR ENTRY WAS SELECTED FOR THE FINALS. Yes…I’m serious.

Here’s an e-mail exchange that Daniel Eubanks, head of the Taxslayer contest had with one contestant:

> Sent: Friday, April 02, 2010 1:34 PM
> To: Daniel Eubanks
> Subject: Re: Contest Entry
>
> Do I need to worry about the beta tapes, release or AVI file at this time? I saw in the official rules it said about these but during submission it didn’t, and also, I didn’t see an address on where to send them. Please advise, Thanks a lot—Shane

> On Apr 2, 2010, at 5:05 AM, Daniel Eubanks wrote:
> Shane,
>
> Our address is below, you will need to send if notified as a finalist.
> Thanks!

On March 31^st, I also e-mailed Daniel Eubanks and asked if contestants needed to submit those materials.  He didn’t respond to me even though we had already exchanged a few e-mails at that point.  So Mr. Eubanks intentionally withheld information that apparently would have made my entries complete.  I heard from other contestants that they had been told they did NOT have to submit those materials unless they made it to the finals.  I have heard from many of the 17 or so people who entered this year’s taxslayer contest and only ONE of them said he mailed taxslayer the aforementioned Beta Tapes, AVI file and notarized(!) release forms.  And he had search for Taxslayer’s home office number and CALL them to find out where these materials should be shipped because the rules didn’t say.

Taxslayer's so-called contest "release form." Click to enlarge

Taxslayer pulled its contest website down but with a little googling I was able to find an archived copy of the release form Mr. Walker said I needed to submit for my entry to be valid.  Turns out, the document is titled “TaxSlayer.com Commercial Production Agreement.” I’ll post an image of it.  It is very clear that it is not a release form.  It is an agreement between Taxslayer and anyone who WINS the contest.  In fact, there is a space for Jimmy Rhodes, the HEAD OF TAXSLAYER.COM to sign!  It could be argued that it was the contestant’s responsibility to get Mr. Rhodes to sign the agreement and if you left that space blank, the form was technically incomplete.  And check out the details of that production agreement.  It says you must send taxslayer 5 BETA TAPE copies of each of your commercials.  Only professional production companies would have a beta deck.  So the cost of having a post house makes some dubs for you would probably be a few hundred dollars.  If taxslayer.com actually expected you to enter into a signed agreement with the head of their company and send in 10 Beta tapes (5 for the 15 second version of your entry and 5 for the 30 second version) then they placed obstacles to entry that were so insurmountable that they would NEVER get 25 “official” entries.  It seems that no matter how thorough a contestant might be, there would always be some loophole that would keep an entry from being valid.  In short, the rules of this contest and the misinformation given to contestants ensured that this contest was 100% un-winnable.

So all this leads to one big question;  Was the 2010 Taxslayer contest a scam?  It seems that the organizers of the contest went out of their way to see that NO ONE could win.  The head of the contest told contestants NOT to send materials in that his boss, Darcell Walker now says were MANDATORY for a submission to be valid.  Is it possible that Daniel Eubanks SABOTAGED this contest?  The whole promotion was canceled because they didn’t receive enough entries.  But it now seems that agents of taxslayer.com actively worked to ensure that they would NEVER receive enough “legitimate” entries.  I submitted my first entry a day before the deadline and I submitted my second entry 12 hours before the deadline.  Why didn’t Taxslayer e-mail me back and say “hey, what about your beta tapes and AVI files?”  Didn’t they WANT to get valid and complete entries?  And why didn’t the taxslayer rules even say WHERE these materials should be sent?  And in what kind of universe would they ever need 5 beta tapes of each version of the entry?  If they received 25 entries consisting of two videos each (15 sec and 30 sec) that would mean they would have received 250 BETA TAPES!  And that’s just if the minimum number of contestants entered.

There are only two possibilities here.  Either Darcel Walker of Taxslaer.com lied to me in an attempt to prevent me from me being compensated for work I did after recived a written guarantee about that work from his colleague or the contest was a scam and Taxslayer knew they would never have to award any prizes.  They put a clause in their rules that said that they had the option to void the contest if not enough valid entries were received and then they made it virtually impossible for contestants to submit valid entries. If this is what actually happened then we are getting into some dark territory.  If Taxslayer let people waste their time and money on a contest that could not be won then we could be looking at an honest to goodness act of FRAUD.  We are beyond screwing filmmakers and breaking contracts.  We are now talking about a possible criminal act.

But what would taxslayer have to gain from running a video contest and then making it impossible to win? Free publicity maybe?  One big reason companies run video contests is because the announcement of those contests always get a little press coverage.  And one reader who entered this year’s contest actually suggested to me that Taxslayer may have held off on canceling the contest because they wanted the suckers who entered to do some free promotion for their company.  See, the taxslayer rules stated that the 25 videos ranked highest by “the youtube audience” would make the finals.  So, during the three week-long period between the submission deadline and the day the contest was officially canceled, filmmakers promoted their entries to family and friends and on their social networks totally unaware that they were giving free advertising to a company that was about to screw them.

But the thing that Taxslayer really had to to gain was cheap or even free content.  A video posted by Taxslayer that explains the contest states the following:

Upon submittal, all videos become the property of taxslayer.com and the creator relinquishes all ownership and rights to the video.

Holy S&%*.  That statement right there could mean that taxslayer intends to use the entries they got (or more likely, the ideas in those entries) and not pay the people who created them!  That would be pretty outrageous though.   I think it is more likely that Taxslayer will try to buy entries at prices way below the original prize amount.  My theory is that taxslayer knew that no one would create tv-quality videos for them for only a few grand.  So they dangled $20,000 in prize money in front of us to get us to enter while possibly knowing there was no way in the world they would receive enough complete entries for the contest to be valid.  I suspect that they intentionally lied to filmmakers and told them whatever they wanted to hear (the contest won’t be canceled, you don’t need to send in beta tapes) just to get them to enter.  I think it was their plan all along to cancel the contest and scoop up their favorite entries for a song later on.

Though Darcel Walker of taxslayer.com is trying to bluff me into thinking otherwise, I believe I DID officially enter the 2010 taxslayer video contest.  The head of that contest told contestants that the release forms and tapes and AVI files were not required unless a video was selected for the finals.  I did not submit those materials because of Mr. Eubanks’ instruction.  So either Mr. Eubanks was lying when he said the additional materials were not required at the time of submission or Mr. Walker is lying to me when he says those materials were required at the time of submission. Either way, employees of  Taxslayer.com/Rhodes Financial Services have behaved unethically and now it looks like they may have possibly even committed a crime.  Here is a brief explanation of what constitutes fraud:

Fraud must be proved by showing that the defendant’s actions involved five separate elements: (1) a false statement of a material fact,(2) knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue, (3) intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim, (4) justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement, and (5) injury to the alleged victim as a result.

Let’s break this down and see if taxslayer’s actions fit this definition of fraud:

1. a false statement of a material fact

Head of the Taxslayer contest Daniel Eubanks told me that the contest would “definitely not” be canceled due to lack of entries and he told contestants that they did not need to mail beta tapes and AVI files for their submissions to count.  The contest was eventually canceled due to lack of entries and according to Mr. Eubank’s boss, the Beta tapes and AVI files WERE required for a submission to count.

2. knowledge on the part of the defendant that the statement is untrue

Whether or not Mr. Eubanks knew he was lying to contestants cannot be known at this time.  However, since he was the head of the Taxslayer contest I can’t imagine he didn’t know he was misleading contestants.  If Mr. Eubanks told the truth, then Mr. Walker intentionally lied to me when he said I did not officially enter the contest.

3. intent on the part of the defendant to deceive the alleged victim

Mr. Eubanks told contestants things that turned out not to be true.  He did this because I believe he knew that if he told them otherwise, they would not enter the contest.  If Mr. Eubanks lied in his letter to me he did so knowing that my entries were valid in the hopes that I would drop this matter.

4. justifiable reliance by the alleged victim on the statement

I entered the taxslayer contest because Mr. Eubanks falsely told me the contest would not be canceled.  I and other filmmakers did not submit Beta Tapes and AVI files because Mr. Eubanks told contestants that they were only required if an entry was selected for the finals.  If Mr. Walker is lying, he did so to try and get me to give up on my efforts to collect on my invoice.

5. injury to the alleged victim as a result.

The invoice I sent to Taxslayer for my expenses and time as a writer, cinematographer and editor totaled $4,347.  Every other filmmaker that did not submit Beta Tapes, release forms and AVI files because Mr. Eubanks told them not to wasted their time and money creating invalid entries for the taxslayer contest.  If Mr. Walker lied, he refused to accept my invoice for untrue reasons.

This matter has suddenly become very serious.  If you entered the 2010 taxslayer contest and were told that you did NOT have to submit beta tapes, release forms and AVI files until after your video was selected as a finalist, or if you entered this contest and are concerned that you may be the victim of fraud, please e-mail me at VideoContestNews@gmail.com.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Author : Sam Jenkins

Comment:

Dude…get over it. You are right, as you proved, it is nearly impossible to create a quality commercial in 9 days. Your entry was awful. You would have lost anyways. Grow up, you should be ashamed of yourself. On another note I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy and his company slap a slander suit on you so fast your head spins.

Wow “Sam,” why so serious?? And if you think I suck so hard, why the heck do you read my blog?  I’m eager to address the points that “Sam” made and I’ll do so at the end of this post. But first I want to try and answer the question of who “Sam Jenkins” is.  I’ve been running this blog for 9 months and I don’t think I have EVER gotten an angry comment that didn’t come from someone with a personal axe to grind. I’ve covered a lot of people’s crappy behavior and bad sportsmanship here on VCN and sometimes those people find the posts about them and freak out.  They want to attack me but don’t want to make themselves look worse.  So they post under a fake name.   I think I’ve gotten pretty good at spotting fake names though.  For instance, I can’t help but wonder if maybe the name “Sam Jenkins” is a reference to legendary (and also fake) Internet nutball, Leroy Jenkins.

Sam Jenkins: Artist's Rendering

Over time, I’ve honed the art of figuring out who anonymous posters are in to a science.  After a few minutes of research and a few seconds of deduction, I can say that I am 99% sure that the person who posted as “Sam Jenkins” is actually The Assistant Director of Taxslayer.com’s Growth Division and the head of the Taxslayer.com video contest, DANIEL EUBANKS.  Mr. Eubanks is the person I have been TRYING to deal with at Taxslayer.com and he is the person that twice told me me that this year’s contest would “definitely not” be canceled.  Yesterday’s post was mostly about how he lied to me and how rude he’s been to me these past few days.  So besides the obvious reason that Mr. Eubanks doesn’t like me (he hung up on me on Monday as soon as I said my name!) I have actual evidence and facts to support my theory that Mr. Eubanks is our hater.  Note: Because I don’t want to be slapped so hard with a slander suit that my head spins, I should point out that I have no concrete evidence that the above comment came from anyone at Taxslayer…though I do have a whole lot of circumstantial evidence. I am not saying that Daniel Eubanks did this for sure.  But my personal opinion is that he did.

I used a very awesome piece of code in my website that lets me know a lot of information about the people who visit here.  Mostly I just see a bunch of cities and IP addresses when I check my logs.  But if you work for a company that is big enough that it names its network, I get to see the name of your company.  For instance, yesterday I got a visitor from “The British Museum!”

Taxslayer.com’s parent company is called “Rhodes Financial Services” and is located in Augusta, Georgia.  That’s the company that Mr. Eubanks works for.

When I got the announcement about the taxslayer contest being canceled, I e-mailed Mr. Eubanks and expressed my disappointment.  I sent him a link to this post from VCN.  It’s a list of all the 2010 Taxslayer entries.  I told him that I found 18 entries and that it seemed like there were more than enough to choose from.  After I sent Mr. Eubanks that link, I checked my web logs.  Sure enough, someone from “Rhodes financial Services” in Augusta, Georgia had visited my site.  I labeled this person’s IP address so that I could recognize them every time they visited.  This visitor took a special interest in my first post about the cancellation of the taxslayer contest.  They checked the discussion on and off all day long for several days, presumably to see what new comments had been added.

By last Friday, Mr. Eubanks had stopped responding to my e-mails and refused to take my calls.  I was really offended by this so I e-mailed him again and told him that I knew he was still interested in what I had to say because I could tell from my site’s traffic logs that he was checking Videocontestnews.com several times a day.

This is a very important part of the story.

So I checked my traffic logs on Tuesday afternoon and I noticed that the visitor from Rhodes Financial Services had been staying away from the site and hadn’t seen my LATEST Taxslayer post….the one where I explain how rudely this Daniel Eubanks guy had been treating me.

Then, at about 2:40 Tuesday afternoon, I got the angry comment from “Sam Jenkins.”  So I checked my web stats to see where the comment came from.  “Sam Jenkins” posted his comment from a Droid smart phone.  Posts from smart phones are untraceable because they list the cell phone provider’s IP address and the HQ could be anywhere.  Though I couldn’t tell where “Sam” was posting from, I could see how and when he had visited my site in the past.

The results of my search speak for themselves.  Here’s what how things went down:

The Droid Phone: Practically designed for writing quick, anonymous comments

The visitor from Rhodes Financial hadn’t checked the site all day on Tuesday and didn’t see the new, more explicit taxslayer post. My theory is that now that Mr. Eubanks knew I could tell when he visited my site, he was intentionally staying away.  But I think he couldn’t resist checking it again so he tried to be sneaky and checked the site with his phone.  At 2:41pm, someone (let’s call him Droid Guy) checked the site from a Droid phone.  6 minutes later, Droid Guy clicked the “view comments” button on the new post.   4 minutes after that, the visitor from Rhodes financial visits the site for the first time all day.  (maybe he couldn’t see it too well on his tiny phone and really wanted to study what I had to say?)  The Rhodes visitor clicked around like a mad man for the next 30 MINUTES.

In the middle of his visit, the Droid Guy returns for a moment.  Droid guy is back at 3:17 and goes directly to the comment section and leaves his rant.  He then disappears.  His brief visit occurs at exactly the same time that the visitor from Rhodes Financial has the site up on his computer screen.

I’m just going out on a limb here…but it seems very possible that Mr. Eubanks remembered that if he left a comment from his office computer I would know it came from him because of his IP address.  I think he didn’t want me to be able to link the “Sam Jenkins” comment to him so he thought he’d be a smart guy and whip out his smart phone so that he could post anonymously.  Again…that’s just a theory.

Here is part of a screenshot of my web logs.  Be aware that “taxslayer” is the label I gave to Rhodes Financial’s IP address so I could spot it when it popped up.  I also added the big red arrow to indicate when the Droid Guy left his comment.  Notice he was not on the site right before or right after he said his piece but the visitor from Rhodes certainly was.

Click to see a larger version you can actually read

I immediately suspected that “Sam Jenkins” could really be Daniel Eubanks of Taxslayer.com so I held the comment for moderation.  When trying to smoke out a hater, this is a great tactic.  It causes the person to check your site over and over as they wait to see if you are going to let their comment go public.  Droid Guy visited the site again later in the day but again, I have to assume the text was too small to read on a phone.  Two minutes later, the visitor from Rhodes was back and the Droid Guy was gone.  The Rhodes visitor checked the comment section of the taxslayer post all day long…as if hey were waiting to see if Droid Guy’s comment was going to be made public.  Rhodes guy stopped checking the site at about 5pm but Droid Guy checked it once or twice Tuesday night…like you know, maybe the person at Rhodes went home for the day and didn’t want me to know his home IP address so he checked the site from his phone.  First thing this morning though, the Rhodes visitor was back like crazy and has already visited the site a bunch of times today to see what comments have been posted.  The Droid guy seems to be gone though.  This is really suspicious because haters don’t just check the site 3 or 4 times and go away.  They act more like the visitor from Rhodes and check the site compulsively.

Taxslayer HQ: Someone in this building is obsessed with this website

There’s one other big reason that I suspect that Daniel Eubanks is our anonymous hater; As far as I can see, the Droid Guy never visited VCN before yesterday yet he knew an awful lot about the videos I submitted to the taxslayer contest.  He said my entry was “awful” and that I wouldn’t have won anyway.  I didn’t provide links to my entries in my 2 recent blog entries about the cancellation of the contest.  So when could Droid guy have seen my videos?  I know that he never visited VCN before Tuesday so he must have watched my entry on another computer at another time.   And how did he know that I wouldn’t have won?  It almost sounds like Droid Guy had seen ALL the entries.

Like I said, I want to respond to a few of the points that “Sam” made.  So here’s his comment again:

Author : Sam Jenkins

Comment:

Dude…get over it. You are right, as you proved, it is nearly impossible to create a quality commercial in 9 days. Your entry was awful. You would have lost anyways. Grow up, you should be ashamed of yourself. On another note I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy and his company slap a slander suit on you so fast your head spins.

And now, my humble responses:

1.  It was not my intention to make a tv-quality entry.  I thought I was supposed to focus on IDEAS and not production values.  Taxslayer made it sound like they planned to re-shoot the winning ad, just like they did last year.

2.  Why should I be ashamed of myself?  Because I have the nerve to stand up for myself and not let people get away with wasting my time and my money?

3.  How do you know I would have lost?  Did you see ALL of the entries?  If so, where?  Like I said, according to my calculations, I had a 1 in 4.5 chance of winning 1st or 2nd place.  Seems like I had a really decent shot of winning.

4. I actually would have been totally fine with not winning.  I also would have accepted the fact that the contest had to be canceled if Mr. Eubanks hadn’t told me that the contest would NOT be canceled.  Losing is just part of the video contest game.  I entered the contest because Mr. Eubanks promised me a CHANCE of winning.  The only thing I was entitled to was that CHANCE but Taxslayer chose not to fulfill their employee’s guarantee to me so I’m going to fight to be compensated for my time and expenses.  We had an agreement and taxslayer refused to hold up their end of that agreement.  That’s why I’m upset.  It doesn’t matter who would have won, what matters is that NO ONE won.

5.  Regarding your prediction that Taxslayer will slap a “slander suit on me so fast my head spins;” you should invest in a dictionary because you have no idea what “slander” is.  First of all, Slander is the spoken form of defamation, Libel is the written one.  That mix-up aside, you still don’t understand the general principle.  Or maybe you do and you’re just trying to scare me into shutting up.  But just so you know, for something to be libelous it has to be both negative and UNTRUE.  If you want to start suing people for saying negative but true things you might as well just rip up the constitution.

Everything I have said in my Taxslayer posts have been true.  And when I was posting THEORIES about what I thought happened I never portrayed those theories as facts.  I have a constitutionally protected first amendment right to criticize, share theories and publish my opinions.  For example, my OPINION is that “Sam Jenkins” is really Daniel Eubanks and if I’m right, he better not dare try and intimidate me with empty legal threats again.

A few hours ago I e-mailed Mr. Eubanks and told him that I suspected that he was the one who left the angry “Sam Jenkins” comment from a Droid phone.  I told him that if he wanted to deny the allegation, he should let me know it wasn’t him.  So far, I haven’t heard back from him.

If I DO find any credible evidence that there is no connection between Droid Guy, “Sam Jenkins” and Daniel Eubanks I will immediately pull this post and make a public apology and correction.  Who knows?  Maybe it will turn out that Mr. Eubanks was sitting in his office reading my taxslayer posts and he called a co-worker in to see what some stupid blogger was saying about him.  And then maybe the co-worker got so mad that he decided to stick up for his colleague and so he whipped out his smart phone, went straight to my website, banged out an angry response and then left the site.  Then he stood over Mr. Eubanks should for then next 20 minutes as he waited for his comment to appear on the office computer’s screen.  Of course, that theory doesn’t really explain the earlier visits from Droid Guy but hey, I’m just brainstorming here.

If you’ve actually managed to read this entire, complicated story, you’re probably wondering why I would go through so much trouble just to try and prove that some random guy is a jerk.  Well the thing is, Daniel Eubanks isn’t just some random internet hater.  He was the man in charge of what WAS one of the biggest and best known video contests on the web.  I’m a filmmaker that entered that contest and I’m even a paying customer of Taxslayer.com.  If Mr. Eubanks did leave the “Sam Jenkins” commment, it’s a really disturbing development.  Assuming Mr. Eubanks is “Sam Jenkins,” here is a list of things he has done to me, a contestant in the contest he ran:

1.  He twice told me, in writing, that the 2010 taxslayer contest would “NOT” be canceled but then canceled the contest anyway.

2.  He refuses to acknowledge that he actually told me the contest was not going to be canceled.

3.  He refuses to answer my questions about the cancellation of the contest.

4. He gave me his phone # so we could talk but he refuses to pick up when I call.

5.  He has been ignoring my e-mails and voicemails since last week.

6.  The one time I called him from an anonymous # he picked up.  I told him who I was and he hung up on me.

7.  He (allegedly) tried to harass and intimidate me using a fake name.

8.  He (alegedly) mocked my entries and told me they were “awful.”

9.  He (allegedly) told me to “Grow Up” and that I should be ashamed of myself (for telling people he sucks at running contests, I guess)

10. He (allegedly) tried to get me to shut up by warning me that he and his company might file an unconstitutional law suit against me.

When you see all that stuff listed out like that you have to wonder how Taxslayer could possibly keep this guy employed after this.  This guy seems to have gone way, way over the line here.  He took what should have been a business matter and made it personal and now he seems tobe attacking me just for telling the truth.  But is it my fault that he gave me a written and signed guarantee about the contest?  Is it my fault he lied when he told me the contest wouldn’t be canceled?  Is it my fault that the guy didn’t even care enough to TRY and talk to me?  Should I just have shrugged my shoulders, said “oh well, I got screwed” and walked away from this?  For God’s sake, the guy has known that  I run a Video Contest blog since the first time we talked.  What the hell did he think would happen if he treated me like crap!?  Did he expect me NOT to mention it on the site?

Again, I don’t want to be sued so for the record, if ANYONE sees something in any of my posts that they feel is untrue they should e-mail me and if the concern is valid I will remove the information toot sweet.

MAY 18th UPDATE:  It’s been about 6 days since I e-mailed a link to this post to the head of the taxslayer contest, Daniel Eubanks.  I told him that I believed the comment in question came from him but that if I was wrong, he should let me know and I would set the record straight.  I told him that if he did not deny that he made the comment, I would take that to mean that he is the person behind it.  My web stats tell me that I’m still getting hits from Taxslayer HQ all the time, but so far Daniel Eubanks has not denied leaving the “sam jenkins” comment.

Note: This is an updated and expanded version of our first taxslayer post from May 5^th.

Despite giving at least one filmmaker a written and signed guarantee that the 2010 Taxslayer.com video contest would not be canceled due to a lack of entries, Taxslayer shocked the poor suckers who wasted their time creating submissions for them this year when they announced that the contest was indeed being canceled…due to lack of entries.  (From my count, they got at least 18 submissions which seems like plenty, doesn’t it?) The cancellation announcement came on May 5th; almost three weeks after the submission deadline had passed.  Oh…and the filmmaker they gave that written and signed guarantee to was me.  On their word that the contest would go on no matter how many entries were recived, I went out and spent approximately 50 hours and $400 writing, shooting and editing two entries for this year’s taxslayer contest.  In total, I created 90 seconds of video content because the “taxslayer team” assured me that my efforts could be worth as much as $20,000 in prize money.  I have tried repeatedly to talk to someone from taxslayer about why they lied to me and let me waste so much time and money on a contest that they knew was probably going to wind up being canceled.  But so far, I’ve been met with nothing but mind-blowing levels of rudeness.

For three years, the annual Taxslayer.com commercial contest has been one of the highest profile and best known video contests on the web. In 2008, this video was selected as the winner of the contest. The filmmaker received $25,000 and the ad went on to air on national TV during the 2009 Tax season. In 2009, this video won the second annual competition and again, the filmmaker behind it was paid $25,000. Except this time (much to the surprise of many contestants) Taxslayer announced they were going to re-shoot the ad before airing it. Here’s the result.  This re-shoot concept was never mentioned in the rules and many contests who created tv-quality entries were furious that taxslayer let them waste so much of their time and money when apparently, all they were after were ideas they could have a production company re-shoot.

The Taxslayer; he will smite you with his mighty lies

In January, Taxslayer brought the contest back for 2010 but it came with some odd changes. For one, the prize for first place was reduced to $15,000 and a second place prize of $5,000 was added. But what was really bizarre were the strict submission guidelines. Filmmakers were required to submit both a 15 second and a 30 second version of their ads.  So taxslayer was paying less money for more work.  On top of the changes, Taxslayer would not confirm whether they wanted ads that could air on TV as-is or if filmmakers should just shoot something simple that taxslayer could remake later.

The complicated and unclear rules scared most filmmakers away but I entered and lost this contest in 2009 (my first loss ever!) and I had spent a whole year thinking of ideas I could shoot if it was was brought back. The taxslayer rules required that filmmakers upload their videos to youtube and then tag them “taxslayer2010.”  So two weeks before the hard-to-forget submission deadline of April 15th, I checked youtube.  The submission period had been open for 2 1/2 months but I found just ONE, SINGLE ENTRY!

Normally, seeing just one entry would make this a must-enter contest.  But I remembered seeing something in the rules that said that taxslayer could cancel the contest if they didn’t get enough submissions. Entering a contest that is probably going to be canceled would be a pretty stupid waste of time. So on March 30th I sent an e-mail to Taxslayer.com. Here’s a piece of it:

I run a video contest blog called “The Video Contest news” and we’ve done a few posts about this year’s taxslayer contest. I, and many of my readers would like to enter the contest but I have a feeling that it is going to be canceled this year due to lack of entries. Is there a chance the contest will be canceled? If the contest is on for sure, and if I announced that guarantee on my blog, you for sure would get lots of new entries from our readers.

An hour later, I got this response. (The all-caps bit included)

The contest will NOT be cancelled. We regularly receive the bulk of our entries in early April.

Thanks!

A few seconds later, I got a second response from Taxslayer. This time it came directly from the head of the contest, Daniel Eubanks. Mr. Eubanks is the Assistant Director of the “Growth Division” at Taxslayer’s parent company, Rhodes Financial Services in Augusta, Georgia. I know all that because his electronic business card was attached to the e-mail. Here’s what he said:

Dan,

I hope I didn’t sound rude in my previous email, I just wanted to make sure you knew we definitely won’t cancel the contest. Let me know if I can help with anything else.

Thanks!

Daniel Eubanks
Assistant Director of Growth
TaxSlayer.com

After getting such a positive response I wrote Mr. Eubanks back and said I wanted to do a post on VCN about the contest and try and clarify some of the confusing parts of the rules.  Here’s a piece of my e-mail:

The filmmakers who read my website kind of make up the unofficial core of the video contest community.  These are the people who regularly enter video contests and usually turn in some of the highest quality entries.  After I posted about this year’s taxslayer contest I heard from a number of people who were confused by the new rules.  I’ve read the rules from top to bottom and I’m still not 100% sure what is required.  Would you be willing to answer a few questions and clarify a few things?  If I posted these clarifications on my site, I think you would definitely see a jump in high-quality entries.  The reason I asked if the contest was going to be cancelled is because from talking to other filmmakers, I get the feeling that many are going to skip this contest and instead focus on one of the other big contests that are running right now.

I then asked six questions for the article.  To my surprise, Mr. Eubanks never responded.  The rules implied that no questions about the contest could be answered so I took Mr. Eubanks’ silence to mean that he had already said too much and that I shouldn’t do the post.

Still, I now had personal guarantee from the head of the contest so I immediately started planning an entry. How could I not?  Not only did I have inside information that the contest would not be canceled no matter how many entries were received, (and it looked like they weren’t going to get many) I had a written and electronically signed agreement to that fact from the head of the contest!  That’s a legally binding contract right there, my friend!  Mr. Eubanks knew that his guarantee would result in me and possibly my readers (I e-mailed a few of them about the guarantee and I know of 2 for sure that did entries) creating entries for the contest so it would be ethically and legally irresponsible as well as just plan dumb to cancel the contest after entering into such an agreement….right?

I was so excited about my inside information that after I finished my first entry (consisting of a 30 second and 15 second version, remember) I started thinking that maybe I had enough time to do a second entry. Like a sign from above, just as I was about to upload my first submission, I got another e-mail from Daniel Eubanks at Taxslayer.com on April 6th. Here it is.  Presumably, everyone who entered the contest last year got this same message.

We are quickly approaching the April 15th deadline for the 2010 TaxSlayer.com video contest. We noticed that you submitted an entry last year but have not done so yet this year. We value all of our submissions and hope to receive one from you this year. If you have any questions at all about the contest please let us know. If you are already working on an entry and plan to submit it soon please reply to this email and let us know so that we can be on the lookout for your submission. Thanks for your help and we look forward to hearing from you soon.

-The TaxSlayer Team

They were begging for entries!  Looking back, that e-mail really infuriates me since Taxslayer probably knew that the contest was going to be canceled when they sent out their last minute call for entries.  I’m guessing the head of the contest decided he should at least make it look like he tried to get more people to submit.  But how many people can really pull together a TV-quality production in just 9 days??  I can’t help but suspect that they knew that anyone entering the contest at that point would just be wasting their time and money.

Taxslayer spends a fortune sponsoring race cars but I guess paying out video contest winnings would break the bank

Of course, I wasn’t thinking so negatively at the time.  But I was worried I might knock myself out shooting another submission only to find out that the deadline was being extended. So I e-mailed Mr. Eubanks again and he said “At this time it doesn’t look like the contest will be extended.”

I just about lost my mind. This was an unbelievable opportunity and I was probably the only filmmaker who knew about it.  I wrote a second script and put up a call for actors on craisglist that very day. By April 15th, I had created two complete entries for the taxslayer contest consisting of 4 videos total. The day after the deadline I checked youtube and found 18 entries for the 2010 contest and posted them all here on VCN. My odds of winning at least $5,000 was 1 in 4.5. As you can guess, my hopes were high.

So I was completely flabbergasted/crushed/befuddled/pissed when on may 5th, Taxslayer.com sent out an e-mail to everyone who submitted videos for this year’s commercial contest and announced that the 2010 competition was being CANCELED due to lack of submissions. Again, this announcement came almost 3 weeks after the April 15th cut off for submissions and just about 2 weeks before they should have announced the winners.

I have been following and entering online video contests since 2007 and I have NEVER seen this kind of thing happen before. I have seen one or two small contests disappear before any entries were recived but I think canceling a video contest after the deadline might be totally unprecedented. It’s a huge shock and major disappointment that one of the most established and best known contests would do this to all the people who spent precious time, money and resources making videos for them. Among those 18 entries I found on youtube, I saw several that I thought would make great winners. Some were professionally produced and ready for TV.  I guess taxslayer didn’t feel the same way though. Here’s the e-mail they sent out:

Dear Contest Participant,

First we would like to thank you for your entry into the 2010 TaxSlayer.com Commercial Contest. We received some great submissions and are very thankful for your efforts. Regrettably we did not receive the required number of entries for the contest. Pursuant to section four of the Official Contest Rules, “If a minimum (number of)… entries are not received by the end of the contest period…the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.” With this in mind, the contest will be voided effective immediately. Once again we would like to thank you for your participation. Please know that as a result of this, you are released of all of your duties and obligations pursuant to the official rules.

Sincerely,

The TaxSlayer Team

What really bothers me about this message is that the “Taxslayer Team” implies that they had no choice but to cancel the contest if a minimum number of entries were not received. This however, is not true. This is the statement from the above e-mail:

“Pursuant to section four of the Official Contest Rules, “If a minimum (number of)… entries are not received by the end of the contest period…the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.” With this in mind, the contest will be voided effective immediately.”

And this is what “section four of the official contest rules” actually say:

“If a minimum twenty five (25) (submitted by separate individuals) entries are not received by the end of the contest period, at the sole discretion of the sponsor, the contest will be void and no prizes will be awarded.”

As you can see, those ellipses replaced some crucial details. Taxslayer.com was not legally required to cancel their contest if they didn’t get more than 25 entries. The contest could be voided AT THE DISCRETION OF THE SPONSOR. Translation; we don’t have to cancel it if we don’t want to.  Yet taxslayer intentionally omitted that fact from their letter to contestants and made it sound like the rules forced them to void the contest.  That was a really scummy move.

I’m guessing that Taxslayer has gotten a lot of angry e-mails in the last few days. Sadly, they don’t even respect contestants enough to answer these messages individually. I contacted Taxslayer and asked a number of questions. They ignored my questions and e-mailed me the same form-letter response they apparently sent to everyone. Here it is:

Dear —,

First let me apologize on a personal note for the cancellation of the contest. I apologize if there was any confusion as to whether or not the contest would be canceled. We understand that everyone who participated committed valuable time and resources and for that we are grateful. Please note that this is our third video contest and we have never had to cancel before. In years past we have received well over the required number of submissions. Please know that we never anticipated coming up short this year. In many cases we have worked with more contestants than just the winner. That being said the number of submissions wasn’t enough to work with this year. All of the videos will remain on our radar as we plan our marketing for next tax season. If there is a video or idea that we feel would work well with our plans we will be sure to contact that contestant on an individual basis and they will in turn be compensated accordingly. Please be assured that your submissions will not be disregarded just because the contest has been cancelled.

Sincerely,

Daniel Eubanks

Wait a second Mr. Eubanks…you “never anticipated coming up short this year?”  Well that’s just a lie.  You and I discussed that very possibility via e-mail! And you “apologize if there was any confusion as to whether or not the contest would be canceled????  I’m not confused…I was lied to!  If I was confused it’s only because you confused me.

I’m sure there was a lot of pressure on Mr. Eubanks as head of the contest to get as many entries submitted as possible.  But did Taxslayer really want him to go so far as to trick people into entering?  After I got the canned complaint response, I wrote Mr. Eubanks again and said that his form letter did not answer any of my questions.  I did hear back from him and he seemed amazed that I still cared about this dumb, ole’ contest.  He gave me his number and said if I could call him if I wanted.  I said I would, but first, I thought he should have this:

Click to embiggen

That’s an invoice for my time and expenses for the projects that Mr. Eubanks greenlit.  The letter with the invoice explains why he’s legally obligated to compensate me for the work I did.  The guy works for a “financial services” company though so I’m sure he knows full well that he screwed up and got me to enter the taxslayer contest under false pretenses. Just for the record, that invoice accurately reflects that amount of time I spent on my taxslayer videos and the amounts are based on my rates for production work.  For two 30 second ads and two 15 second ads I expect to be paid $4,447.00.  Trust me, that is a hell of a bargain. If I wanted to be unreasonable about this I’d also bill them for the $1,200 in new production gear I bought to shoot my entries.

Anyways, anyone care to guess how Mr. Eubanks reacted to the invoice?  If you guessed “like a total jerk” you guessed correctly.  My e-mails to Mr. Eubanks have all been ignored.  I’ve called him several times and he never picked up.  I left several messages and he never called back.  Today, I finally called him from an anonymous number and he picked up.  I told him who I was and guess what he did…

He hung up on me.

I wasn’t too surprised though.  Earlier that day I called Rhodes Financial Services and talked to the operator.  I asked for the name of the director of the “Growth division” (that would be Mr. Eubank’s boss)  Can you guess what the operator did?

She hung up on me too!

I called back and she sounded pissed.  I got the guy’s name though so if this Daniel Eubanks guy is not enough of a professional to deal with the mess he made, I’ll try his boss.  And if anyone reading this entered the taxslayer contest this year and would like Mr. Eubanks’ boss’ contact info, just let me know.

I started this blog nine months because simply put, I love video contests.  They’re fun, they’re great ways to get experience and best of all, you can make a lot of money with them.  But in the last 9 months I’ve watched filmmakers get screwed every which way you could think of in these contests.  9 times out of 10 there’s nothing you can do about it.  But this time, the person who got screwed is me and I just happen to have the law on my side in this matter.  Mr. Eubanks knew that if he lied to me I would go out and create entries for the taxslayer contest and he knew that if he told me the truth (that the contest could have been canceled) he knew I would NOT have created any entries.  I understand that the rules said that the contest MAY be canceled if fewer than 25 entries were submitted and the other people who entered this contest accepted the risk that the contest could be canceled under certain conditions.  But n my case, Mr. Eubanks’ personal, written guarantee to me as a representative of taxslayer.com supersedes the generic terms of the contest rules.  Why did the guy lie to me to get me to enter the contest?  I don’t know…but he did.  And now he and his company need to step up and fulfill their obligations.  In the real world, you don’t just get to waste people’s time and money and then shrug your shoulders and walk away. You can’t just lie to people and then hang up on them when they call looking for answers.  That’s not how you treat your customers.  Oh yeah…that’s what really sucks about this.  I’m a paying customer of taxslayer.com!  I used them to file my taxes this year because I wanted to support a company that supported video contests!  From here on out though, I’m a Turbo-Tax man.

UPDATE:  Oh snap.  We seem to have gotten the attention of someone at taxslayer.com.  It looks like someone at taxslayer’s parent company, Rhodes Financial Services tried to leave this angry comment in response to this post:

Dude…get over it. You are right, as you proved, it is nearly impossible to create a quality commercial in 9 days. Your entry was awful. You would have lost anyways. Grow up, you should be ashamed of yourself. On another note I wouldn’t be surprised if this guy and his company slap a slander suit on you so fast your head spins.

That comment was made by someone using a fake name and a fake e-mail address.  But I checked my web stats and it’s pretty clear that this comment was made by someone at the Rhodes Financial offices in Augusta, GA.  Presumably it was the head of the contest, Daniel Eubanks since he knows I run this site and that I have been blogging about the cancellation of the contest.  For a full explanation of how I could tell where the above comment came from, click here: http://videocontestnews.com/2010/05/12/did-this-angry-comment-come-from-the-head-of-the-taxslayer-contest/