A few weeks back I blogged about the Home Run Inn Halloween Video Challenge. I love the concept (make a horror film featuring a Home Run Inn Pizza) but hated the execution (the winner of the $2,500 grand prize will be determined by web votes.) This week, Home Run Inn announced the winner of the contest. So…here’s the type of winning video you get when you let “the public” decide the results. The actual video was annoying to embed so click on the image to view.

First Place winner. Prize: $2,500

That is easily one of the worst videos I have ever seen win a contest. So how did this one win?  That’s easy to explain actually….the guy who made it apparently just stayed up every night voting for himself over and over again.  And what’s amazing is that technically, this wasn’t even cheating!  Home Run Inn made it very, very easy for contestants to stuff their own ballot boxes.  To vote, users had to register an e-mail address and then they could cast up to 15 VOTES A DAY for the video of their choice.  And the rules say absolutely nothing about not creating fake accounts.  So technically, the winner of this contest actually played by the rules…the stupid, crappy rules.  In the end, the winning video received more than 40,000 votes. Could 2,500 bucks really be worth all that work???

I wasn’t following the voting on this contest but the other contestants were. The comment box that went with the winning video is pretty ugly. People are not happy with the way things went down at all. Some contestants did keep track of the voting and the winner, “Foreseen Voices” would go up by thousands of votes in the middle of the night. And then, whenever someone would post a critical comment, a dozen, clearly fake comments (consisting of mostly random words) would appear so that the negative comment would be pushed off the page. Here are some of the more interesting comments that they tried to bury:

lyricopera2 says:

This is a lousy video in every way. Obvious duplicate accounts, and just a sad overall video. Nothing about this video is original, funny, slick, creative, or good in almost anyway. It is sad that this video is going to represent the entire contest. How about a contest based on creativity and execution rather than I’ll make 5 million accounts and carpal tunnel myself voting for it in my mom’s basement.

dpmotu3 says:

How come every time somone leaves a negative comment anther person obviuosly supporting the video comes on and leaves a stupid one line comment just enough times to get it off the front page??

mmsedm says:

People have viewed this video almost 15,000 times?!?
It has more votes in this short time span than it did in the longer Round 1 voting. What a joke this contest is! (If you can call it a contest.)

libnotice1 says:

why are people leaving bad comments? Maybe it is because no one understand how this video can get votes like crazy in the middle of the night. Maybe it is also because no one likes entering a contest you can’t win because no one can keep up with a video that is somehow getting 6000 votes a day.

Kirk LaSalle says:

This video had over 8000 votes in the fist 24 hours.. LOL when the votes get audited…(and they DO get audited)

LOL he’ll be in for surprise! LOL

“Kirk Lasalle” was wrong. There was no audit because the rules technically allowed all the activities that everyone was complaining about.  And these guys weren’t the only repeat voters by the way. The vote counts of many of the top 10 finalist videos are ludicrously high and there were plenty of accusations thrown at other filmmakers. So the whole thing was one big ClusterF#$&.

If you look at the contest website it’s immediately clear that Home Run Inn realizes they screwed up. They actually post a sort of apology NEXT TO the picture of the contest winner. It really comes off as a sort of diss against the guy. It’s like saying “ok, we screwed up and here’s the guy that wrecked the contest for everyone else by staying up all night voting for his own video over and over.”  Here’s the text of the announcement:

Thank you to everyone who participated and voted in this year’s Video Challenge. We appreciate everyone’s comments regarding how the contest should be judged in the future years. This is only our second year, so we take all comments/concerns into consideration. We are already talking about ways to make this contest better for next year and would like you to know that your feedback has definitely helped us! Something we are considering is adding in judge’s picks to the finalist round so that all videos, even those entered late in the contest, have a fair chance.

This was a really fun idea for a video contest and if judges had been in charge of picking the winner I would have entered in a second. So hopefully a new, improved version of the contest will be back next year.

In the last week I’ve gotten a few facebook messages from friends about Home Run Inn Pizza’s “Halloween Video Contest.”  This is happening because my friends all know that if there’s anything I love more than video contests it’s Pizza and Halloween

The idea for this contest is one of the best I’ve ever heard; make a horror film that includes a Home Run Inn Pizza.  Now….take a second to think about that.  You already have 3 great ideas you can film, don’t you?  How about Night of the Living Pizzas!?  Or Pizzaface the serial killer that wears a mask made of pizza!?  Or maybe a giant Pizza the Hutt type pizza blob starts getting some payback for all the pizza we’ve been eating and starts eating people!?

It’s great to see a contest that actually has a unique concept and isn’t just “shoot a commercial for us so we don’t have to pay an ad firm to do it.”  Even the contest website is one the absolute nicest I’ve ever seen; cool layout, easy to use and filled with cute monsters and pictures of delicious pizza.

No, how about I eat YOUR face!?

There is only one grand prize in this competition.  First place will get you $2,500 but ten runners-up will each get 12 free pizzas (and Home Run Inn is like the best frozen pizza out there) and a flip video camera.

Even though there aren’t a bunch of big prizes, I was ready to start shooting just because I know me and my friends would have a ton of fun making a pizza-based horror film.  I bet you would too.  But don’t start charging up your camera battery yet.  The way this contest is being run is screwed up that no one should even bother to enter.

Here’s how the winner is selected:

1. The submission period runs from 9/21/09 to 10/19/09
2. The submission period is also the voting period.  Viewers cast a vote for their favorite video during this time.
3. At the end of the submission/voting period the 10 videos with the most votes become the finalists.  Their scores are then reset.
4. “Round two” starts and runs until 10/26.  During that time, viewers again vote for their favorite video.
5. Finally the video with the most votes, wins.

SCREW….THAT……NOISE.  That sucks!  Any contest that lets viewers pick the winners sucks already but this plan seems like it was designed to make sure a really crappy video winds up the winner.

Google "pizza zombie" and you'll get some strange results

The biggest problem is that voting is happening during the submission period.  Right now, the video in First Place has 1,422 Votes!  The deadline is still 20 days away but anyone who entered right at the start of the contest has a gigantic advantage over people who submit later.  How is anyone who uploads a video today going to be able to catch up to 1,422 votes?  And to make things worse, all you have to do to vote for a video is register your e-mail address.  In the end, the winner will be whoever feels like registering the most accounts and voting for themselves over and over.

So this is a contest that you should stay a million miles away from because it will only break your heart.  What a fricking bummer.  You know what though?  It’s a pretty effective marketing campaign.  I seriously need some Home Run Inn Pizza now.

I had planned to just do a short little post about this but the more I look into it the more suspicious this whole thing gets. Something shady seems to have happened with the “Conan, please blow up my car” video contest. Let me start from the beginning before I lay out the case….

Shortly after taking over the Tonight Show, Conan O’Brian decided that there had to be a more interesting way to dispose of a “clunker” than just trading it to the government for some cash. So he announced the “Conan, please blow up my car” video contest. If you had a really crappy car you were supposed to create an interesting, creative video explaining why your car sucked and why you deserved to have it blown up and replaced by Conan with a brand new Lexus.

Since this contest was promoted on the Tonight Show for a few weeks they got a flood of entries. In all, 951 videos were submitted. Earlier this month, this video was selected as the winner:

Grand Prize Winner. Prize: A new Lexus Hybrid

Sure that’s a really crappy car but the video is as simple as can be. The rules of the contest encouraged participants to create over the top videos though. Judging was supposed to break down the score like this: Originality (50%) and Creativity (50%).

So was that video original and creative? No…not one bit. It was just a guy talking about his suspiciously crappy car. Commenters on the Tonight Show’s website are pretty upset that this video was chosen as the winner. Some even charge that some kind of fix was in. And you know what, as much as I love Conan I have to admit that I think something shady did occur. Consider these points made by commenters on the Tonight Show web site:

1. One poster points out that the entry should have been ineligible because the video features a business’ logo (A “Pizza Pirates” logo on the hood of the car and on the guy’s shirt) and that was prohibited by the rules.

2. Another mentions that he car is also totally illegal to drive because the seat-belts don’t work and apparently the car had to be a drivable clunker.

3. Yet another poster asks a question so brilliant it would make Columbo proud: “If this guy drives with one lft arm holding the door (oh pity me, could of said you used bungies mr. wizard). Can you imagine the right arm making gear changes and turning the steering wheel at same time. People this whole thing was preplanned to appear as a clunker. Aha!!!” (While that move might be tough it would at the very least make the car illegal to drive.)

4. The most astute observation came from a poster that suggested that this particular car was chosen because it was so wrecked that its make and model are a complete mystery. In the video, the owner of the car refers to it only as a “1980.” So instead of blowing up a crappy Ford or Toyota or whatever, Conan got to keep the car companies happy by destroying a completely anonymous car.

The damage to the car also seems kinda suspicious too. As the guy says, he intentionally cut the roof off because it would get hot while he was making his Pizza deliveries.  But who wants to eat a pizza that’s been wind-cooled by a ride in a homemade convertible?  Near the end of the video the guy shows of a bunch of mysterious dents in his driver’s side door. He said that one day at work someone threw eggs at his car and shot paintballs at it.  But look at those dents! Were those eggs shot out of a 44 Magnum? And listen, I have played paintball before and I don’t think they could do that to a car door. If paintballs really could dent metal, would it be legal to shoot them at fleshy human beings?  Most suspicious of all though is the guy’s front license plate.  It looks like someone took a hammer to that plate. And even if he didn’t, how can it be legal to drive around with a license plate that is so bent that it can’t be read?

But forget all that stuff. Here is the biggest red flag of all; The guy in the video says he delivers Pizzas for a place called Pizza Pirates. I googled Pizza pirates and guess what? They have several locations but the guy with the clunker works in Ontario, California…..a mere 52 minute drive from the Universal Studios lot where the car was blown up by Conan.  The winner lives in Chino, CA which is basically a suburb of Los Angeles.

Wow, how convenient

I hate to do this but I officially call “shenanigans” on Conan O’brian. Can you imagine how much money NBC would have had to spend if the winner of this contest was from New York or Florida? By picking a guy who lived in the LA area they probably saved at least $10,000. Besides paying for a trip for two and a hotel room for the winner, NBC would have had to get the clunker to LA! NBC lawyers would never let someone drive the winning “clunker” to the west coast so the chosen vehicle would have had to have been shipped inside a big ass truck. That would have cost thousands of dollars if the winner was from the East coast. Oh! And then NBC would have had to get a new Lexus Hybrid to that guy! The actual car that the guy won was presented to him at the Universal Studios lot after his car was exploded. If the guy lived 2,000 miles from LA would he have had to drive the Lexus all the way home? Of course not. NBC probably got 1 free car in exchange for all the publicity and they again would have had to ship it to the guy’s house. After all, how many Lexus Hybrid dealerships do you think there are in the middle or Georgia or Montana? Not many I’m guessing so they couldn’t just make arrangements with a local dealer if the winner lived outside of the LA area.  Because the winner lives in Chino he would have been able to drive that car right home after the taping.

While googling I found the Pizza Pirate’s Facebook page and they seem very proud of their employee and the death trap he drove while working for them. Several “fans” of Pizza Pirates have commented on the company’s wall that they have seen that beat up car driving around Ontario, CA many times. One girl says….

“haha dude that’s awsome. my school is like right by there and we use to walk by and see that car all the time,lol. so when we heard in was going to be blown up on tv we were like omg..haha.”

Kids say “dude,” “OMG” and “LOL” in every internet comment they make….right? That might be a little suspicious but like I said, a number of people on facebook have said that they will miss seeing that crappy car drive around town. So it probably was a real car at least.

So what’s the final verdict? After looking at all the evidence I believe that:

1. The car that won the contest was real and was a total mess.

2. The winner of the contest might have done a few things to the car to make it look even crappier.

3. The winning video should have been deemed ineligible to win because the car was not legally drivable and because it featured a company logo. (Pizza Pirates isn’t just one store, it’s a small chain with 3 locations.)

4. The judges of the contest that picked this clunker totally disregarded the judging (Originality/creativity) criteria outlined in the rules and picked this car as the winner because:

a. It was funny looking
b. No potential advertisers would be offended that one of their cars were being called a “clunker” since only an expert could decipher its make and model.
c. NBC would be able to save thousands in transport costs because the winner and his car were located just across town from the studio.

In conclusion, here’s what I think happened: The contest was announced and someone at the Tonight Show remembered seeing this beat up Pizza Pirates car driving around the LA suburbs. The car was easy to track down of course and someone contacted Pizza Pirates and the owner of the vehicle got a discreet call. Someone from the Tonight Show encouraged the owner of the car to create an entry so that they could pick a local winner with a really funny-looking car. Conclusion: Shenanigans abound!

To add insult to injury, the actual blowing up of the winning car was really lame! It didn’t EXPLODE at all. It just kid of popped and then was engulfed in flames. Here’s the video of the “Explosion:

For the record I should probably mention that I am not a disgruntled contest entrant. I did not enter a video into the Conan Contest and I have no stake in this unsavory affair.