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

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

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

Are you a member of Poptent.net?  If so, congratulations…you are now part of the “World’s Largest Video Production House!”  That’s right; last week Poptent announced the official launch of their very own production company, Poptent Productions.  From now on, Poptent isn’t just going to be running video assignments; they’re going to be producing video content for their clients.  In some cases those videos will actually be produced in Poptent’s new production space.  But the people that write, direct, shoot and edit these videos won’t be Poptent employees.  Poptent will instead farm this work out to their most talented members.  So if you’ve made a few sales or even if you just uploaded a really impressive demo reel, you might get hired by Poptent to create a video for one of their clients.  And when I say “hired” I mean that you wouldn’t have to compete against other filmmakers.  You would produce a video and it would be a guaranteed purchase.  Poptent has been running a beta version of this program for months and so far companies like Dell, Intel, Jaguar and General Mills have signed on and hired Poptent (and consequently, poptent creators) to produce videos for them.  Here’s how Poptent is pitching this endeavor to potential new clients:

Poptent Productions is the world’s largest video production house. We have thousands of fully-vetted filmmakers and videographers across the United States and in over 125 countries ready to work on your next video project. We are the faster, more nimble alternative to traditional video production methods. There is no project that we cannot handle quickly, efficiently and cost effectively. Need to shoot in multiple locations simultaneously and in a variety of languages? Poptent is your solution. We can streamline your process and facilitate greater go-to-market agility.

So from now on, Poptent will be running open video assignments for some clients and for others they will be hiring individual filmmakers to produce videos.  That means that there are now two ways that filmmakers can make money on Poptent.  And that’s great…right?

Well to be honest, I’m not sure I like this new direction that Poptent is heading in.  Poptent is a CROWDSOURCING website.  Crowdsourcing is about THE CROWD. Hiring a production company that assigns the gig to a producer is pretty much the exact opposite of crowdsourcing. The original premise behind Poptent was that anyone, anywhere had an equal chance of selling their work to a world famous brand.  But now “Poptent Productions” feels like just another corner of the industry that most of us little guys will never be able to break into.  Don’t get me wrong; I think Poptent Productions will probably be a big success.  But I’m worried that its success will mean fewer opportunities to make money for the vast majority of  filmmakers that currently use the site.  From now on, when a member of the Poptent staff pitches their services to a brand, they’ll be able to offer two different options:

OPTION 1:  Poptent can run a video assignment and open it up to all the members of the Poptent community (or to just a few dozen members in an invite-only assignment.)  The brand will create a brief and filmmakers will decide whether or not they want to follow it.  There is no guaranteeing  how many submissions will be uploaded and there is no guaranteeing that any of the submissions will be usable.  But the brand will have to commit to purchasing at least one submission for $7,500 to $10,000. The biggest benefit of running an open assignment is that the brand may get lucky and receive an amazing, outside-of-the-box video that only an undiscovered “crowdsourcer” could come up with.

OPTION 2:  Poptent Productions can oversee the creation of any type of video the brand wants.  Poptent will consult with the sponsor and then hand-pick one or more of their 50,000 members to write/direct/shoot/edit the project.  The filmmakers will be paid about $7,500 to $10,000 for their work.  The biggest benefit of Poptent Productions is that there is essentially no risk with this option.  The brand will know exactly what they are getting.  So while they probably won’t get something “magical” they are guaranteed to get a decent, well-made video.

If you worked for a company that needed some video content, which option would you choose?  Would you take a risk and run an assignment in the hopes you might get a phenomenal video?  Or would you play it safe and just hire Poptent to create the content you need?  If you go with OPTION 1 and the assignment is a flop, you’re on the hook for blowing about $25,000 worth of your company’s money.  (It costs about $25,000 to run a video assignment on poptent.)  How would you like to tell your boss that you spent $25K and didn’t get one single, usable video?

So OPTION 2 is basically a risk-free alternative to a traditional Poptent assignment.  That should make Poptent’s clients very happy but I think it might be a raw deal for filmmakers. I have a feeling that people are going to contact Poptent about running a crowdsourced assignment but then they’ll chicken out and go the safe route when the staff tells them about Poptent Productions.  So in a very real sense, Poptent is now competing with their members for gigs.  And since Poptent employees are the ones who will help companies decide which kind of assignments to run, the deck is not exactly stacked in your favor.

So Poptent Productions might wind up taking money away from “the crowd” and giving it to a handful of proven producers.  If you’re hoping that maybe you’ll get offered one of these “direct paying” gigs you probably shouldn’t get your hopes up.  The odds are just not in your favor.  Even if Poptent Productions produces 52 videos a year and even if they hire 52 filmmakers, that still means that only .001% of members will be getting any work.  And since I don’t think Poptent Productions will double the company’s business, brands that would have run open assignments in the past will instead hire Poptent to make their videos.  That means fewer public assignments and fewer oppertunities for 99.999% of the site’s members.

And that’s kind of a bummer!  This whole story makes me think of the old saying; You gotta dance with the one that brung ya.  Poptent Productions will probably wind up being fantastic for a tiny number of very talented filmmakers. But Poptent has succeeded because of the work done by ALL of their members; not just the ones that have made 8 or 9 sales.  Those 50,000 filmmakers mentioned in Poptent’s press releases joined the site because they wanted to have a shot at making some money.  They didn’t join so that they could be part of an impressive statistic.  It will be a real shame if Poptent Productions causes there to be fewer public assignments but I’m afraid that’s exactly what’s going to happen.  And if Poptent is just going to turn into another production company, where does that leave those of us in the 99% that will never be offered a seat at the table?

4/20/12 UPDATE: This story continues in the comment section. Mark Schoneveld from Poptent posted a response and explained Poptent’s motivations for creating their production company. And Kerry Gaffney of Mofilm also left a comment describing a similar program that Mofilm is now running. So if you’ve read this far, click the comments button and keep reading!
 

Beyond the Invite-Only assignments, there’s another level to Poptent that even I haven’t gotten to see.  At the top of the assignment pyramid there are “Direct Assignments.”  Only a tiny number of people are asked to participate in those assignments and sometimes, that number is ONE.  Yes, sometimes Poptent runs one-person assignments.  Basically, filmmakers in these super-private assignments are sort of hired directly by the brand and poptent acts as a middleman.  Sometimes two or three members might be asked to submit scripts and then the brand will pay to produce the idea they like the best.

And that’s what happened in this Direct Assignment that was run by the non-profit organization, ChildHelp.  Two members were asked to write scripts that would feature Shaquille O’neal and Betty White.  Child Help picked the script they liked best and the director got to shoot it.  The PSA that was created for this assignment is pretty good and it’s cool to see a Poptent video that has big celebrities in it.

Purchased by ChildHelp.  Purchase Price:  $7,500:

 
It looks like ChildHelp also paid for the director to create a behind the scenes video.  It’s actually very interesting to see how the project was produced so I’ll post it.  To my surprise, it looks like the PSA was shot with a DSLR.

Purchased by ChildHelp.  Purchase Price:  $3,500:

 
So, now that I’ve got you excited, I bet you’re wondering what you have to do to get invited to one of these super secret, ultra exclusive assignments.  Well guess what?  That’s something I’d like to know too!  Poptent’s method for selecting filmmakers is kind of a mystery.  But someone on the staff once told me that it has something to do with a member’s unofficial “karma” score. And I got the impression that your score is based on how many assignments you’ve entered, the number of medals you’ve won and how you treat the other members in the community. So if you play nice with others and if you do great work, someone on the staff will probably, eventually notice and send you an invite to a private assignment.
 

Everyone loves a follower!

If you’re reading this post, chances are that you’re either a filmmaker or a Russian spammer who is going to try and leave a comment about where people can get a Microsoft Zune for cheap.  Either way, you probably have a twitter account that you use for online networking.  It took me a long time to get into Twitter but I now hate it a lot less than I used to.  Turns out twitter can actually be a helpful tool if you’re into video contests.  For example, I’ve learned that if you want to get a response from a contest sponsor, sometimes you should try sending them an @ message on twitter.  Most companies monitor their accounts closely and apparently they actively try to make it look like they’re friendly, responsive and easy to deal with.  Last summer I spent months and months trying to get one company to pay me a big contest prize they owed me.  I sent tons of e-mails and my contact just kept giving me the run around.  But then I sent a tweet asking why I hadn’t been paid my prize yet and BAM….the response was immediate.  My contact was unhappy that I made my “problem” public but it finally forced them to take care of the issue.

But of course, you can use Twitter for nice things too.  I follow a bunch of video contest companies on twitter and you know what?  You should too.  They tweet out a lot of good info.  Case in point: I’m shooting an entry for Mofilm’s Walmart competition this weekend and just yesterday Mofilm tweeted that new video assets had been added to the project.  I’ll use one of those clips for sure in my commercial and I wouldn’t have even know they were available if it wasn’t for twitter.

So for the first time ever, I thought I’d take part in the weekly twitter tradition known as #FollowFriday.  It’s where users tweet out suggestions of who to follow.  So here are my #FollowFriday suggestions:

ONLINEVIDEOCONTESTS.COM:  https://twitter.com/#!/videocontests

FILMTHENEXT.COM:  https://twitter.com/#!/FilmTheNext

MOFILM:  http://twitter.com/#!/MOFILMugc

POPTENT:  https://twitter.com/#!/poptent

TONGAL:  https://twitter.com/#!/tongal

ZOOPPA:  https://twitter.com/#!/ZooppaUSA

And of course, if you don’t already follow VCN on Twitter, you should add us too.  And because I’m feeling saucy today I’ll even follow back any new followers VCN gets this weekend.  Yarg…sentences like that are one of the reasons twitter still annoys me a little.

VCN:  https://twitter.com/#!/Beardy_VCN
 

Well, Super Bowl XLVI is over and the winner is….Video Contest Nerds everywhere! On sunday night, four of the commercials that aired during the big game were originally shot for video contests or online spec assignments. Doritos aired (only) two Crash the Super Bowl ads, Chevy aired the commercial that won Mofilm’s “Route 66″ video contest and Dannon yogurt ran a commercial that was created for a Poptent assignment.  I’ll post all the winning ads below.  Let’s start with the Crash the Super Bowl winners:
 
CRASH THE SUPER BOWL WINNERS:
 
- Man’s Best Friend by Jon Friedman.  AD METER RANK:  #1
 

 
- Sling Baby by Kevin Willson.  AD METER RANK:  #4
 

 
Normally, USA Today would release the results of their annual “Super Bowl ad meter” poll a few hours after the game. But this year, the Crash the Super Bowl winners will have to wait until Wednesday to find out if they won any of Doritos’ bonus prize money. The reason for the delay is that this year, USA Today is running TWO ad meter polls. The first got its results from focus group polling. The people in those groups watched the Super Bowl commercials live and turned up little knobs to indicate when they saw something the liked. The second Ad Meter poll is open to the public and it’s still going on. From now until Tuesday, February 7 at 6:00 pm EST, Facebook users can visit http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/superbowl-admeter and vote for their favorite ad. If a Crash the Super Bowl commercial ranks in the top three on EITHER ad meter, Friotlay will pay out the traditional bonus prizes. First place is worth One Million Dollars, Second is worth $600,000 and Third place is worth $400,000. We will post the results of the “Facebook Ad Meter” as soon as they are announced on Wednesday morning.
 
And now, the other winning video contest entries of Super Bowl 46:
 
-Happy Grad for Chevy by Zach Borst:
 

 
Chevy aired a few commercials during the big game but I think Happy Grad was the best Chevy ad of the night. In my opinion it blew away the other Chevy commercials even though the other spots were big budget extravaganzas about skydiving cars and the Mayan apocalypse.
 
-The Tease for Oikos Yogurt by Remy Neymarc:
 

 
How the “The Tease” came to be is kind of an interesting story. Dannon ran a very special, private assignment on Poptent and asked members to create video “pitches” for a Oikos Greek Yogurt commercial that could feature John Stamos. 24 filmmakers shot their commercials using stand-ins for Stamos. The folks at Dannon picked their favorite and the chosen director got to re-shoot his idea. You can read the full story here.

Based on the quality of the ads we saw tonight, I think we’ll be seeing A LOT of “Crowdsourced” commercials during next year’s Superbowl. I watched the game in a crowded bar and all of the video contest entries went over pretty well. To my surprise, the Dannon yogurt ad made a lot of people laugh out loud. Chevy’s “Happy Grad” got a mild but positive reaction. “Sling baby” got some chuckles from one group of older women. One of them screamed with laughter but the men in the bar didn’t really react to that spot. The champ of the night though had to be “Man’s Best Friend.” People went bonkers for that one and most of my friends seemed to think it was the best commercial of the game. But like I said, all these ads did pretty well so all the winning filmmakers deserve a hearty “congratulations.” There’s still time for you to help make this year’s crop of Super Bowl video contest entries look good so head here to vote for them in USA Today’s Facebook ad meter poll.
 

The phrase "Most Notable" wouldn't fit on the banner so I went with "Best"

Back in December I was planning on doing an article about the “Best Video Contest Entries of 2011.”  I did one in both 2010 and 2009 but I never got around to doing the 2011 list.  The thing is, 2011 wasn’t really a kick ass year for “consumer generated content.” There just weren’t many big stand outs.  So I figured that before we get any deeper into 2012 I’d just do a quick run down of the best video contest entries of the past year.  But here’s the thing; these entries aren’t really “the best.”  Anyone who has entered even a single video contest knows that the “best” entries don’t always win.  So let’s say that these are the most notable contest entries of 2011.  Basically this will be a list of the biggest winners of the past year.

In February, the Crash the Super Bowl finalist Pug Attack aired during the Super Bowl and scored the Million Dollar ad meter bonus.  But you know, I never really liked Pug Attack since it was just kind of a re-do of the CTSB winning ad, Underdog. One CTSB spot I did like though was the Pepsi Max commercial, Love Hurts.  That ad also aired during the game and won a $400,000 ad meter bonus.

The spring of 2011 was a very good time for a Lexington, KY man named Walt Arnett.  In March his “Cash America rap” won first place and $10,000 on Cash America’s Cash Rap video contest.  In May this video won him 1 of the 6 Mini Coopers that Dairy Queen gave away in their Mini Blizzard Treatment video contest.  And then just a week or so later his entry won the $150,000 grand prize in Excedrin’s What’s Your Headache video contest.  Interesting note: All three of these contests used facebook votes to determine the winners.

During the summer, Gain detergent awarded a million dollars to this video in their Smell Like a Million Bucks video contest.  The winner of that contest was determined by a public vote so of course the winning entry wasn’t that great.

And….that’s it.  Those were all the big contests on 2011.  It used to be that there were several big video contests a year where the grand prize would be at least $25,000.  And as far as I can remember, there weren’t any “make our TV commercial” contests last year either.  I guess that sites like Poptent, Tongal and Mofilm have made those kind of big contests unnecessary. But a few contest entries did make it onto TV in 2011.  In November, Triaminc started airing a Poptent-made ad entitled 102.  And this cool Mofilm-made ad, “Chevy Runs Deep” actually aired during the MLB AllStar game.

Now that I mention it, Mofilm ran a ton of huge video contests in 2011.  Each contest was based around a different film festival or arts event and each competition had an over all winner.  You can see all of the top Mofilm winners of 2011 in this convenient youtube playlist:  http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL42175AE837CCDF68

Finally, I think I’ll close out this list by naming VCN’s pick for The Best Video Contest Entry of 2011.  This was an easy call.  Top honors go to “Duct Tron” which won first place and $4,750 (?) in Tongal’s Stuck on Duct Tape competition.  Not only is it an amazing on a technical level, it actually has a hilarious surprise ending.  This ad wound up going viral and recived a crazy amount of love from the Internet.  Watch it and you will understand why.
 

 
If I missed any big 2011 contest entries leave a comment and let me know!