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Disappointing Results of the Skinit.com contest

Posted by Beardy on July 7th, 2010

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

Results of the Aflac 10 second “Video Contest”

Posted by Beardy on June 12th, 2010

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.

Has Tony Stark invented the ultimate online voting system?

Posted by Beardy on June 9th, 2010

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

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:

Create a fake e-mail address
Create a fake Facebook account
Use a proxy server to disguise your IP address
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.

Was Taxslayer’s video contest an un-winnable scam?

Posted by Beardy on May 25th, 2010

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.

16 days to go until the Skinit contest deadline

Posted by Beardy on May 15th, 2010

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

Taxslayer.com lies to filmmakers, cancels video contest 20 days after submission deadline

Posted by Beardy on May 11th, 2010

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/

Godaddy Finalists Announced

Posted by Beardy on May 8th, 2010

I didn’t realize that Godaddy was going to let the public know who made the finals of their ginormous commercial contest but I checked the website today and they had 10 “Finalists” listed. They also announced that the winner and a few of the runners-up will make their debut during the Indy 500 on May 30th. Man, godaddy is smart. That seems like the perfect event for this kind of unveiling. Plus that’s a long friggin’ race so they’ll probably air a lot of the finalists.

Every one of the videos that made the top 10 are pretty solid. And there’s a nice variety to the finalists. Some are “sexy” and some are goofy but they’re all funny. There’s only one kind of amateurish video (the one about the super powers godaddy can give you and it made me chuckle) but there rest of the videos are 100% pro all the way. They are as slick as can be. Hey, $175,000 is at stake so it’s only fitting that the commercials look professional. But all the folks who shot entries in their basements with their flip cameras will probably be mad that they only picked slick productions.

Like I said, I enjoyed all the finalists videos. They’re all funny but none of them really hit it out of the park. So I was impressed but not blown away. But people really outdid themselves and it looks like some people spent a lot of cash on their productions. You can see all 10 finalists at http://videos.godaddy.com/super-bowl-video-contest but here are my 2 favorites:

The “Get online rap” is pretty good too but I can’t find it on youtube. The public voting period is also over now and you can see which videos won the “community” prizes for having the highest scores. Remember, those prizes are stuff like laptops and cameras. Here’s the video that wound up being the hightest rated:

Christ, what an asshole. As you can guess, the annoying jerk in that video is a youtube celebrity who got his legion of tween followers to vote for him. I’m sure the folks at Godaddy are quite relived that they didn’t let “the public” pick their $100,000 winner.

5/9/2010 UPDATE: An astute commenter pointed out that the only non-slick finalist I mentioned has already been named the winner of the OTHER godaddy commercial contest. If you like contests enough to actually read this website, you probably already know that Godaddy ran two video contests concurrently. There was the big $175,000 contest and then there was an alternative contest run on the contest site zooppa. The prize in that one was only $3,000. For some reason, people in other countries and certain states (NY and FL I think) weren’t legally eligible to enter the big contest. So that everyone could have a chance to enter, the second contest was created. Some sneaky filmmakers submitted their commercials to both. That seems like bad form to me but I guess it worked for the guy who made the “superpowers” ad. It’s as simple as can be but it’s well written and well perfromed. Check it out:

Winner, Godaddy’s ZOOPPA contest. Prize: $3,000

Taxslayer.com cancels video contest 20 days after the submission deadline

Posted by Beardy on May 5th, 2010

This morning, Taxslayer.com sent out an e-mail to everyone who submitted videos for this year’s Taxslayer commercial contest and announced that the 2010 competition was being CANCELED due to lack of submissions. This announcement comes almost 3 weeks after the April 15^th cut off for submissions.

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. A few weeks ago, I posted every 2010 Taxslayer entry I could find right here. I found 18 entries…and two of them were mine. Among those 18 entries I saw several that I thought would make great winners. I guess taxslayer didn’t feel the same way. Here’s the e-mail I got this morning:

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

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

I’m guessing that Taxslayer got a lot of angry e-mails today. 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

I have a lot more I want to say about this but I’m going to cut things off here, for now. I have some interesting information that I’m not ready to share yet but I’ll probably get into it later this week. In the meantime, if you entered this year’s taxslayer contest, we want to hear from you. Please leave a comment or e-mail us at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.

Damn the man! More government sponsored contests

Posted by Beardy on April 23rd, 2010

That's where The Man lives

If you read our post on monday about the EPA’s new regulation-themed video contest, you’ll know that there are a few people out there that feel that the government is basically trying to control our lives and government-sponsored video contests are just another one of their propaganda tools. (check out the comments on this article about the contest to read the thoughts of some seriously pissed people) Elsewhere on the web, a frequent video contester has even called for filmmakers to boycott the EPA contest. I have seen tons of video contests run by government agencies (the EPA alone seems to do like one a month) so I’m really surprised that folks just noticed this was going on. Common sense tells me that government agencies are going to receive X amount of dollars a year for PR no matter how much people complain. If they’re going to spend the money, at least some of it will go to filmmakers if they hold video contests. In fact…one could argue that government-run video contests actually SAVE taxpayers money. For example, the EPA just ran a PSA contest about fireplace safety. (you can watch the submissions here) The winner of that contest will get $2,500 and their video will actually air on tv around the country.

Do you know what that means? It means the federal government was able to but a national PSA for the bargain basement price of just $2,500! So the “Learn Before you Burn” contest sounds like a win-win-win situation to me. The government gets to save 10’s of thousands of dollars on a PSA, a independent filmmaker gets a little cash and a lot of exposure and maybe a few more people won’t die in fires.

While we’re on the subject of contests sponsored by Big Brother, I thought I’d post there results of the “USA.GOV” contest. It was held to increase awareness of what people can get done with USA.gov. Here’s the winner. It’s pretty neat and features a catchy little tune:

First Place: Prize: $2,500 of the taxpayers money

Godaddy.com’s $175,000 video contest

Posted by Beardy on March 1st, 2010

Unless your Internet has been down for the last week or two, you’ve probably heard about Godaddy.com’s huge, new commercial contest. It’s one of the absolute, best video contests I have ever seen. First off, the prizes are huge. Third place wins you $25,000, second place is $50,000 and first place is $100,000. Second, many big-money contests host all the entries themselves. But for this one, participants just submit their entries via youtube. So unlike last year’s Doritos and Butterfinger contests, no entries will disappear in the depths of the sponsor’s servers and contestants won’t have to wait for days for their videos to appear online. The only catch is that you have to sign up for a goddady account, which is free.

I think the thing I like best about this contest though is that the top three winners will be picked by Godaddy judges and not by a public vote. That means the quality videos actually have a chance of coming out on top. But the folks behind this contest did something else very smart. Visitors to the site will be able to vote for their favorite entries but those votes have no impact on which videos win the top prizes. Instead, there are smaller (but still pretty good) prizes for entries that are the “audience favorites.”

The deadline to enter is April 23^rd so you still have a good, long while to get your submissions in. To kick things off, the Godaddy team created a sample entry.

Godaddy sample entry:

Here’s what the godaddy team had to say about their sample entry:

“If we expect you to make a commercial for the GoDaddy.com Commercial Contest, we should be able to make one ourselves, right? This is an idea we (Go Daddy’s Social Media Team) put together to give you an example of a potential submission for the contest. Of course, we’re not eligible to win. Also, our example’s a bit longer than the 30 second limit…”

I think it’s funny though that the sample video is 16 seconds longer than the official time limit. Just goes to show how hard it is to keep an idea under 30 seconds. Having their “social media team” create a sample entry is just the kind of thing that gives me a good feeling about a video contest. It shows that the sponsor is holding the contest partly for the fun of it. I’ll tell you, not only will I be entering this contest, I plan to throw everything I got at this one.

Important Note! If you live in New York, Florida or outside of the US, don’t bother entering because you ain’t eligible for some reason. Check the official rules for more details about who can enter.

Shenanigans in the LG “Life’s Good” HD contest?

Posted by Beardy on February 11th, 2010

Last week I posted the winner of the “Life’s Good” HD online film fest sponsored by LG. The winner was a very, very impressive HD short film called “Nuit Blanche.” You can see it by clicking here. But frequent video contest winner and friend of VCN, Lucas Ridley wrote me and explained that the whole contest was sort of one big clusterf%&k. Lucas is a hang glider and submitted an excellent entry in LG’s “Sports” category. You can see it here: A Leg to Fly on.

Though he submitted his entry on time and followed all the rules, for some weird reason, LG basically acted as if the entry didn’t exist. Lucas’ dealings with LG were so odd that I asked him to share his story. This is from Lucas:

Here’s the history:

* Made this film specifically for this contest in about a weeks time

* Made the Oct 16th deadline (had to mail in a physical DVD)

* Receive identical emails (on 16th and 17th) from two different people asking if this has been entered any where before and has it won any awards, my responses go unacknowledged.

* entries begin to appear on their website and youtube channel, except mine so I emailed on Oct 22nd asking when and where mine will be viewable, same day response was: “We’re not posting anything new for a while till we process the entries.”

* Nov 3 emailed to see if I could post the video to my personal account, response again came the same day: “OK to post on your personal acct.”

* Email sent on Nov 16th goes unanswered (month after entry deadline and my video is still not up anywhere): “Hi, I’ve looked at your updated website and youtube page and can’t find my submission, “A Leg to Fly On” on either of them? I’m kind of worried about what that means? Can you please give me a heads up? Thanks”

* Email sent on Nov 23rd gets answered the next day: “Hi, I’m just following up from my email a week ago since I haven’t heard anything yet.

From the response I received when I sent in my video it seemed that there wasn’t any problem with my video but I still don’t see it up on your youtube channel or your website. Please inform me of the status of my short film. Also, I never read in the official rules anything about a top 12, but there is a top 12 on your youtube page. Please let me know, I spent a lot of time and energy on this and I’m not getting a response back. Thank you” >>>>their response>>>> “Lucas

Not all films entered were posted on the LG FilmFest YouTube site. Keep watching the lgfilmfest.com site for more news about contenders.” >>>> That was the last I heard from them – and they never posted any more news about contenders.

* Over a month goes by and still my video is not viewable on their youtube channel nor on their website so I email them again on Jan 1st to no response: “… I was hoping you could give me a quick update on my film? I was also looking for the contest rules, but they were taken down …”

* Jan 10th follow up email with no response: “Hi, 10 days ago I emailed about getting information on where my short film is since I still have not seen it displayed on your site or on your youtube channel. Please advise, thank you”

* Jan 25th, my last email to them: “Hi, I am very concerned now that I have not heard any news or received a response from this email address in two months and the winners will be announced soon. Is my video being seriously considered for this contest? Thanks”

If you managed to read through that, there was no indication that my entry would have been disqualified for any reason, and they acknowledge that they did receive it.

Sketchiness:

* Lack of communication after it was obvious they were never going to put my video up on their website (my entry that I posted to my personal youtube acct has more views than all of the entries in the Sports category combined, so it’s not like it wasn’t watchable).

* Removing the official rules from their website

* they originally had entries like “The Moon – Vancouver Film School” which is like a year old, and clearly not made for this contest, but they renamed it something else and put it up like it was an entry, but since have taken it down.

* The quality of the other entries seem like they might be a similar story. Nothing created specifically for this contest (which wasn’t part of the contest rules or anything – to my memory at least since they’ve taken the rules down too -, just adds to the peculiarity), but it seems they just hand picked existing films out there, to give the illusion of high quality associated with the brand LG.

* There are only 5 entries shown for the Sports category. So it wouldn’t be a limitation of space. (did i mention that my single video has more views than all 5 of those entries combined? Not bragging, but just saying, it’s not like my video was unwatchable)

* The duplicate emails from two different email addresses asking if my film had won any awards before, of which I never heard a response from either, after my response to them.

* The “Top 12 Films” category on their youtube channel, now has been changed to just “Top Films” – neither of which were outlined in the official rules (again, to the best of my memory, but I’m 99.99% sure about this, since they took down their official rules)

My concern comes from a worry about the mistreatment of creators of content, like those reading this right now. My advice for the future is to never waste your time creating content for an LG contest in the future, because it won’t be given a fair chance and you will be ignored at best (unless it is a contest properly administered through youtube, like the one they did about two years back). I have learned, and advise others to do this, to copy and save the official rules of any contest you enter so you have something to fall back on if the rules are mischievously taken down, which if they are, you probably aren’t going to hear back from them anyways, but it never hurts.

I feel like this contest was just one in disguise to attract attention. Despite feeling like I fell into some advertising trap portrayed as a legitimate contest, I did still enjoy creating a short film that I’m proud of and others have seemed to enjoy, but I have learned my lesson to stay away from LG in the future and encourage others to do the same (to clarify this was LG Canada who put on the contest). Instead, spend your time on real contests that give our community a platform to display true user-generated work with a great deal of feedback and moderation and the best example of that so far has been the Doritos contest and I hope other contests begin to rise to that bar they’ve set, because this one feels like it took that bar and started clubbing baby seals with it. Okay, maybe that was a harsh ending, but a decent south park reference any way. What are your all’s thoughts on this? Did anyone else out there submit to this contest?

Ok, you’re back with Beardy now. This is not the first time a suspiciously amazing video has won an LG video contest. Last summer, I shot an entry for a contest were people where supposed to dance to the theme song for the new remake of FAME. The Fame video contest was also sponsored by LG and at the last minute, an OUTRAGEOUS, over the top entry was submitted and wound up winning the $50,000 grand prize. It’s called, The Art of Fame.

The Art of Fame and Nuit Blanche are the two most ELABORATE and professional video contest entries I have ever seen. And both were made for video contests sponsored by LG. Sure, both contests had big grand prizes and big money always attracts some pros, but is it possible that LG might be hiring or soliciting….ringers? The winner of the $100,000 HD fest grand prize works for a well-known production company and the short was not created for the LG contest. Is it possible that maybe someone at LG saw the short somewhere and then encouraged the filmmaker to enter it?

Sound far-fetched and pointless? Well, guess what? The head of a tech company once strongly encouraged me to enter his video contest. The contest was his idea and he wasn’t happy with the submissions so went looking for someone who could do just want he wanted. He saw some music videos I made on youtube and said if I made a similar music video for his contest I’d have a very good chance of winning <wink, wink.> We stayed in touch during the whole production process and sure enough, I won. My video was by far the best submission and the video even went viral but I never would have entered if I hadn’t been recruited by the sole judge of the contest. So….ringers do happen.

Anybody else enter the LG contest? If so, did you get jerked around at all?

Fame and fortune

Posted by Beardy on October 14th, 2009

The opening of the remake of Fame came and went without much attention a few weeks back but to promote the release of the film, LG sponsored a Fame-themed video contest. They encouraged dancers, singers and musicians to film themselves covering the remade Fame theme song in whatever way they wanted. So a dancer could dance to it or a singer could sing it or a musician could play it. I’m sure you get the picture. There was only won prize and it was a whopper: $50,000. Here’s the winning video. I can’t embed it so click on the image to watch it.

Warning: Video contains mimes

Whoever shot that thing is really smart. Most of the other entries consist of a people who set their camera up in their bedroom or in their ballet studio and danced in front of it alone. The makers of the winning video went all out and made a super slick music video. I can see why it won but….I don’t know, it seems a little TOO slick if you ask me. This is one of those times when you have to wonder if maybe the sponsor hired a ringer to create a great entry. Except that doesn’t make much sense in this case. Normally I’d suspect a ringer if a company plans on using the wining video in their advertising campaigns. But the ad campaign for Fame is over. The contest itself was part of that campaign and the movie has already kind of been forgotten about. So everything is probably on the up and up. I’m going to guess that a lot of the kids who jumped around in front of their web cams and thought they’d have a chance at winning 50 grand will be upset that a pro-made video went on to be named the winner in this one. Again, the winning video was really well made but picking it sort of goes against the original “film yourself” spirit of the contest, I think.

Popularity Contest News

Posted by Beardy on October 9th, 2009

Ecompliments.com held a video contest where entrants were supposed to like, compliment somebody…I think. The actual rules or even the point of the whole thing don’t really matter. What matters is that the winner of the 10 Grand was decided by a public vote.

Letting “the public” pick the winner of a video contest is bad enough. But the organizers took things a step further and allowed the public to start voting before the end of the submission deadline. That means that the first people to upload videos had a huge advantage. Here’s the video that went on to win the top spot:

First Place. Prize: $10,000

That video wound up receiving 3,195 votes but the second place video (who won nothing) had only 1585 votes. This begs the question, how did such a blowout occur?

Turns out the dude who won the 10K has a huge youtube following. He does a web show called The DeFranco Update and he has himself 104,273 subscribers to his youtube channel! He added a link to his video so that if any of his fans wanted to vote for him all they had to do was click, register and vote. So did any of those 3,195 voters watch any of the other videos before they decided that the Defraco Report guy’s entry was the best? Of course not. They just voted for the guy they already liked and then moved on.

And I don’t blame Defranco Report guy for this one bit. Yes he had an advantage over the other contestants because he already had a fan base but you can’t hold it against the guy for making the most of the opportunity when it came along. I’ve had some videos go viral before and though it’s fun to see your view count rise, you can’t help but wish there was some way to make real money off of all those clicks. So the winner of the contest just found a unique way to make money off his internet celebrity.

The organizers of the contest seem to realize that they basically messed up and held a $10,000 popularity contest. The Ecompliments contest website says…..

“We will be running a new contest with new rules in January. A panel will determine the winner based on a combination of factors. Although votes will be a primary factor it will not be the only one. The video requirements will be more tightly focused on “compliments” and “sharing the good.” There will be a grand prize and prizes for second and third place.”

Sounds like they probably got whole lot of complaints about how the winner was picked. But good for them for doing a whole new contest. Hey, maybe I can shoot an entry for the new contest where I compliment the organizers for doing a new and improved contest!

Australia is confusing

Posted by Beardy on October 6th, 2009

Ok, I am confused. I am confused by Australia; both the country and the continent. Today I saw the results of the “Learn, Live and Grow; Study in Australia video contest.” The point of the contest was to explain why it’s awesome to study abroad in Australia. Here’s the winning video:

First Place. Prize: A trip to Australia

For the most part it’s a funny entry and really covers all the bases that were required by the contest. So why am I in such a kerfuffle? Because First Prize in this contest is a trip to Australia….and the dude who won SHOT THAT ENTRY WHILE IN AUSTRALIA.

From the winning student’s mini-bio that’s up on the contest site, it looks like he’s already returned home to Canada. But still, doesn’t it seem weird that the guy was apparently just in Australia a few weeks ago and now he’s already got a free trip back? Couldn’t they have maybe given the prize to someone who wasn’t already in Australia while the contest was going on?? Oh well. Some Canadians have all the luck I guess.

Wait a second…this guy didn’t win a “trip” to Australia. He won 2 round-trip plane tickets to Australia. Man, that kinda sucks. They couldn’t spring for a couple nights in a hotel? On the plus side, at least I’m not jealous of that guy anymore.

Butterfinger winner and weird voting weirdness

Posted by Beardy on October 4th, 2009

Butterfinger announced the winner of the “Nobody’s Gonna Lay a Finger on my Butterfinger” video contest on Thursday. Of the 4 finalist videos, here’s the one that came out on top:

First Place. Prize: $25,000

Now, when the voting period ended I predicted that the posted scores would change dramatically before the winners were announced because Butterfinger would check for vote fraud and throw out multiple votes that all came from the same IP address. Well….I was half right. The final vote counts are now very different than what they were when voting ended. Except, ummmmm, everyone’s vote totals went UP and not down.

Each of the four finalist videos each have at least 1,000 more votes today then they did when the voting ended. The vote buttons were removed from the site when the contest closed so there’s no way people could have somehow been casting votes since then. (Click here to see the Butterfinger vote totals as they were on September 23rd and click here to see the vote totals as the are today.)

So what happened? Why did the winning video, “Butterfinger Phone App” have 12,974 votes on September 23rd but now has 16,556 votes on October 4th? Where did 3582 new votes come from in that time?? I actually don’t think anything shady went on with the vote. Now that I see that it was a massive blow out (the 2nd place video has 13,626 votes) I think the chance there was large-scale fraud by any of the contestants is slim. Without the aid of some kind of voting program there’s no way to generate that many fake votes. So Beardy decrees this to be a clean win for Butterfinger Phone App.

But the question remains; why did the vote totals jump after the contest ended? My guess is that votes in different parts of the country were registered on different servers. So in the last 2 weeks, Butterfinger had to seek out every vote and add it to the total. That’s a really crappy way to run a vote though. Youtube sort of works that way (ever wonder why your view count only goes up in big jumps after you hit 300 views?) but youtube tabulates its info from all its servers a few times a day. Why wouldn’t the butterfinger vote work the same way? Would butterfinger withhold votes on purpose to keep the contest competitive? On the day that voting ended, the first and second place videos were only separated by less than 700 votes. How did that slim margin turn into a 2928 lead for Butterfinger Phone App? This does seem sort of shady and I think it might have been an intentional tactic on Butterfinger’s part. Whatever the case, I suspect the jumping Butterifnger scores will always remain a video contest mystery.

10K will buy a lot of pic-a-nic baskets

Posted by Beardy on October 2nd, 2009

$10,000 is a lot of money….A LOT OF MONEY. When a contest has a prize that big, should you even bother entering? Doesn’t the huge prize mean that the pros and semi-pros will come out of the woodwork and blow everyone away with a bunch of super slick productions?

Well…depends on the contest I guess. I remember the SkinIt.com contest from a few months back had a prize of 10 grand and got a lot of really awesome and professional looking submissions. But that contest was easy to enter. All you had to do was go online and order some “skins” for your laptop and shoot a commercial.

Now compare that to “The Jellystone Park Video Contest.” The goal of that competition was to “capture the fun you have at Jellystone Park in a 30- to 90- second (up to 3-minute) video for a chance to win $10,000.” That means that if you wanted a real shot at winning you would have to physically go to one of the Jellystone campground/parks that are spread across North America. And that takes a lot of commitment. Chances are that most pro/semi-pro filmmakers live in or near urban areas, right? So how many would actually make the trek out to the woods to shoot a video for this contest?

Not many. Jellystone got almost 80 entries but by the looks of the finalists, most of the people who entered were…NOT filmmakers! Gasp! Oh the horror. It gets worse; the winners of the 10 grand are just some FAMILY!

Ok, I kid of course. But really, most of the entries I saw were just created by actual patrons of the parks, which mean amateurs with family video cameras. In a way, it’s sort of neat to see a contest that didn’t get sniped by some slick pro. This contest goes to show that even if you don’t have high-end camera gear or years of production experience you still have a shot at winning because you never know really what the judges will like. Check out the winning Jellystone video and you’ll see what I mean. It was a simple video with a nice little story and it even manages to make the park look fun. Watch this and tell me that you don’t want to go jump on one of those giant bouncy things!

I can’t embed the winning video so click on the link below to watch it.

Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $10,000.