Video Contest News » vote

Avoid like the plague: DocSniper.com

Beardy — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 16:55:03 +0000

NOTE: Our traffic has gone up a good bit thanks to the Crash the Superbowl posts. So if you’re new to the site, thanks for visiting. If you’re looking for a place to promote your Doritos commercial, scroll down to the next post. But if you feel like reading some non-CTSB video contest news, scroll your eyes down to the next paragraph.

There are lot of reasons NOT to enter certain video contests. If the winner is picked by a public vote, you should probably stay out of that fight. If the prize is really small that means the company is cheap and might not even pay up if you win. But the most offensive red flag is a contest that charges you an entry fee. All I can say about that is Fuuuuu*k that noise. Finally, I try to avoid contests that are run by non-U.S. based companies. For one, those contests are usually open to everyone, everywhere which means that your competition is THE ENTIRE FREAKING WORLD. But more importantly, if you have a problem with that contest, what are you going to do? Fly over to their home country and sue them?

So those are what I consider to be deal-breaking red flags. That said, I think I have officially discovered the WORST video contest I have ever seen. Somehow they managed to pull off the rare, 4-red-flagger contest here. It’s “Doc Sniper’s Make Some Noise Video contest” and it immediately comes off as suspicious because the point of the contest is incredibly vague. Check out this description:

That’s it? Make a video with music in it? What the heck is the point of that? Ohhh..I know. The point is that to enter the contest, you have to pay a $10 ENTRY FEE! Pretty much any filmmaker will already have some kind of project that includes music in it. So maybe a ton of them will decide to take a shot, pay the 10 bucks and enter to win the massive $500 jackpot!

This just has “scam” written all over it. The winner of the $500 prize is picked by the “Doc Sniper” community. So think about that; you have to PAY to enter the contest and then if you want the prize, you have to get a bunch of people to register to the site to vote for you. I repeat, Fuuuuuuu*k that noise.

I kind of feel bad for ripping on DocSniper.com because after looking through the site, it seems to be the passion project of some young entrepreneurs hoping to build a new social networking site. I don’t think they actually want to rip people off but based on the business model they are presenting, I think that it’s inevitable that people are going to get screwed. Basically it looks like they are trying to build a pyramid scheme for video contests; if 100 people each pay 10 bucks to enter the contest then 50% of that money goes to the “winner” and 50% goes to Doc Sniper. According to the site, it is their goal to do one contest like this every month. But so far, just 3 people have entered the “music” contest. Are they still going to pay out the 500 bucks if they only take in $30 in entries fees?

The final red flag here is a little weird but there are several videos on the site from “Doc Sniper” himself in which he explains certain aspects of the site. Click right here to visit the site and watch one of these videos. (best example is on the front page in the upper right hand corner) Something is weird about Doc Sniper. It took me a second to catch on but the guy in the video is doing a fake American Accent. I kept poking through the site and in the forum, someone mentions that Doc Sniper is based in Australia. So there you go, the final red flag. And this red flag is so scary it has a picture of an even redder flag on it! The people behind this site are going out of their way to make it appear like they are based in the US (besides the accent, they seem to really drive home the fact that prizes are paid in US dollars.)

Like I said, I feel bad for coming down so hard on this site. Despite the weird fake accent, “Doc Sniper” even seems like a nice guy. So Doc, if you have a google alert set for your name and you see this, I recommend that you drop the entry fee idea ASAP. There are just way, way too many free video contests out there for the concept ever to catch on.

Butterfinger winner and weird voting weirdness

Beardy — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 09:50:20 +0000

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.

How to screw up a great idea for a video contest

Beardy — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 19:14:13 +0000

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

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

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

No, how about I eat YOUR face!?

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

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

Here’s how the winner is selected:

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

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

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

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

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