Other than Dorito’s Crash the Super Bowl contest, Taxslayer.com’s annual video contest may be the longest running video contest on the web. It was started way, way back in the pre-HD dark ages of 2008. That first installment of the contest was run before my time so I don’t really know how smoothly it went. But I do know that one submitted commercial won $25,000 and even aired on TV during the 2009 tax season. But after that first year, Taxslayer has managed to run one terrible contest after another. The ineptitude of the contest organizers and their lack of respect for their contestants is just ridiculous. For the third year in a row, Taxslayer allowed filmmakers to waste time and money by changing the contest weeks after it was launched. (I don’t want to clog up this post with old news so if you’d like to read about how Taxslayer screwed up their 2009 and 2010 video contests, click the comment button for a quick explanation) I don’t know if account-types just don’t understand how to communicate with creative-types but I think it’s more likely Taxslayer just doesn’t give a shit about the people who enter their contests.
The 2010 Taxslayer contest was such a disaster (they retroactively canceled the contest 3 weeks after the deadline passed so they wouldn’t have to pay out any prizes) that I was totally flabbergasted when I learned that they were going to try and and run a new version of the contest for 2011. For the first time, Taxslayer abandoned the “make our next TV commercial” idea and replaced it with a good, old-fashioned video contest. The requirements were simple; contestants had to make a video that demonstrated “The Craziest of Funniest way you’ve ever done your taxes.” And to make things even simpler, Taxslayer even said they were NOT looking for commercials for their company. They just wanted funny videos. In fact, the videos only needed to mention “Taxslayer” once. So again, it really seemed like they did NOT want a standard commercial-style video.
Because Taxslayer screwed their contestants so badly last year I decided to stay far away from this year’s version. I had pretty much forgotten about the contest when one day about 6 weeks ago I got 3 e-mails in one afternoon from filmmakers who had just recived strange e-mails from Taxslayer. The letters they got notified them that their entries (and a lot of other entries) were being pulled from the contest. Here’s a copy of the letter the rejected filmmakers got:
So Taxslayer bounced the entries that didn't meet the established guidelines. Or at least that's what they said. What really happened is that the people who set up this contest screwed up and didn't communicate to contestants what they actually wanted. Here's a screen grab that a contestant sent to me of the original rules:
In case you can’t read that tiny, fuzzy type, the rules say that contestants should:
“Submit a video demonstrating the craziest or funniest way you’ve done your taxes. Entries should reference Taxslayer at least once.”
But compare that to this line from the letter that the rejected filmmakers received:
“We would like a short video demonstrating the craziest or funniest way you’ve done your taxes WITH TAXSLAYER.COM.”
Catch the difference? In the original rules, Taxslayer forgot to mention the “with Taxslayer.com” part. So naturally, filmmakers shot videos that showed a crazy way they had done their taxes WITHOUT taxslayer. I know that’s what I would have done. It seemed like the whole point of the contest was to show how crazy it is to do your taxes without Taxslayer.
Because the folks at Taxslayer were simply to incompetent too articulate exactly what kind of videos they wanted, they decided to punish filmmakers for not being able to read their minds. They rejected all the entries that weren’t about Taxslayer and told contestants they could re-edit their entries to comply with the (new) guidelines. To be fair, Taxslayer did tell filmmakers that they could re-submit their videos without making any changes but come on….there was no way any of those entries ever had a shot at winning.
Here’s the video that Taxslayer ultimately selected as this year’s winner:
2011 Taxslayer winner. Prize: $10,000:
That’s actually a pretty good video. I like it and it perfectly fits the contest “guidelines.” And it’s even kind of topical, no? Taxslayer just announced the winner on May 5th so I can’t help but wonder if the recent news about the Seal team that took out Osama Bin Laden influenced the judges decisions.
At this point I’d post a link to the contest page and encourage you to check out the other entries…but I can’t. Taxslayer pulled the entire contest off the web almost as soon as the winner was announced. You can’t even watch the winning video on any of taxslayer’s sites. It’s only by luck that I happened to find a version of the winning commercial on vimeo. And yes…the video that won is a commercial. For all of Taxslayer’s talk about how they didn’t want an “ad” they wound up picking a video that looks a whole lot like a TV commercial. It’s 30 seconds long, it ends with a Taxslayer.com title card and even demonstrates that you can do your taxes on taxslayer from your Ipad.
When Taxslayer canceled last year’s video contest I thought for sure they wouldn’t have the balls to try and run it again this year. So will Taxslayer bring the contest back in 2012? Oh, I’m sure they will. But if they do, take my advice; don’t waste your time, money and talent entering. If you do enter I’m sure you’ll only wind up getting screwed over in some new, crazy way.
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Ok, so here’s the story of the 2009 and 2010 Taxslayer video contests:
When Taxslayer launched the second installment of their contest in 2009 they again asked filmmakers to make their next TV commercial. But after the deadline passed, Taxslayer decided to throw the whole “make our next TV commercial” concept out the window. Instead of picking a TV quality winner (like they did the year before) they picked several non-TV-quality entries and then hired a production company to reshoot them. The ads they picked were pretty funny but the move angered a lot of the pros that entered. I remember some really elaborate, high-quality entries from that contest. A lot of people spent tons of money renting horses and suits of armor and HD cameras because Taxslayer had led them to believe that production quality mattered and that only professional looking ads had a shot at winning.
When Taxslayer tried again in 2010 it seemed like they had learned their lesson from from the 2009 contest. They decided to forget about asking for TV-quality ads and just asked for for funny ideas that they could reshoot. But Taxslayer got greedy. They lowered the prize amounts and asked for TWO videos per entry. Filmmakers had to create both 30 second and 15 second versions of their ad. That’s an incredibly hard thing to do, even for professional ad firms. Taxlsayer also asked for some really crazy stuff like copies of the entries on Betacam SP tapes. (Do you know anyone with access to a $10,000 Betacam deck?) So most people decided the amount of work wasn’t worth the potential reward.
I myself decided to enter the 2010 contest because Taxslayer kept sending me e-mails basically begging for entries. I responded to one of these e-mails by saying “I see in the rules that Taxslayer may cancel the contest if they don’t receive more than X number of submissions….I don’t want to waste my time making entries for a contest that might be canceled….so is there any chance the contest will be canceled due to lack of entries?”
The head of the contest, Daniel Eubanks of Taxslayer.com wrote me back and assured me that wouldn’t happen. So I shot 2 entries. And guess what happened? Weeks after the deadline passed Taxslayer decided that they didn’t like any of the submissions so the retroactively canceled the contest due to lack of entries! They did get about 20 submissions which seems like plenty to me. So I and all of the other contestants were furious that Taxslayer lied to us and allowed us to waste time and money shooting videos for a contest that they probably knew was going to wind up being canceled.
that was such a frustrating contest last year, I didn’t touch it this year.