2012 January | Video Contest News - Featuring News about Video Contests!

Make Your Own: The Most Popular Crash the Super Bowl ad of 2012

Posted by Dan L. on January 30th, 2012

A funny thing happened the week that Doritos announced their five picks for the Crash the Super Bowl finals. As usual, a lot of media outlets and bloggers covered the contest and announced the start of the voting. But instead of featuring one of the winning commercials in their stories, a lot of writers chose to embed a video that didn’t actually make the final five. The ad is called “Make Your Own” and it is weirdly hilarious. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:

The reason why all these news outlets decided to feature the same, non-winning video is kind of a mystery. I remember that the official Crash the Super Bowl winners were already on youtube the day the results were announced so all those journalists could have just posted one of the official ads. At first I thought maybe someone, somewhere had falsely reported that Make Your Own had made the top five and other writers had picked up the false lead. But many of the articles I read actually lamented the fact that this spot didn’t make the finals. A piece on the Huffington Post went so that Make Your Own “snubbed” despite being “brilliant.”

The entry went on to be featured on the front page of Yahoo, CBS This Morning, NBCsports.com, Mashable and a ton of other websites. But things really got crazy when Make Your Own appeared on the front page of Reddit. After that the video just went fully viral. Today, Make Your Own has recived 2,378,000 views on youtube. Here are the current stats for the five videos that actually did win the contest this year:

Man’s Best Friend: 199,903 views

Hot Wild Girls: 199,966 views

Bird of Prey: 200,486 views

Dog Park: 128,736 views

Sling Baby: 112,536 views

Combined total views: 841,627

So Make Your Own has a view count almost three times larger than all the finalist ads combined! That is simply an amazing accomplishment and it’s certainly no fluke. This is an awesome submission and I think it would have made a kick-ass finalist. The hilarious dude playing the host is named Byron Brown. The concept is great but I think it’s the Brown’s performance that added just a bit of insane magic to this ad. The guys who actually made this entry are three friends from Austin TX; David Ward, Jack Dreesen and John Ramsey. This is their third year entering the Crash the Super Bowl contest and this time around they shot 3 (very good) submissions. You can seen all their various entries on Ward’s Oh wait a second….as I’m writing this I just noticed these guys created one of my favorite Doritos submissions of last year’s contest!

Back to Make Your Own; because the ad has become so popular, the producers have been asking fans to tweet at Doritos and ask them to “reconsider” their entry. Obviously it’s way too late for this ad to become a finalist but Doritos does love to pull surprises on Super Bowl night. I think it would be freaking amazing if they actually decided to run this spot; if not during the superbowl then maybe at some later date. After all, I think Doritos really owes these guys. Look at all the free advertising they got out of this one entry that didn’t win a dime! If Fritolay were paying one cent per view, they would owe the producers of Make Your Own more than $23,500! if you’d like to join the campaign to get Doritos to air this ad, click here:

Interview with Jon Friedman, Crash the Super Bowl finalist and creator of “Man’s Best Friend”

Posted by Dan L. on January 26th, 2012

Crash the Super Bowl finalist, Man's Best Friend

Though I’m not totally crazy about some of Doritos’ picks in this year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest, I will admit that all of the 2012 finalists are….ok. In fact, I think they all range from decent to awesome. Last week I posted an interview I did with one of the creators of the CTSB finalist ad, Hot Wild Girls. I mentioned that I thought his entry was one of the “awesome” ones and that I personally would be voting for it every day. But this year, Fritolay has made it so you can vote a bunch of times in a bunch of different ways! So I’ve been splitting my votes up between my two favorite ads; Hot Wild Girls and Man’s Best Friend.

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that “Man’s Best Friend” made the final five; not because it was bad but because it was….I don’t know…pleasant. It doesn’t assault your senses or your intelligence like some of the other finalists do. Sure, it has a gigantic dog in it but it’s smart and subtle and even a tiny bit dark. And the most amazing thing of all is that Man’s Best Friend was produced for only about 20 bucks! So it’s really exciting to learn that that low budget, “homemade” ads still have a shot in this contest.

Man’s Best Friend was created by a very nice dude from Virginia named Jon Friedman. Let’s get to know him, shall we?

VCN: So Jon, tell me about yourself. Who are you, where are you from?

JON: I am a freelance graphic designer, filmmaker, photographer, and musician from Virginia Beach, VA. Filmmaking has always been a passion of mine, as is music (I play piano, guitar, and drums.) In the graphics world, I am best known for my design of the “Conversations with God” books, which have sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. I was also fortunate enough to design Richard Bach’s last two books–he is the author of the classic books, “Jonathan Livingston Seagull” and “Illusions.”

VCN: Have you entered many video contests in the past?

JON: This is the first video contest I’ve entered.

VCN: What made you want to enter the CTSB contest?

JON: Well, I can think of a “million” reasons . . . But seriously, I’ve always thought it would be fun to make commercials. I’ve had a lot of ideas for them over the years, and while I was watching the commercials during last year’s Super Bowl I thought “why haven’t I entered this contest? This is something I’ve always wanted to do.” So I made a decision right then and there to enter CTSB the following year.

VCN: Where did the idea for Man’s Best Friend come from?

JON: The inspiration for “Man’s Best Friend” was triggered by a thought I had one night. It just occurred to me that in most ads involving an animal, the animal is always trying to acquire the product. So I thought to myself, “What if there was a twist on that, or it was the opposite of that?” After having that thought, the idea for “Man’s Best Friend” popped into my head. I think that’s how inspiration works in general. Something usually triggers it–a thought, a memory, a feeling. It can be anything.

VCN: How was the ad produced? What kind of camera did you use? Mind if I ask what your budget was?

JON: I shot the commercial for about $20 using a Canon 7D (which I already own). I had to buy some Doritos, a few props, and some dog treats. I originally thought the commercial would only cost $13 to produce, so I went way over budget. The most difficult part about the production was getting “Huff the Great Dane” to cooperate. He’s really just a gigantic 120+ pound baby who wants to run around, sit in people’s laps, and eat treats (he was also fond of shaking hands/paws with everyone). Huff knew the word “sit” but that’s about as far as his training went. It took some patience and cleverness to get what we needed.

Jon Friedman in Fritolay's secret underground PR bunker

VCN: How and when did you find out you made the finals?

JON: I don’t remember the exact date, but I received a phone call between the second and third week in December. I was told to keep quiet about it of course, so that was very difficult. It’s tough to walk around acting like everything’s normal when you get news like that!

VCN: This is kind of an insider question but I think some readers will really like to hear the answer. I’ve heard that actors in CTSB ads actually get paid SAG “scale” by Fritolay. Is that true?

JON: Yes, that’s true. I only had one on-screen actor in my commercial and he had to fill out a SAG contract.

VCN: So who are you taking to the Super Bowl?

JON: I’m taking my brother (and assistant director.) We often collaborate on creative projects and his help has been invaluable.

VCN: What are you doing to promote your entry?

JON: I don’t know that I’m doing anything too special–Facebook, local media, friends and family. I’m hoping that will be enough!

VCN: What has been the reaction of your family and friends to all this?

JON: They’ve been incredibly supportive and I think many of them are more excited than I am! I’m still in shock by the whole thing.

VCN: Here on VCN we’ve talked a lot about finalists who are able to win the CTSB more than once. Are you already planning your entry for 2013?

JON: I have so many ideas, and I’ll admit, I have thought about what I might do next year. If I don’t win the big prize this year (which I believe automatically disqualifies you from entering the contest again), I will probably enter it again next year. I had a lot of fun making this commercial, and even if I don’t win again, I know I’ll enjoy creating another one.

VCN: Any final thoughts you’d care to share?

JON: This whole experience has been amazing, and I still feel honored that “Man’s Best Friend” was chosen as a finalist. If people have any questions or comments they’d like to share with me, I can be contacted at

To vote for Man’s Best Friend, head here: www.mansbestfriendcommercial.com

Mofilm announces the winner of Chevy’s “Route 66″ Super Bowl commercial contest!

Posted by Dan L. on January 23rd, 2012

I love it when a great video wins a huge video contest! Last week, Mofilm announced the winner of Chevy’s international “Route 66″ Super Bowl commercial contest. The lucky filmmaker is Zack Borst of the god old USA. His commercial, “Happy Grad” has won him $25,000 and a trip to one of Mofilm’s Super Bowl parties. (They’re hosting parties in NY, LA, London and Mumbai!) The ad premiered last night during the Giants game but Happy Grad is also slated to air during SuperBowl 46.

WINNER: Prize: $25,000 + ad will air during the Super Bowl:

The more times I watch that ad the more I like it. I watched every finalist in this contest and I think the judges made the absolutely right choice. The actors in this spot really nailed their roles but the guy who really deserves the credit here is the writer. 60 seconds is a long time and the writer did an awesome job of topping each “gag” with an even funnier scenario. But he was also smart enough not to get too crazy. So to Zack and his crew I tip my beard and say “job well done.” And a job well done also goes out to the folks at Chevy and Mofilm. They ran a great contest and they picked a great winner. They easily could have blown this whole thing by letting “the public” pick the winner via an online vote but instead they decided to reward quality rather than popularity.

Now that I think about it, this commercial might actually have a decent shot of scoring well on the USA Today ad meter. It’s very likable and the comedy keeps building and building so I bet it will get a really high score. Wouldn’t it be funny if this consumer-made spot beat out all of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl ads??

Besides the top winner, Chevy gave out a ton of prizes to finalists in different regions of the globe. Actually, they wound up awarding even more prizes than promised. You can see the full list of winners on Mofilm’s Facebook page:

Jolly Rancher launches a video contest with no rules

Posted by Dan L. on January 20th, 2012

Yo, suck on these!

I try and follow what goes on over on Poptent.net pretty closely and over the last few months I’ve noticed an odd trend developing. It seems like more and more companies are running video “assignments” on Poptent that are sort of like the first phase of a larger video contest. The brand’s judges review all the Poptent submissions they receive and then they select several finalists. These finalists each get paid a few thousand dollars so the brand can post their videos on their websites or facebook pages for a few weeks. Once the finalist videos are posted, fans of the sponsor are invited to vote on their favorite “consumer made” ads and the video that gets the most votes wins a big, fat cash prize. So basically, companies are using Poptent so they can have their cake and eat it too. Since there is so much talent over on Poptent the brand is almost sure to get a ton of high-quality videos to choose from. (Bonus: they also don’t need to worry about non-winners posting their embarrassing, low-quality or offensive videos elsewhere on the web.) And then when they run the second phase of the contest they also get the social media exposure that comes with running an online vote. When all is said and done, the brand gets high-quality content, the are technically no “losers” so the fans don’t feel like the sponsor wasted their time, the sponsor’s website or facebook page gets tons of traffic and the directors that made the finals get at least a little cash for their trouble.

So it’s an interesting contest model. But it really only works if all phases of the contest are run well. The people at poptent obviously know what they’re doing so Phase One is guaranteed to run pretty smoothly. But these types of contest can easily crash and burn once the brand takes over and launches the contest phase. Case in point: Jolly Rancher’s Crunch ‘N Chew video contest. Late last year Hershey’s ran a Poptent video assignment for their new product, Crunch ‘N Chew Jolly Ranchers. In total they recived 189 videos which is a hell of a lot of submissions for a Poptent contest. On Monday the company announced that they had picked three finalists and each winning filmmaker would be getting $2,500. Then all three videos were posted on Jolly Rancher’s website for a month-long public vote. After 30 days, the video with the most votes will be purchased by Hershey’s for $7.500. And the winning filmmaker will be paid an additional $10,000 so they can produce two sequels to their first video. Hershey’s built a beautiful and simple webpage for the contest. You can see it and all three of the finalist videos by clicking on this image:

Click to check out the actual site

As you can see, one video has already managed to get over 3,000 votes in about 4 days! (Note: I’m writing this on Thursday night and the voting began on Monday morning.) The website says you can “vote once a day” but 3,245 votes in 4 days still equals 811 votes a day! That’s insane. Unless you’re an Internet superstar, you’re not going to be able to pull down numbers like that. So where are all those votes coming from? Well, I did a little test and if you want to vote multiple times in this contest all you have to do is clear your web browser’s history and refresh the page. Yep, it’s that easy. You can vote an infinite number of times that way.

So I’m going to guess that most of Video #2′s votes came from the same computer. Last night at 12:45AM I took a screenshot of the contest site and video #2 had 2,258 votes. Nine hours later I checked the site again and video #2 was up to 3,022 votes. So that video gained 764 votes overnight. Right now it is 9PM on thursday night. Since 10AM video #2 has only gained 223 votes. How does a video get 764 votes in the middle of the night but only 223 votes during the day? The only answer that makes any sense is that somebody stayed up all night voting for the same video over and over.

So these guys are cheaters and they should be disqualified immediately….right? Wrong. As far as I’m concerned anyone who casts multiple votes in this contest isn’t doing a damn thing wrong. If you cheat in a contest you should get disqualified. But “cheating” is BREAKING THE RULES. And guess what?

The Jolly Ranchers video contest has no rules.

Seriously. I’m not trying to be hyperbolic. There are literally no rules for this contest. The finalists have received no instructions from the sponsor and there are no rules on the contest site. And if there are no rules, how can you possibly cheat??? The website says that “You can vote once per day through February 15th!” But a single, random sentence isn’t legally binding. And the site certainly doesn’t say you “may not vote more than once per day.” How are contestants supposed to know what is ok and what isn’t if the sponsor doesn’t bother to tell them? If Hershey’s REALLY didn’t want people to vote more than once a day, why did they make it so easy to vote over and over?

So frankly, you can’t blame the repeat voters. The blame here belongs to whoever set up the voting phase of this contest. I’m simply amazed that someone built that site without realizing people could easily vote for themselves as many times as they wanted. I mean for Christsakes, $17,500 is at stake. It’s just human nature to want to do everything you can to win a prize like that. In fact, I don’t believe that no one realized this would happen. I’m going to guess that the poor web designer or IT guy who set up the contest site probably tried in vain to explain to the marketing folks running this project that it was going to devolve into a pointless vote-a-thon. I’ve been a tech and I spent years working with people in marketing. They seem to just have a biological aversion to hearing about technical problems. They pretty much just plug their ears and don’t want to acknowledge that something could go wrong. And if they have to choose between fixing an important technical issue or preserving their vision well…their vision wins out every time. So some marking person somewhere probably got the idea in their head that voting in this contest should be as simple as possible. And the vision of a one-click vote wound up trumping common sense.

But as I said, the voting period in this contest lasts until February 15th. That’s a long ways away. Hershey’s still has plenty of time to fix this. Because there are no rules the sponsor has no grounds to disqualify anyone. And really, they don’t even have cause to throw out any of the votes. But what they can do is post some freaking RULES. Then if people get caught breaking those rules the company will have grounds to disqualify them. But really, I think the smart thing to do at this point is just cancel the vote and pick a winner. And maybe they can give the non-winners a little extra cash to compensate for what they’ve had to go through this week. Seriously, this is one of the biggest video contest debacles I’ve ever seen and I would be freaking out if I had to endure a month-long, phony voting process. Right now this is a voting contest, not a video contest and that just sucks.

THURSDAY NIGHT UPDATE: I was going to wait until Friday morning to post this but I’ll publish it now. It’s now a little after 12:45AM and Video #2 is now up to 3734 votes. That means that video received 1,476 votes in the span of 24 hours. And 480 votes came in between the hours of 9PM and 1AM tonight. That’s twice the number of votes that video got all day on Thursday. Again, it’s not really possible to cheat in a contest where there are no rules but someone does seem to be voting for one of the entries over and over. So I guess we’ll just have to wait and see if anyone at Hershey’s cares enough to do anything about this.

MONDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: Unfortunately, Hershey’s hasn’t done a thing to try and stop this out of control contest. In fact, they have let things get much, much worse. Video #2 is now up to 10,134 votes. That means they got about 6,000 votes in 4 days. But now, the team who created Video #1 have also apparently decided to try and win this contest. Yesterday Video #1 had about 1,000 votes. Today they have 4,000 votes! As I keep saying, this contest has no rules so none of this can count as cheating. But I have to ask, what the hell does Hersey gain from running a joke of a contest like this?

TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE: Someone who called himself “Jolly Fan” left a comment accusing me of being the creator of the video that has the least number of votes in this contest. Just for the record, I am not. I didn’t even enter the Jolly Rancher assignment. Click the comments button to see “Jolly Fan’s” very un-friendly message. If you read between the lines it seems pretty obvious that Jolly Fan is actually the creator of Video #2.

Interview with Eric Delgado, co-creator of “Hot Wild Girls!”

Posted by Dan L. on January 17th, 2012

The hot, wild girls of "Hot Wild Girls"

When the Crash the Super Bowl finalists were announced on January 4th, I was pleasantly surprised to see that an ad entitled “Hot Wild Girls” had made the Top 5. Though the commercial was clever, topical and funny, it seemed like kind of an “outside the box” pick for doritos. It didn’t feature anyone getting brutalized and it wasn’t an over-produced, super-slick interpretation of “user generated content.” Instead it actually feels like real, authentic, UGC. It looks like it was shot by a few buddies in their living room because it was! And while it does feature dogs, at least they weren’t trying to trick a cruel human into dropping his Doritos on the ground. (I was positive we’d see another “dog gets his revenge” ad this year since there were so many copycats in the gallery)

So I was really glad to see this spot make the finals. And I was even more pleased when I found out “Hot Wild Girls” was made by a friend of VCN! The ad was written by a reader named Eric Delgado of San Antonio, TX. This is kind of insane but for the second time in about 8 months, Eric has a serious shot at winning a million dollars in a video contest. Over the summer, he and his friends made the finals in Gain’s “Smell Like a Million Bucks” competition. Ultimately his team didn’t win that contest but it seems like that brush with victory inspired them to “go big” when it came time to enter the biggest video contest of them all; Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest. And now, here’s out Q&A with Eric:

VCN: Tell me about the “Hot Wild Girls” team. Who are you guys?

ERIC: Nate Watkin, Brad Scott and Eric Delgado. We are ex-MMA fighters from Denver, CO and San Antonio, TX with a combined record of 1-27 (Brad got the W because the other dude tapped out upon entering the cage claiming that Brad was “too pretty to hit.”) Actually, Nate (my cousin) and Brad are the co-founders of their production company, Definite Productions, based in Denver. They’ve been working together for about four years producing commercials and videos. Last year, after Nate saw my Doritos entry for last year’s CTSB, we decided that we should work together on a future project since we all had a passion for comedic commercials.

The "Hot Wild Girls" team

VCN: Have you guys entered many video contests in the past?

ERIC: As a team, it’s our second contest.. We entered the Gain “Smell Like a Million Bucks” contest this past summer and we were actually a Top 25 finalist for the million dollar prize. Sadly, we didn’t win. That’s why we are pretty stoked about this Doritos opportunity. We realize that we’ve overcome some pretty ridiculous odds and we are extremely grateful to be in this position. Beardy’s Note: Here’s his team’s Gain entry. That’s Eric playing the role of the Repair Man:

VCN: What made you want to enter the CTSB contest?

ERIC: Honestly.. The opportunity to have our commercial/vision broadcasted to over 120 million people worldwide via the Super Bowl and the doors that’ll hopefully open as a result.. And of course the money. The money part should actually immediately follow the “Honestly..” mentioned above. What? Just sayin’.

VCN: Where did the idea for your entry come from?

ERIC: My cranium.. But knowing you Beardy, you probably want some details. I knew we needed something that was “trendy”. I also knew the power of animals in a commercial. I wrote and wrote for a few hours until finally I came up with dialogue that fulfilled the “twist” which, coincidentally, added the final ingredient… Gorgeous girls. I love those girls Beardy…I have no problem admitting that.

VCN: How was the ad produced? What kind of camera did you use? Mind if I ask what your budget was?

ERIC: Pre-production consisted of a week of casting talent, securing a location, and locating 3 Rottweiler’s (thank you Camp Bow Wow!) that could work together. We had a $2,000.00 budget that was used to pay the talent and makeup artist. A friend loaned us the RED One camera to shoot this ad. Nate and Brad chose this camera for it’s amazing picture quality and control of the final image. Since our intention was hopefully to have this ad broadcasted, we felt it was best fit to shoot at a higher resolution. We shot on-location during a 5-hour period and had to work around the shifting daylight. All footage was logged within an hour of completing the shoot, and then edited the next day with a final that night due to the deadline of the contest.

Whoa, nice camera!

VCN: So who gets to go to the Super Bowl?

ERIC: Nate and Brad. However, if the Cowboys we’re still in the playoffs, this would be a little different. Stupid Cowboys.

VCN: What are you doing to promote Hot Wild Girls?

ERIC: Media (News/newspaper/radio interviews).. Social media outlets (Facebook, Twitter, buzzfeed.com, etc.).. Website (hotwildgirls.tv).. Guerrilla marketing (fliers, posters, word of mouth, etc.)

VCN: What has been the reaction of your family and friends to all this?

ERIC: They have been AMAZINGLY supportive! They are extremely proud and happy for us.. And we couldn’t be happier to have them along for the ride. We love ya’ll!!! All that time spent in the past voting for a friend’s “Cutest Baby”, “Best Restaurant”, or “Prettiest Puppy” is finally paying off.

VCN: Here on VCN we’ve talked a lot about finalists who are able to win the CTSB more than once. Are you already planning your entry for 2013?

ERIC: Absolutely. However, I hope they just announce the winner(s) before December 21, 2012. If I’m going down, I’d at least like to know that our commercial WOULD have aired during Super Bowl XLVII.

VCN: Any final thoughts you’d care to share?

ERIC: Yes.. And this is for your frequent visitors (like us.. fellow “Joe Handycams”) Beardy. There will always be people out there that criticize your work. They’ll try and blast your creation on websites, forums, or maybe even the “comments” section under that YouTube video that you were proud to post even after a contest you didn’t win. Who cares.. Let them criticize while you continue to create. We are by no means experts in this art.. It simply makes us happy.

VCN: Well said!

I’ve been voting for “Hot Wild Girls” every day and I think you should be doing the same. It’s a cool, funny ad I’m hoping that if it airs during the Super Bowl and scores well on the ad meter, maybe next year Doritos will be inspired to make “outside of the box” picks when it comes time to choose their 2013 Crash the Super Bowl finalists. To vote for Hot Wild Girls, just click here!

A quick recap of the best video contest entries of 2011

Posted by Dan L. on January 14th, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Apparently I’m an “Inspiring Expert!”

Posted by Dan L. on January 12th, 2012

Way to go, dork!

I did it! I finally freaking did it! I accomplished one of my personal “video contest goals!” I won….an iPad!! Can you believe it? If you’re a frequent video contest-entrant you already know that like half the contests on the web offer iPads as prizes. I’m guessing it’s because they’re a coveted and cool piece of technology that costs under $1,000. Somehow I knew I’d eventually win one of these things and I finally did it! The iPad 2 is part of my prize for coming in first in my category in Randstad’s “Inspiring Experts” video contest. Oh….and the other part of my prize is $10,000.

Ok, technically I don’t get to pocket the whole ten grand. I get 5K and the iPad and another 5K goes to the charity of my choice. I’m excited about the cash but in a weird way, I’m more excited about the money I get to donate. Yo, I feel like friggin’ Bill and Melinda Gates over here! I try and donate to a few charities whenever I can but I can never afford to give more than a few hundred dollars a year. So having the power to donate $5,000 to any cause I want is a rush. I’ve been thinking about this for days and I’m having a really hard time picking just one organization. My friends on facebook sent me some really great suggestions but I wanted to really do something huge with the money. I wanted to….you know….alleviate some human suffering with the cash.

This is totally amazing! I won first place in a video contest that was run by a company named Randstad and as part of my prize, the sponsor will donate $5,000 to the charity of my choice. Yo, I feel like friggin’ Bill and Melinda Gates over here! I try and donate to a few charities whenever I can but I can never afford to give more than a few hundred dollars a year. So having the power to donate $5,000 to any cause I want is a rush. I’ve been thinking about this for days and I’m having a really hard time picking just one organization. My friends on facebook sent me some really great suggestions but I wanted to really do something huge with the money. I wanted to….you know….alleviate some human suffering with the cash.

So I’ve decided to donate the whole nut to a group called Charity: Water. The group’s mission? “To bring clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations.” Water is the most basic of human needs. If you don’t have water, nothing else matters. There are a lot of water-related charities but one thing really makes Charity: Water special. Here’s a quote from their website:

When we started charity: water, we made a bold promise to the general public — 100% of all their donations would always go directly to water project costs. Even the credit card fees from your donation today are taken care of, so a true 100% goes to people in need. Private donors, foundations and sponsors cover our operating costs; everything from staff salaries to basic office systems to office rent and supplies. This allows us to continue using 100% of public donations for water projects.

Is that an ingenious idea or what? I think a lot of people are hesitant to donate to charities because they figure most of the money will be spent on salaries and other bureaucratic stuff. So finding a few millionaires to cover all the operating costs will make average joes like me feel like this group delivers the biggest bang for our charitable buck.

The thing that really sealed the deal for me though is that a donation of $20 gives one person in the developing world access to clean water. And a single donation of $5,000 can fund an entire, large-scale water project for an entire village! It takes 18 months to complete one of these big projects but apparently, people who fund an entire well get updates and photos of of how the project is progressing. I haven’t really gotten into the final details of this with Randstad yet but hopefully they’ll be able to keep me in the loop as far as the updates go.

Randstad ran an amazing contest and they gave out a ton of prizes. A bunch of other winners also get to send money to charity. You can see all of the winning videos here: http://www.inspiringexperts.com/videogallery Rather than post my own entry, I thought I’d instead use this space to post a video or two explaining how Charity: Water works. They’re a really awesome organization and there are a lot of thirsty people in the word. So if you ever win a nice, big, fat contest prize and want to share the wealth, this is a very worthy cause:

More info at http://www.charitywater.org

Tongal’s ACE Hardware Winners

Posted by Dan L. on January 10th, 2012

If you’ve noticed all the ads we’ve been running for Tongal.com you already know that they’ve been running some huge contests for some major-league companies lately. One of their bigger clients is ACE Hardware and yesterday Tongal announced the winner of ACE’s “Customer Service Video Project.” The goal in this contest was to shoot a video about how helpful ACE employees can be. Here’s the spot that came out on top:

First Place Winner. Prize: $10,000:

Pretty good huh? Looks really professional too. I was keeping an eye on this contest because I actually entered this one myself. I collaborated with my long-distance contest buddy HappyJoel Levinson; he created a song and I shot and edited a video for it. We did manage to win a prize; $500. But this was one of those times when I kind of knew I had missed the mark. I think the video was cute but it was lacking pizazz. You can’t tell from the video but the outside stuff was shot in the freezing rain. But at least the shoot was a good excuse to try out my new camera gear. I just bought an HVX200 last month and I’m really happy with it. Now that I’m using a real video camera again I realize just how inhibiting DSLRs can be. With the HVX I don’t need to worry about ISO numbers or syncing up audio in post or stuff going out of focus if I move the camera a foot closer to the subject. I’m excited to shoot a lot more entries this year now that I don’t have to worry so much about the tech side of things. Basically I’ll be able to just point and shoot. Anywho, if you’d like to see the entry Joel and I did (or the rest of the winning spots) head here: http://tongal.com/project/aceservice