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: