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

Trailer for Keanu Reeves’ doc about digital filmmaking

Posted by Dan L. on February 27th, 2012

This isn’t exactly “video contest news” but it certainly is interesting. If you enter video contests it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re shooting with a DSLR or a digital HD camera. In the last few years, the picture quality of consumer-grade and pro-sumer grade video equipment has skyrocketed while the price for this kind of gear has plummeted. Consequently, first-time directors are now shooting and editing commercials for no money that are good enough for broadcast. Just look at the Crash the Super Bowl finalist “.” The guy who made that ad shot it with a DSLR for about 20 bucks. But it’s now airing on national TV and most viewers would never guess the spot was created with a consumer-grade camera.

So the world of independent filmmaking has changed a whole hell of a lot in just the last few years. I figured it would take a generation for Hollywood to switch from film to digital but it seems like one big name director after another is ditching celluloid. I don’t know where Keanu Reeves stands on the issue of Film vs. Digital but apparently he produced an entire documentary on the subject entitled “.” The trailer looks really cool and I’m looking forward to the seeing the whole film. The doc premiered at the Berlin International film festival this month and hopefully it will eventually make it’s way to a theater near me.

It looks like pretty much every famous hollywood director alive appears in this doc. Guess a lot of people are passionate about this issue. Personally, I think film can suck my balls. It’s a medium for the rich and the elite. After 100 years, “making movies” will soon be an art form that every person on Earth can try for themselves.

Hey, here’s a incredibly obscure fact for you: Two of the five finalists in the very first installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest ( and ) were actually shot on film. Contestants would have shot their entries way back in the fall of 2006 and at the time, film was still one of the only ways an amateur could crate a professional looking, TV-quality ad. Six years later and Doritos is still airing Mouse Trap and you know what? It still looks great. On the other hand, the 2007 finalists that were shot on HD don’t really hold up very well. Five years from now we’ll probably look back at the 2012 finalists that were shot with RED cameras and 7Ds and think they look like crap compared to the footage that you can get with the consumer grade digital video cameras of 2017.

Happy #FollowFriday

Posted by Dan L. on February 24th, 2012

Everyone loves a follower!

If you’re reading this post, chances are that you’re either a filmmaker or a Russian spammer who is going to try and leave a comment about where people can get a Microsoft Zune for cheap. Either way, you probably have a twitter account that you use for online networking. It took me a long time to get into Twitter but I now hate it a lot less than I used to. Turns out twitter can actually be a helpful tool if you’re into video contests. For example, I’ve learned that if you want to get a response from a contest sponsor, sometimes you should try sending them an @ message on twitter. Most companies monitor their accounts closely and apparently they actively try to make it look like they’re friendly, responsive and easy to deal with. Last summer I spent months and months trying to get one company to pay me a big contest prize they owed me. I sent tons of e-mails and my contact just kept giving me the run around. But then I sent a tweet asking why I hadn’t been paid my prize yet and BAM….the response was immediate. My contact was unhappy that I made my “problem” public but it finally forced them to take care of the issue.

But of course, you can use Twitter for nice things too. I follow a bunch of video contest companies on twitter and you know what? You should too. They tweet out a lot of good info. Case in point: I’m shooting an entry for Mofilm’s Walmart competition this weekend and just yesterday Mofilm tweeted that new video assets had been added to the project. I’ll use one of those clips for sure in my commercial and I wouldn’t have even know they were available if it wasn’t for twitter.

So for the first time ever, I thought I’d take part in the weekly twitter tradition known as #FollowFriday. It’s where users tweet out suggestions of who to follow. So here are my #FollowFriday suggestions:

ONLINEVIDEOCONTESTS.COM:

FILMTHENEXT.COM:

MOFILM:

POPTENT:

TONGAL:

ZOOPPA:

And of course, if you don’t already follow VCN on Twitter, you should add us too. And because I’m feeling saucy today I’ll even follow back any new followers VCN gets this weekend. Yarg…sentences like that are one of the reasons twitter still annoys me a little.

VCN:

Fantastic tutorial about Cinematic Camera Movement

Posted by Dan L. on February 21st, 2012

I’m sure I’ve said this here before but if you’re looking for tutorials, tips and information about low budget, DIY filmmaking, the best place to go on the web is IndyMogul.com. Oh but wait, I guess that’s sort of no longer true. It looks like Indy Mogul’s website isn’t really being updated any more. I’m guessing the IM team has turned their attention to and youtube. Fortunately, Indy Mogul’s is still being updated a few times a week and it’s full of invaluable info.

Anyways, today I saw an IM video that was so good I had to post it. It’s a tutorial about how you can use doly shots and other methods of camera movement to make your footage feel more cinematic. Rather than blab on for 300 words about how a dolly can add production value to your low budget videos and how they can make your work look more commercial, I’m going to just assume you know all that and get right to the video.

The tutorial is great because it explains how and when you might want to use one of these things. But the best part of the video comes at the end. A homemade dolly just isn’t going to be as smooth as a professionally made one. So the director explains how you can use After Effects to totally even out your dolly shots. The method is so freaking effective that you can basically just shoot something hand held and then stabilize the footage so that it looks like it was shot with a dolly. Watch and learn!

Here’s the that explains how to build the dolly that’s featured in this video. But I’m not actually crazy about that design. I think it’s overkill. That dolly includes a seat for the camera operator and I think having a heavy, living. moving person on a cheap, home made dolly isn’t a great idea. If you plan to use After Effects to stabilize your footage, you can get away with using something pretty simple. For instance, for a incredibly easy, $15 dollar dolly. It won’t support a big ass professional camera but it would be perfect for your little DSLR.

How to apply for one of MOFILM’s production grants

Posted by Guest Author on February 17th, 2012

Beardy’s Note: Today I’m happy to bring you folks a very special guest post that was written by a longtime friend of VCN; MOFILM’s director of social media, Kerry Gaffney. Kerry’s going to let you you know how you can apply with Mofilm to get cash to pay for your Mofilm video contest entries. It sort of sounds to good to be true but it’s legit; Mofilm is now paying out production grants to filmmakers left and right. Need some money to hire actors or rent a nicer camera or build some outrageous prop or buy a new piece of editing software? Mofilm wants to help make any and all of that happen. Here’s how you can get a slice of their sweet, production grant pie:

______________________________

There are lots of reasons why people like to enter video contests. And there are also lots of reasons why they don’t enter; usually it’s because they run out of time or because they don’t have the money to do their idea justice. MOFILM can’t help with the time element but we’re now doing our best to help with the money side with the introduction of Production Grants.

When we were running the Chevrolet Super Bowl contest last year, we really encouraged filmmakers to make their entries as big and bold as possible. The winning spot had the chance of being aired during the telecast of the Super Bowl LXVI. So we wanted to make sure that all the entries were great enough to stand shoulder to shoulder with, or be even better than, the big agency ads. That’s why we launched the MOFILM Production Grant program. Open to any filmmaker from anywhere around the world, all they had to do was apply; sharing their concepts and giving as much supporting material as they felt like. We gave out over $100,000 last fall and the scheme was so successful we decided to include production grants for as many of our contests as we possible could.

So far in 2012 we’ve approved over $140,000 in grants for 14 different contests to over 100 filmmakers. That’s not a typo, just in January we’ve approved almost $150,000. That’s in addition to the $300,000 in prizes across our Sydney, Barcelona and Texas contests.

So how does it work? It’s easy; go check out the open contests on MOFILM and pick a brand. If there are production grants available there will be a link to the application form right from that page. You need to be quick though, the grants go fast so the sooner you get your application in the better.

For the application we want to know who you are, what your concept is, how much money you’d like (there’s usually a guide as to what’s available on the form) and what you plan to spend the money on. A member of the MOFILM team will then review the applications and decides who gets what. Anyone can apply but your odds of being successful are increased if you have a great idea (natch), have some supporting material like a script or a storyboard, and examples of previous work either with MOFILM or in a link to your showreel on your MOFILM profile.

Once you’ve been told you’ve been successful, you’ll be sent an approval form to fill in and sign. Then you can get on and create. You can bounce ideas off the account manager or ask for advice and feedback. Although, any filmmaker entering one of our contests can do that by asking on or with an email to . Once you’re ready, and before the deadline, upload your video and all the relevant release forms. One of the MOFILM team will then be in touch to ask for receipts and bank details. Once we have that we’re good to make payment and we’ll reimburse your approved expenses. After that, all you have to do is wait to find out if you won!!

—- Guest Post by Kerry Gaffney. Follow Kerry on Twitter —-

Do former finalists have an unfair advantage in Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest?

Posted by Dan L. on February 14th, 2012

See you next fall?

Now that the Super Bowl is over and the final ad meter results are in, the 2011/2012 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest is officially over. So you know what that means right? It’s time to start thinking about next year’s contest! No seriously…I’m not joking. This year, Doritos gets to boast that they won both of USA Today’s ad meter polls. won the real ad meter and won the online vote. So both the Sling Baby team and the Man’s Best Friend team will be receiving million dollar bonuses. Yeah, ok sure….Sling Baby only won the online poll because the producers of that spot got a small army of people to give bad scores to all the other ads in the competition. But that little fact kind of makes their “win” sound a lot less impressive. So I’m going to guess Fritolay is just going to pretend that stuff didn’t happen and focus on the double victory. And I think that double ad meter victory pretty much guarantees that the Crash will be back this fall.

So for VCN’s final CTSB post of the season, I thought I should revisit a topic that I hope will get a lot of discussion this summer at Fritolay HQ. About three weeks ago I got to do something that thousands of disappointed video contest filmmakers across the country would probably love to do; I got to talk to some of the judges of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest and ask them about how they select their top five finalists every year. Though I had a million random questions I wanted to ask, our conference call was set up to address just one specific issue: Do former Crash the Super Bowl finalists have an unfair advantage in Doritos’ annual commercial contest?

I’ll go over conversation below but first, here’s why we discussed that particular topic: It turns out that even though Doritos received 6,100 entries last fall, three of the five 2012 finalists had co-written, directed or produced commercials that had made the finals in a previous installment of the contest. One winning ad was actually shot by two 2011 finalists that met at the SuperBowl last year and decided to join forces this time around. Another 2012 finalist, Kevin T. Willson has now seen his work make the finals three years in a row. But what was really amazing is that three winning entries, Dog Park, Bird of Prey and Sling Baby were created by a group of friends that attend the same church in Hollywood. So even though the odds of making the finals were 1 in 1,220, three people who all knew each other and who all had co-created ads that had won this contest in the past managed to win again this year.

And 2012 was by no means a fluke. A surprising number of people have made the finals more than once. In fact, there has been at least one repeat finalist EVERY YEAR for the past four years. Now to be fair, some of the past repeat finalists, without question, made the best entries EVER submitted to the contest. (Specifically I’m thinking of “” and “.”) But in the last two years, things have been getting kind of ridiculous. For instance, there is no question that one 2012 finalist spot, wouldn’t even exist if the director and the producer hadn’t met at the Super Bowl last year. That team won again this year because they made a good entry….but they were able to make that entry BECAUSE they won the contest last year. So now more than ever it feels like the Crash the Super Bowl contest was become an insider’s game where the same group of people all get to take turns being finalists.

After the 2012 results were announced in January I blogged about the repeat winners and explained why I thought former finalists might have an edge over the rest of the people who enter the Crash. Here’s a quick rundown of the reasons I listed:

1. PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE JUDGES: When you win the Crash the Super Bowl contest you get to spend several days at the Super Bowl hanging out and partying with the people who actually run the contest. The contest judges get to know the finalists personally and it’s just natural that everyone would get friendly with each other. In my article I theorized that some finalists and some judges may even stay in touch after the game. (Turns out I was correct) I don’t think anyone has ever won this contest because they were pals with one of the judges. But being friends with the people who pick the winners certainly can’t hurt.

2. INSIDE INFORMATION: I suspect that finalists may benefit from talking to the reps from fritolay about the contest during the Super Bowl trip or later in the year if they keep in touch. For instance, I have a feeling that former finalists probably find out (either via hints or direct info) that the CTSB contest will return before that news is made public. If my hunch is correct, past winners basically get a head start over everyone else who enters the contest.

3. MONEY: When you make the Doritos finals you win $25,000. Many finalists turn around and spend a huge chunk of that money on a new entry the following year. For example, the 2012 finalist ad Sling Baby cost about $2,700 to produce and it was made by a director who had already made the finals twice before. So it was easily one of the most expensive commercials submitted to the contest last fall. It’s just not possible (or wise) for Doritos to pick commercials that look crappy so I think people should absolutely be free to spend thousands of dollars on their submissions if they want. However, few people spend that kind of money because it’s just too much of a gamble. But I think former finalists are willing to spend big bucks on their submissions (and I consider anything over $500 to be “big bucks”) because they’re gambling with “the house’s” money.

4. SPECIAL ACCESS TO RESOURCES AND TALENT: Lots of producers have access to money and talent but CTSB winners can get access to those things because of their previous win. This contest can open doors for the people who win it. What actor, crew person or investor wouldn’t want to team up with some who has already made the finals and had their Doritos commercial air on TV? You can’t blame a contestant for taking advantage of opportunities that come to them because they have won the Crash before. But it’s just one more thing that makes the process easier for them. On top of that, as we learned this year, finalists are actually allowed to team up with other former finalists and pool their resources and talent. Now that someone has actually pulled this off, I think we’re going to see more cases this fall where former finalists collaborate and form their own little Super Teams.

The article I posted on January 4th was entitled A Crash the Super Bowl Bummer: Three of the five 2012 finalists were made by past winners and you can read the whole thing by clicking that link. The story quickly became VCN’s most popular post ever and it looks like it was read about 10,000 times (for this site that’s an insane figure.) After it was up for a while, I thought it would only be fair to get Fritolay’s side of the story. So one of their PR reps was good enough to set up a conference call so I could talk directly to two of the people in charge of the Crash the Super Bowl contest; Brian Kuechenmeister who is the head of Public relations for all of Frito-Lay and Jeff Klein who is a senior marketing director for Doritos.

If I were a better writer I would weave their answers into an in depth article about fairness in the Crash the Super Bowl contest. But this is a blog, not Newsweek so I’m just going to hit you with some bullet points. Here’s what I learned from talking to Kuechenmeister and Klein of FritoLay:

1. The two reps were adamant about one point in particular. They said that personal relationships with the judges will not help a finalist make the finals again. They said the official judging criteria listed in the rules are the ONLY thing that matter. Here’s how the rules say entries are score:

1. Originality and Creativity – 40%
2. Adherence to Creative Assignment – 30%
3. Overall Appeal – 30%

2. Some of the people who judge the contest do get to know the finalists during the trip to the Super Bowl. Some judges and some finalists do become friendly and they do stay in touch after the game. One specific example that I was given was that former finalists sometimes update the Doritos team about new projects they are working on. However, the reps also said that they also stay in touch with filmmakers they’ve met who have never won the contest.

3. Former finalists do not get to jump the line. By that I mean that former finalists do not get to send their new entries directly to the judges. I was told that former finalists have to go through the same judging process as everyone else.

4. This one surprised me: The judges know the name of the person who submitted each entry before the final decisions are made. I was told that as long as a former finalist enters under their own name, the judges will know which entry is theirs. This means that the judges know that former finalists have a shot at winning again when they start making their final picks. It also means that there is no surprise moment when the judges realize they just picked the same person’s video for the second or third year in a row. I asked if being a former finalist helped or hurt a person’s chances of winning again. The reps said that issue isn’t a factor during the judging.

5. The rules state that employees or contractors of Fritolay are not eligible to enter the contest if they worked or were contracted by Fritolay in the last 12 months. Even though Doritos purchases all of the winning commercials and airs them for years, finalists are exempt from this rule since the judges consider them to be “contest winners.” So if you are a finalist this year you can be a finalist again next year.

6. EVERYONE who has ever won the Crash the Super Bowl contest is eligible to win again. Even the Herbert Brothers who won the million dollar grand prize can enter again if they want. A former finalist is only ineligible if they were hired by Fritolay to promote the contest that year.

7. I asked if the reps thought that repeat finalists had a financial advantage because they could reinvest their prize money into future entries. They said some people choose to spend a more money on their submissions than other people and that’s up to individual contestants.

That’s a hell of a lot of info and I REALLY appreciate that the reps were so open about the whole process. But I think this contest looks very different to people who are on the “inside.” So I’d like to address a few points from the perspective of any outsider:

First, on the topic of money: If you can get your hands on the right equipment and if you’re willing to spend a few thousand dollars on your submission you’re going to be a serious contender in this contest. And as I’ve said, I think that is totally fair. The winning ads are going to air on millions of HD TVs on Super Bowl sunday! You can’t run an ugly-looking commercial if you want to have a shot of scoring well on the ad meter. During my conversation with the reps from Fritolay, I realized that Doritos NEEDS filmmakers that are willing to make expensive, professional-looking entries. And every year some of the slickest submissions are made by former finalists. I think this is one reason finalists are allowed to enter again the year after they win. It’s like an insurance policy that guarantees that Doritos will always get at least a few tv-quality entries from past winners. If finalists were required to take a year off after winning then Doritos would miss out on those “safe bet” entries.

Now, on the topic of personal relationships with the judges: The thing that bothers me most here is the fact that the judges allow themselves to to become friends with the finalists. And I don’t mean “friendly.” Judges and finalists apparently become actual friends. If you spend a few days with a group of people on a SuperBowl trip you’re just going to naturally bond with them. But as I said, Kuechenmeister and Klein insisted that the judges aren’t picking people for the finals because they all partied together last year. And I believe them 100%. The Crash is a multi-million dollar ad campaign. It would be ludicrous to pick Doritos’ Super Bowl commercial just because the guy who directed it is an awesome dude.

However….the judges in this contest are human beings. Human beings have feelings and human beings have brains that work on a lot of levels. Imagine that you’re a judge in this contest and you’ve got to decide between two commercials. One was made by Potential finalist A and the other was made by Potential Finalist B. Potential finalist A is a total stranger. Potential Finalist B was a finalist in the contest last year. You know that finalist’s name, you’ve met him, you’ve met his girlfriend. You went to parties and concerts and bars with both of them. You watched the Super Bowl from a private skybox together. You got to see the excitement in this guy’s eyes as he waited to see if his commercial was going air during the game. And maybe you got to see the defeat in his eyes when he learned his ad didn’t air or that he didn’t win one of the bonus prizes. Then after the game you stayed in touch. Maybe you even became friends on facebook. If you did, you would get to hear about every up and down in that person’s life. You would know if they were struggling or if they got a great job thanks to the contest. If they didn’t win one of the big prizes you would know if it was their dream to make the finals again and win the million dollars. Maybe you would even offer them encouragement. Maybe part of you looked forward to seeing what Potential Finalist B was going to do this time around.

So…in this scenario, who would you rather be? Potential finalist A or Potential finalist B? Even if the judges TRY to remain totally objective, isn’t it unfair to the other 6,000 contestants that the judges even HAVE TO try to be objective? Wouldn’t it be more fair if they just WERE objective?

I feel like kind of a jerk for even saying this but just now, on a whim I signed into facebook and checked to see if Mr. Kuechenmeister had a profile. He did and it’s set to “public.” I looked at his list of friends and it looks like he is Facebook friends with almost every Crash the Super Bowl finalist from the last 3 years. (He only has about 500 friends so he’s not a public figure or anything that people can just friend out of the blue.) This is relevant for some very important reasons. Brian Kuechenmeister is the head of Public relations for Frito-Lay and he’s one of the top decision-makers in the Crash the Super Bowl contest. I would be willing to bet that no video can even make the finals without his approval. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of people who enter this contest every year will know the names of any of the judges. But if you do know who the judges are, and if are able to stay in contact with them between contests you’re basically setting yourself up to be a front runner next time around.

For example, the reps told me that former finalists don’t send their new entries directly to any of the judges. But when a filmmaker enters the Crash the Super Bowl contest, what’s the first thing he or she does when his or her entry appears in the video gallery? They post the link to their submission on facebook, of course. I checked and that’s what three-time Crash the Super Bowl finalist Kevin Willson did on November 20th last year. Willson is facebook friends with both Kuechenmeister and Klein. Which means that one day before the contest deadline, Fritolay’s head of Public relations and the Senior marketing director for Doritos would have seen this in their facebook feed:

Did Willson do anything wrong here? Hell, no. The guy should be able to post his entries on his facebook page like everyone else. I just think that it’s inappropriate that some of the judges in this contest have chosen to follow the efforts of a handful of contestants. As I’ve said, Doritos received 6,100 Crash the Super Bowl entries this year. It would take one person about 50 hours to watch every, single submission. I’d be amazed if the big wigs at Fritolay watched more than a few hundred entries. They probably only watch the very best submissions. Willson didn’t need to worry about his entry making it past round after round of judging. If just one of the contest judges saw that link on Facebook they would have probably though something like “Well, Kevin’s a contender again this year.” Of course, that would only happen if the entry was any good. But lots of good entries get snubbed every year. If two filmmakers each make excellent submissions and one has to survive multiple rounds of judging before it gets to the head of PR for Fritolay and another can get his entry in front of that person before the submission period is even over, is that really a fair process?

And I think I can offer one more piece of evidence that supports my theory that the people who run this contest just get a little to close to some to the winners. All last month, Doritos had been airing this commercial to encourage viewers to vote in the Crash the Super Bowl contest:

The ad features clips of several entries that have won the contest over the years. But it also includes shots of a few non-winning submissions. I thought the commercial was a fantastic idea when I first saw it. It was awesome of Doritos to showcase the weird and wonderful work of so many past contestants. Sure, it would be incredible to make the finals but just having even a few seconds of your goofy Doritos entry air on TV would be pretty sweet. Plus, it’s fun for viewers to see clips of strange Doritos commercials they’ve never seen before.

But there was one shot in the commercial that seemed familiar to me. I recognized one of the clips but I couldn’t remember why. It took me a while but it finally hit me. I was even able to find the complete submission online:

That entry is entitled “ChainSaw” and it was shot for the 2010/2011 installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest. It didn’t make the finals. But it was directed by Kevin T. Willson and produced by Heather Kasprzak. Willson has directed ads that made the CTSB finals for the last three years. And Kasprzak has produced ads that have made the finals for the last two years. Kasprzak actually produced Willson’s 2010-11 entry. Between them, Willson and Kasprzak have created FOUR COMMERCIALS that have made the Crash the Super Bowl finals.

So it’s obvious why “Chainsaw” appears in that promo. It was convenient. In the last two years, the Crash the Super Bowl contest has probably received 10,000 entries. But the folks at Doritos knew the producers of “Chainsaw” personally. They didn’t have to dig up their contact info. They could just call them and ask for permission to use that clip. And a post-production intern didn’t have to spend weeks searching for a non-winning entry that had something to do with “love.” I’m sure the judges just remembered that Willson & Kasprzak had shot a high-quality entry that would fit their concept. Heck…maybe this ad even inspired their concept. Oh and as a bonus, Doritos didn’t even have to pay to use the clip. I actually asked and Willson and Kasprzak weren’t compensated for the use of their footage. I’m guessing that’s because if they got paid they would be considered “contractors” and they would not be eligible to enter the contest again next year.

So to someone on the “outside” it looks like Doritos has a few “go-to” filmmakers that they just seem to like to work with every year. Do I think that anyone at Fritolay is actively conspiring to pick the same winners in this contest over and over? Absolutely not. All of the 2012 finalists made entries that were good enough to win…but so did a lot of other people. To win this contest you need to have talent and make an awesome, hilarious, professional looking submission. And Doritos gets lots of awesome, hilarious, professional looking submissions every year. But for some reason it just seems like “the system” favors contestants that have won the Crash before. Former finalists have lots of cash to play with, they are able to work with the best actors and tech people they can find, they may know the contest is happening again before the news is made public and they just happen to be friends with the people who will be picking the winners. So it’s not really surprising that the same people can win two or even three years in a row. But….is it fair?

“Man’s Best Friend” gets a mention on SNL

Posted by Dan L. on February 12th, 2012

Hey, Forget the ad meter….if you want to know what the biggest commercials of the Super Bowl were, just watch Saturday Night Live the weekend after the big game. If a commercial gets a joke or even a whole parody you know it made an impact on people’s brains. Last night SNL Live did a sketch about MIA’s middle finger “controversy” and the Crash the Super Bowl ad, got a pretty funny mention. I won’t spoil the joke. Just skip ahead to like the 1:15 mark to hear the reference. Or just watch the whole thing….it’s Sunday and it’s February. What the hell else do you have to do today?

If you’re still bored after that, go check out SNL’s parodies of Clint Eastwood’s “Halftime in America” commercial. I know it doesn’t have anything to do with video contests but f*ck it…it’s funny so just watch it: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/

Sling Baby “Wins” Facebook ad meter poll and a million bucks thanks to unsportsmanlike conduct

Posted by Dan L. on February 8th, 2012

I call Shenanigans! Sling Baby's "head of social media" calls on fans to attack their competition.

On Tuesday night, filmmaker and three-time Crash the Super Bowl finalist Kevin T. Willson became the fourth person ever to win the million dollar ad meter bonus in Doritos’ annual commercial contest. But unlike the other three times directors have won that honor, Willson’s victory isn’t anything worth celebrating. In fact, the way he “won” his bonus money is so shameful I think his win might wind up being a black mark on the reputation of the entire field of “crowdsourced” advertising.

As I explained in my last post, this year USA Today ran TWO versions of their annual Super Bowl ad meter poll. The traditional poll got its scores from viewers in private focus groups and the results were released on Sunday night. This year, USA Today’s focus groups declared the Crash the Super Bowl entry “” to be the best commercial of the game. (A great call, BTW) As is tradition, Doritos will award a bonus of one million dollars to the creator of Man’s Best Friend for pulling off such an amazing feat.

But USA Today’s second ad meter poll was touted as a chance for “the public” to rank the commercials of Super Bowl 46. The poll was run online and voting was open to anyone with a facebook page. Voters were able to score a video on a scale of one to five stars. Way back when the 2011/2012 installment of the CTSB contest was launched, Doritos said that they would be giving out bonus prizes to any CTSB ad that landed in the top three of either USA Today ad meter poll. (one million dollars for first, $600K for second, $400K for third) Voting in the online ad meter ended last night and when all was said and done, Kevin Willson’s Crash the Super Bowl ad, “Sling Baby,” managed to come out on top.

So this year, Fritolay gets to boast that Doritos commercials took the #1 spot in both of USA Today’s ad meter polls. But the new facebook ad meter poll is set up and run in such a way that virtually guarantees that a Crash the Super Bowl ad will land “in the money.” The other 55 ads in the poll have nothing to gain financially by doing well so only the Sling Baby team seriously FOUGHT for first place. So I think fritolay knew a Doritos ad would probably win the facebook poll all along. However, I don’t think they ever could have guessed that the final score would be so lopsided that the results would make the entire facebook ad meter look like an unfair, illegitimate joke. Check this out; here’s a shot of the Facebook ad meter scores as they were just a few hours after the Super Bowl ended:

Online ad meter standings: Sunday Night

On Sunday night, the CTSB commercial that won the traditional ad meter was also winning the online poll. Actually, the top 5 ads on this poll are just a jumbled version of the results of the traditional ad meter. So before the Sling Baby crew started voting, the facebook poll was actually a pretty fair indicator of how “the public” felt about the ads that aired during the big game. But here’s what the scores looked like by Monday afternoon.

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Sing Baby had shot into first place but that was no surprise. However, the plummeting scores of the other videos in the top five were a little suspicious. As for the Kia commercial, it featured Motley Crue and it turns out the band kept and to vote for their ad. So that’s why that spot jumped into the Top 5. I guess the Sling Baby team didn’t appreciate that someone else was trying to win the ad meter poll. Here’s how the rankings looked at 1:15 on Tuesday afternoon:

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The Kia ad had been slapped down hard. Just 20 minutes after I took that screen shot I checked the rankings again. The Kia ad’s score was down to 4.22 and it had fallen out of the top 5. So the only commercial that seemed to actually be trying to beat Sling Baby was mysteriously crushed in the voting over night.

Here now are the final scores of USA Today’s Facebook Ad Meter Poll:

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When voting started, Sling Baby was in a three way tie for first place with Man’s Best Friend and Bud Light’s Weego. But after two days of voting, Sling Baby wound up absolutely slaughtering the competition. Though I use the word “competition” lightly. I did see a few casual requests for votes from some of the other competitors, but I think most companies realized that an online ad meter was sort of meaningless. For the Sling Baby team, winning a 56-way contest that almost no one else was really trying to win should have been a piece of cake. And Doritos even helped their cause. After Man’s Best Friend won the big ad meter contest on sunday, Doritos started encouraging their fans to head to the online poll and vote for Kevin Willson’s Sling Baby. I think it’s insanely, amazingly awesome that the folks at Fritolay want to give one of their CTSB winners a million dollars. Sure, it’s good publicity for them but still, it was a really gracious move. With Doritos’ support, Kevin Willson and his teammates could have scored a spot in the Top 3 without breaking a sweat. But unfortunately, winning $600,000 or $400,000 fair and square apparently wasn’t good enough for these folks. I kept track of the ad meter for the last three days and it seems that Sling Baby won because a small army of supporters sabotaged the scores of the other ads in the poll by maliciously rating them 1 star out of a possible 5.

If you look at Sling Baby’s official facebook page, you’ll only see a few subtle hints that the team wanted people to down-vote the other ads in the poll. Here’s one example I saw:

Screenshot of the "Vote For Sling Baby" facebook page

Just for the record, Willson’s “User Generated ad” was created by a team of more than 40 pro and semi-pro filmmakers and cost almost $3,000 to produce. But anyway, as you can see, whoever was running that facebook page was really pushing the idea that their team had to beat Budweiser, M&Ms, Kia, etc. And one fan even flat out said he was rating the other videos one-star. And yet, no one spoke up and said “Hey man, we don’t want to win that way. Please only give honest scores.”

But that was how thing’s went down on Sling Baby’s official page. Behind the scenes, the Sling Baby team felt free to get ruthless. Based on what I have seen, it seems that some team members decided they could only win if they played dirty. The creators of Sling Baby were incredibly organized and they even had someone managing their online campaigns. That person’s name is Nate Daniels and the “About Us” section of Vote4SlingBaby.com lists him as being in charge of “Social Media.” But apparently he also helped come up with the idea for the entry. Daniels did an interview with something called the Lansing City Pulse in which he talked about his role on the team:

Daniels, who moved to Los Angeles, teamed up with the director of the ad, Kevin Wilson, to create the commercial. “I helped create the idea for ‘Sling Baby,’ and am in charge of the online campaign and the website,” Daniels said.

And here he is doing a TV interview with a Lansing, MI news station about Sling Baby’s quest to win the facebook ad meter. So Daniels was a key member of the Sling Baby team. He was literally the guy in charge of spreading the word about the ad and I assume that he was the head of the “online campaign” to get votes for the commercial. At first Daniels simply asked people to vote for his team’s ad. But as the Sling Baby slipped in the polls, he started to hint that people should give bad scores to the competition:

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But soon enough, Daniels dropped the innuendo and just started instructing people to rate the competing ads “1 star.” In an absolutely despicable move, he even told told people to give a bad score to the other Doritos commercial, Man’s Best Friend:

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Daniels was by no means the only person using Facebook or Twitter to get Sling Baby fans to give bad scores to the other commercials in the ad meter. I found a bunch of other examples that I could post. But the people who made those requests weren’t in charge of Sling Baby’s social media campaigns so I’m not going to repost their comments. I’m only sharing what Nate Daniels did because it was his job to promote Sling Baby online.

Now, if you’re thinking that perhaps this one team member went rogue and did all this without the OK of his teammates….well, take a look at this:

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Jeff Edwards was the Executive Producer of Sling Baby. Not only that, Edwards was Kevin Willson’s “plus one” for the trip to the Super Bowl. So Edwards was practically a co-finalist. He got a free trip to beautiful Indianapolis, he got to watch the Super Bowl from Fritolay’s private box and I’m going to guess that he stands to receive a huge slice of the million dollar ad meter prize. So this guy should have known better than to publicly call on people to give bad scores to the Bud Light, Kia and Chrysler ads. As Captain Hook would say, that’s just bad form. Even Motley Crue didn’t tell people to down-vote the other videos and they are literally a motley crew!

Over the years I have been in a lot of video contests where votes determine the winners. And I always make it a point to tell my family and friends NOT to down-vote the competition. That just seems like a skeezy and unfair way to win a contest. So it simply blows my mind that (as far as I saw) not one Sling Baby team member responded to Daniels or Edwards by saying, “Dude, chill out…we want to win fair and square.“ Though I didn’t see any evidence that Kevin Willson was asking people to sabotage the scores of the other videos in the contest, I think it’s incredibly unlikely that he didn’t know what his friends and teammates were up to. And yet, it looks like he did nothing to stop these sad, unsportsmanlike tactics.

And that might be because he knew those tactics would work. Just look at how the scores for the other top videos tumbled during the voting. Even Man’s Best Friend, the REAL best commercial of Super Bowl 46 went from first place to sixth place in just 48 hours. That just shows you how effective “down-voting” can be. Every high school graduate knows that you can get an A+ on every test but just one F per semester will wreck your final grade. My point is that negative scores have a much bigger impact than positive scores do. Let’s do some quick math: Imagine a commercial on the ad meter had 10 votes of 4 stars each. That would make their score 4.00. If a person casts an 11th vote of 5 stars, the video’s score goes up to 4.09. But if that person casts an 11th vote of 1 star, that video’s score plummets to 3.72. Winning by down-voting the competition was probably easy but it was also certainly wrong. But I guess the promise of a million god damn dollars can make people do some pretty crooked things. To me it looks like some members of the Sling Baby team decided that it was their mission to make sure Willson’s commercial came in first by any means necessary. And those folks straight up accomplished the hell out of that mission.

Right about now you might be wondering, “What’s the big deal? So these guys did what it took to win a million bucks…what do you care? It’s not your money.” Well the reason this is a big deal because the Sling Baby crew completely violated the spirit of this competition. I could win a hundred yard dash if my friends ran onto the track and tackled all the other runners, but that wouldn’t prove that I was the fastest guy in the race. And I sure as hell wouldn’t be proud if someone gave me a gold medal for my phony baloney victory. The point of the ad meter poll is to be ranked the best because your commercial IS the best….not because you got a whole bunch of people to give bad scores to the other ads. Not only is that unsportsmanlike, I think it borders on fraud. If the Sling Baby team launched a coordinated effort to get hundreds of people to LIE so that they could win this contest then they could be facing some serious legal repercussions. And yes, when those voters gave bad scores to all the other videos in the contest they were LYING….they were not scoring the other commercials honestly. I think this whole debacle could and should be investigated by the legal departments of Fritolay, USA Today, Kia, Budweiser, M&Ms, etc, etc, etc. But at the very least, the down-voting could result in Sling Baby being completely disqualified from the Crash the Super Bowl contest. Here’s what the official rules of the contest say about unsportsmanlike conduct:

Sponsor reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to disqualify any individual deemed to be (a) tampering or attempting to tamper with the entry process or the operation of the Contest or any Sponsor or Contest-related Web Site; (b) violating the Official Rules; (c) violating the Web Site terms of service, conditions of use and/or applicable general rules or guidelines; or (d) acting in an unsportsmanlike or disruptive manner, or with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any other person. This Contest is offered only in the United States and is governed by the laws of the state of Texas. All claims relating in any manner to this Contest or to any Submission must be resolved in the federal or state courts located in Collin County, Texas.

Now that I think about it, if key members of the Sling Baby team were willing to resort to such unscrupulous measures to win the million dollar ad meter prize, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suspect that maybe they did some unscrupulous things to get enough votes to ensure their ad would air during the Super Bowl. Again, I think that’s something the big wigs at Fritolay can and should look into.

Finally, there is one more reason why all this matters: Crowdsourcing, video contests and consumer generated ads already don’t get a lot of respect from the pros in the advertising world. Every time a twenty dollar, homemade commercial like “Man’s Best Friend” beats Madison Avenue’s multi-million dollar commercials, the entire ad industry looks bad. But Sling Baby’s “win” on the facebook ad meter gives the pros a reason to dismiss the accomplishments of crowdsourcers everywhere. Sling Baby makes it look like we can only win when we’re playing with a stacked deck. And even worse, the ridiculous results of the facebook ad meter make all of us look like greedy, vindictive cheaters. Oh, but just for the record, down-voting the other ads technically wasn’t cheating since their were no rules and the ad meter wasn’t even an actual “contest.” But if people were giving bad scores to the other commercials on the ad meter just to help Sling Baby win, that would be unethical. And winning a million dollars unethically is nothing to be proud of.

Two final notes: First, all the facebook screenshots that appear in this post come from public facebook pages that anyone can access. However, I didn’t think it would be necessary or appropriate to actually link to those pages. Second, the website AdBowl.com also ran an online poll where the public could rate the commercials of Super Bowl 46. There were no prizes or bragging rights at stake in that poll so no one tried to sway the outcome of that contest. According to people of the Internet, the two best commercials of the game were Volkswagen’s Dog Strikes Back and Doritos’ Man’s Best Friend. As for Sling Baby, it came in 6th.

Man’s Best Friend scores the #1 spot on USA Today’s Super Bowl ad meter!!!

Posted by Dan L. on February 6th, 2012

2012 Crash the Super Bowl winner, Man's Best Friend

It’s about 2:00AM on Monday morning and USA Today just released ~~some~~ ALL of the results of their annual Super Bowl ad meter poll. And guess what?? The Crash the Super Bowl ad, MAN’S BEST FRIEND scored the number one spot!!! That means the creator of that ad, Jon Friedman will win Doritos’ ONE MILLION DOLLAR ad meter bonus! And since his spot was the highest ranking Doritos commercial, Friedman also wins the chance to shoot a project (presumably a Doritos commercial) with the guys from The Lonely Island.

Here’s the entire Top 5 list. It looks like the other Crash the Super Bowl ad, Sling Baby just missed landing “in the money” and came in 4th.

Doritos – Man’s Best Friend – 8.82
Volkswagen – Dog Strikes Back – 8.73
Skechers – Go Run – 8.57
Doritos – Sling Baby – 8.48
M&Ms – Ms. Brown – 8.47

You can see USA Today’s complete ranking here. But let me save you some skimming: “The Tease,” the Dannon Yogurt ad that was shot for a Poptent assignment, came in 13th and “Happy Grad” which was shot for a Chevy contest on Mofilm came in 24th.

So all the “Crowdsourced” ads of Super Bowl 46 did pretty well. But mark my words, Man’s Best Friend’s million dollar win is going to be epic news this week. That commercial was produced for just 20 dollars! I interviewed the director a few weeks ago and he said the only expenses were a few bags of doritos and a cat collar. So man….score one for the little guys!

As I mentioned in my last post (the one I wrote before I knew USA Today would be releasing their results tonight) I explained that there are actually two ad meter polls happening this year. The second poll is being run on facebook and “the public” gets to pick the winners on that one. Doritos has pledged that if “Sling Baby” can score a spot in the top 3 on that poll they will also pay out a bonus prize to the director of that ad. Voting ends on Tuesday and I have zero doubt Sling Baby will make the top 3. Earlier tonight that ad was ranked #3 but now “the public” has pushed it into first. The team that created Sling Baby are now literally pros when it comes to winning online votes. So like I said, they’ll make the top 3 for sure. To vote in the facebbook ad meter poll, head here: http://www.usatoday.com/sports/football/superbowl-admeter

After the results of the facebook ad meter are released on wednesday, the 2011/2012 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest will finally be over. To mark the end of this year’s contest, we’re going to be running one more story about the Crash next week. In the article we’ll try and answer the big question of 2012: Do former finalists have an unfair advantage in the Crash the Super Bowl contest? For the story I was actually able to interview some of the judges at fritolay who run the contest and who help choose the winners. I was seriously amazed at how open they were about how they pick their finalists every year so if you’re a hardcore CTSB fanatic, you’re definitely going to enjoy that post. Check back on 2/13 for the full story.

Congratulations to the Man’s Best Friend team and to all the video contest filmmakers who crashed the Super Bowl this year!