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

What the heck are the “Nacho Average Ad” awards?

Posted by Dan L. on November 30th, 2012

After the Crash the Super Bowl deadline passed on November 16th, I checked Doritos’ facebook page and saw a strange announcement. It said something like “come back on November 28th for some exciting awards news.” The official set of finalists weren’t going to be revealed until January 4th so I had no idea what was going to be announced on Nov 28. Well it turns out that for the first time ever, Doritos will be awarding bonus prizes to some entries as part of something they are calling the “Nacho Average Ad Awards.” Five videos have been nominated by Doritos’ judges in eight different categories. The commercial that gets the most votes in each category wins a special prize. Here are the different categories:

-

Now I can appreciate a hot “babe” as much as the next guy but just for the record, it is 2012, right? Having a “Best Supporting Babe” category seems so 1988. There’s a surprising amount of T & A in the five videos in that category which is kind of weird because the Crash the Super Bowl contest has never really been about “sexy” humor. I think the folks at Fritolay probably understand that some of these ads (like the one that features a triple-boobed woman) are probably too hot for TV. But at least they can use them to get some extra hits on facebook. Personally I’ve got nothing against tri-boobs but I think that if Doritos wanted to have a category that objectified women they should have balanced things out by also adding a “Hottest Hunks” category.

Facebook users can vote for their favorite Nacho nominees once a day until December 17th. The Crash the Super Bowl page is kind of unclear what the winning filmmakers will receive but here’s what the the official rules say:

Each Nacho Average Ad Award winner will be awarded a Nacho Average Ad Awards trophy and a one (1) year supply of Doritos awarded in the form of 52 free product coupons each valid for one (1) bag of DORITOS® brand Tortilla Chips (up to 11.5 ounces) up to $4.29 each. Approximate Retail Value of each Category Nacho Average Ad Award is $523.08. Such Nacho Average Ad Awards are unrelated to the Judging Criteria, and will not be considered in and have no bearing upon Finalist selection.

So if you win you basically get a ton of Doritos. I don’t think it would be very wise for a single human being to try and consume one full bag of Doritos a week for 52 weeks straight. So if you actually manage to win this prize I suggest you give a lot of those coupons to friends or maybe a food pantry.

My friend and VCN reader Shane F. actually was nominated for a “Nacho” award in the “Most Powerful Doritos” category. You can check out his entry and give him a vote by clicking on the image below:

Click to view and vote

Shane’s commercial is pretty good but actually, a lot of the nominees are surprisingly funny and well made. There are a few nominees that I think will make the final 5 and there is one entry that I would call a sure thing. I really thought that Doritos would keep the best entries hidden until they revealed the actual finalists in January. But if your entry didn’t get nominated for a Nacho award I still think you have a chance of making the top 5. A few Nacho nominees will probably make it but I’m sure that some of the big winners will be a surprise. After all, Doritos received almost 3,000 entries this year. I doubt that the judges have even had a chance to watch them all yet.

QUICK NOTE: I wanted to say thanks to all you Crash the Super Bowl fans that have been visiting VCN over the last few weeks. We had almost 18,000 unique visitors this month which means November was our busiest month ever!

Quick, go shoot a drinking and driving PSA for Ciroc!

Posted by Dan L. on November 27th, 2012

Drink me. But not before driving, idiot.

Hey! What are doing this weekend? Shopping? Putting up Christmas lights? Well screw that noise. I have a hot tip for you so you might want to change your plans and do some filming this weekend. Ciroc Vodka is running a video contest and they are looking for :30 second PSA’s about “responsible celebration,” i.e., not drinking and driving. I’ve been working on an entry of my own but I have a sinking suspicion that I’m not going to be able to pull it off. So I figured I might as well do a quick post and share the details of this very winnable contest. The deadline has been pushed back a few days and your last chance to enter is this sunday. To be eligible to win, each entry must include the phrase “the art of celebration.” Contestants are supposed to upload their PSAs to a third-party hosting site (e.g., youtube, vimeo) and then send Ciroc the link. I’ve checked around and the competition seems to be really light. I’m not exactly sure why though because there are some pretty nice prizes up for grabs. I think the problem is that the details of the prizes are kind of buried in the official rules. Ciroc will pick three finalists and each of them will receive a $2,500 prize pack. But that “prize pack” is pretty much just a consultation with a fancy party planner and a $2,500 gift card. So if you make the top 3 you basically win $2,500. After the finalists are picked, there is some public voting and one PSA will wind up airing on BRAVO on new year’s eve. You don’t get any extra money for that but obviously it wouldn’t hurt if your work wound up on TV.

There are a few other reasons I think this contest is winnable. Because this contest is being sponsored by a vodka company, the rules have to comply with certain federal laws. Here’s an important disclaimer from the official rules:

THIS CONTEST IS ONLY OPEN TO LEGAL RESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES WHO ARE 25 YEARS OF AGE OR OLDER. VOID IN ARKANSAS, CALIFORNIA, MAINE, MARYLAND, PENNSYLVANIA AND WHEREVER ELSE PROHIBITED OR RESTRICTED BY LAW.

That means that young filmmakers and every filmmaker in Los Angeles is ineligible to win this competition. So like I said, you might want to cancel your lame weekend plans and shoot a quick submission. I’m still hoping to enter this one myself and I realize I might be shooting myself in the foot by talking about this contest but oh well…consider this an early Christmas present from your pal Beardy. Full details are here: http://www.esquire.com/ciroc.

Hey by the way, did you notice that this post includes the correct usage of both “i.e” and “e.g.”? Feel free to bookmark this post and use it as a reference guide for the rest of your life.

VCN Sponsor Spotlight: 11/23/12

Posted by Dan L. on November 23rd, 2012

Happy post-turkey day everybody! I’m not much of a competitive shopper so I thought I’d stay in today and tell you all what I’m thankful for. I’m thankful for pecan pie, episodes of Community on Hulu Plus and of course, our sponsors! Mofilm, Tongal and Poptent are running some gigantic video contests right now and in this month’s installment of the Sponsor Spotlight I’m going to list three of my personal favorites. If you get bored of shopping and eating this weekend be sure to check out the details of these top tier competitions:

Deadline: 12/4/12

TONGAL’S DUPLO VIDEO CONTEST: In this monster contest, a total of $150,000 in prizes are going to be paid out to a whole bunch of lucky Tonglers. Like all Tongal contests, this one is being run in three phases; the idea phase, the pitch phase and the video phase. The idea phase is already over but it’s worth noting that 50 user-submitted ideas each won $100. That means the Idea Phase alone cost Duplo $5,000. So why do they need so many ideas? Well because the sponsor wants a freaking ton of videos for their new online ad campaign. Here’s how the rest of the contest is going to work; if you want to participate you need to submit a pitch about how you would film FIVE videos based on a single, per-approved topic (for example, using Duplo as part of creative playing.) The sponsors will go through the pitches and pick 10 filmmakers that they want to work with. Each of those filmmakers will receive $3,000. They will then use that money to produce their five videos which will be based on some of the 50 ideas that were submitted in the idea phase. This is sort of different from the way they normally do things on Tongal. Normally a filmmaker pitches a specific idea. But this time you just need to show some of your previous work and explain how you would handle a general topic. So the filmmakers won’t actually know the ideas they’re going to be filming until after they win the pitch phase. Finally, the Duplo judges will review all the videos and the person who made the best patch of ads wins 40 grand! All the runners up will win prizes ranging from $20K to $6K so if you win the pitch phase you basically are a lock to win at least $9,000 in this contest. PITCH PHASE DEADLINE: December 4th, 2012. Click HERE for details.

Deadline: 12/30/12

POPTENT’S MASTERCARD ASSIGNMENT: To be frank, I’ve been kind of annoyed with Poptent this year because most of their best assignments have been “Invite Only.” For a while I really thought the site was going to get rid of their public assignments all together. There were times were they were running 22 video assignments at once but 20 of them were for invited members only. But I’m happy to say that in the last few weeks a whole boatload of new public assignments have appeared on Poptent.net. The one that caught my eye was Mastercard’s “Your Money, Smarter” assignment. I like this one for 2 reasons; first, Mastercard is guaranteeing that they will purchase at least two videos at $12,000 each! And second, instead of making one video, filmmakers are being asked to create two :15 second vignettes. I think that this might be a turn off to some people (who will see it as twice the work) so I think participation for this contest might be a little low. But then again, $12,000 is almost double what a normal poptent assignment will pay so that should get a lot of people interested. DEADLINE: December 30th, 2012. Click HERE for details.

Deadline: 2/4/13

MOFILM’S BARCELONA CONTEST: Finally, I wanted to direct your attention to Mofilm’s Barcelona video contest. The thing is, barely any details about this competition have actually been released. The deadline isn’t even until early February. But you should keep Barcelona on your radar screen because in the next few weeks, Mofilm is going to start offering production grants to filmmakers who want to shoot submissions for this contest. In Mofilm-land, production grants (of up to $2,500!) are sometimes allocated on a first come, first served basis. Obviously you’ll need to submit a decent idea but it does help to be fast. And that’s why I recommend that you try and keep tabs on which Mofilm contests are coming down the pipe. As soon as a grant is officially announced, you can pounce and be one the first people to submit an idea. And oh yeah by the way, if you actually win one of the categories in this contest you’ll get $8,000 and a trip for two to Barcelona! DEADLINE: February 4th, 2013. Click HERE for details.

We want to see your Crash the Super Bowl entries!

Posted by Dan L. on November 16th, 2012

-

It’s Friday, November 16th and that means you have until midnight tonight to submit your entries for Doritos 2012 Crash the Super Bowl contest! I’m a little sad to say that for the first time in 4 years I won’t be submitting an entry of my own. I had been working on a really elaborate idea for weeks but we ran into some big problems when we tried to shoot the spot last weekend. You know how they say “never work with kids or animals?” Well my script featured about a whole bunch of animals and not one of them did the one thing we needed them to do on camera. So the whole thing was a total bust. But I think the idea itself is really good and I might try and do re-shoot next year.

So this year I’ll be watching the CTSB from the sidelines. Although….I might just re-submit my entry from last year. I’m not 100% sure but I don’t think that’s against the rules. (Update: It is) I’ll have to check on that. Anyways, I know that a whole lot of you guys actually did manage to shoot and submit entries so I wanted to give you all a chance to show off your work. If you have a Crash the Super Bowl entry that you’d like to share, leave the link in a comment on this post. For some reason, Doritos’ facebook app makes it hard to share a direct link to a specific entry. If you want to link straight to your video, here’s what you do. First, go to your submission and look for the “share on twitter” button.

-

Click that button. A twitter box will pop up and you will see a link. That’s a direct link to your video! So copy that sucker and paste in in a comment.

-

Every year I offer to do mini-critiques of any videos that you guys send me, so if you’d like a quick review, please ask for it when you post your link. (if you don’t I’ll assume you just want to share your ad to get some extra views.) As I do every year, I’ll be posting my favorite Crash the Super Bowl “contenders” so if your video is really amazing it might just make my own personal Top 5. Good luck this year everybody!

Wingstop’s “No Bones About it” winner

Posted by Dan L. on November 13th, 2012

When it comes to chicken wings, I’m a bit of a connoisseur. For bone-in wings I’ll go to Hooters and for boneless wings I’ll go to Buffalo Wild Wings. But if I’m in a hurry, the boneless wings at Wingstop aren’t too bad either. (I’ve found it’s a great place to grab a quick lunch with my dad.) If you ever find yourself in a wingstop, be sure to order some fries and dip them in the blue cheese dressing. That’s good eatin’ right there, pal! Oh but you know what’s even better? Have you ever had the buffalo shrimp at Hooters?? Those actually blow all chicken wings everywhere out of the water. Hey you know what’s funny? Me and my friends love Hooters’ food but now that we’re not immature 22 year olds any more we find the girls in their booty shorts to be kind of annoying. Sometimes you just want to have some beers and some wings and you don’t feel like enduring the waitresses’ bad fake flirting. We’d probably go to Hooters more if the girls were allowed to dress and act like normal humans.

Wait a second…why did I start writing this post? Oh yeah, Wingstop had a commercial contest. They picked 5 finalists and then people voted on facebook. Here’s the winner:

Wingstop’s First Place Winner. Prize: $10,000:

Seriously, Hooters Buffalo shrimp; try them and thank me later Also, take your dad to Wingstop. He’ll love it and you’ll be in and out in like 45 minutes.

Mofilm’s “Little Big Planet” winner starts airing on TV

Posted by Dan L. on November 8th, 2012

Last night I had the TV on while I was reading stories about all the very nice things that happened in the US on Tuesday when some familiar sounds grabbed my attention. It was a commercial for the Playstation game Little Big Planet: Karting. It took me a few seconds to realize where I had seen the ad before; it was the entry that won Mofilm’s Little Big Planet video contest! They just announced the results like a week ago and the winning ad is already on TV. It’s pretty good and very professional looking. There were a lot of Mofilm grants available for this competition so I’m sure the director of this spot had his production funded, at least in part, by a Mofilm grant.

First Place Winner. Prize: $25,000 and a trip for 2 to Las Vegas:

There were a lot of good runners-up in this contest. The second place winner is not nearly as slick as the winning ad but it still cracked me up. You can see all the chosen entries here.

Doritos should extend the Crash the Super Bowl deadline because of Hurricane Sandy

Posted by Dan L. on November 6th, 2012

Hurricane Sandy

If you’ve watched more more than 10 minutes of news in the last week you’ll know that a big chunk of the American east coast was devastated by Hurricane Sandy on October 29th. At least 111 people were killed in the US alone and over a million Americans have spent a full week without power. Tens of thousands of people have been displaced, children have been out of school for a week and countless roads are still accessible. Today’s presidential election is still going ahead as planned but events like the New York Marathon were cancelled and Halloween in New Jersey was even “rescheduled.” There are many, many serious, life-and-death issues that need to dealt with but this is a blog about video contests so we’ll focus on just one, relatively frivolous problem; Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest.

At a time like this it feels sorta stupid to worry about a goofy commercial contest but I know that if I lived on the East Coast I’d probably be very bummed out about the Doritos competition. The deadline for the 2012 competition is 11:59PM on November 16th. Most people wait until the last minute to shoot and edit their entries so I’m guessing that hundreds of filmmakers who wanted to enter the Crash this year won’t be able to. I’m sure a whole lot of people on the east coast had to cancel shoots last weekend because of Sandy and if you still don’t have power you can’t charge your camera batteries or edit your footage. And oh yeah…if your house is filled with sand and water you probably have better things to do than shoot a Doritos commercial.

So I’ve got to ask, should Doritos extend the Crash the Super Bowl deadline? In my humble option I think they should. Things are starting to get back to normal and if the deadline is extended a lot of people on the coast will be able to slap together their entries. And hey, not for nothin’ but there are some really talented filmmakers in that part of the country. Just off the top of my head I remember that one team from North Carolina has won the Crash the Super Bowl contest TWICE and the million dollar winner from last year was from Virgina.

If the big wigs at FritoLay don’t extend the deadline there will always be an asterisk next to the title of the 2012 installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest. I don’t think there should be a huge extension of the deadline….an extra week would probably be plenty. I just skimmed through the rules of the contest and it does seem like a deadline extension would be possible. Check this out:

If for any reason the Contest is not capable of running as planned, including without limitation, infection by computer virus, bugs, tampering, unauthorized intervention, fraud, technical failures, or any other causes which corrupt or affect the administration, security, fairness, integrity or proper conduct of the Contest, Sponsor reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to cancel, modify or terminate the Contest.

That section of the Crash the Super Bowl rules seems to give the sponsors the right to alter the terms of the contest if something happens to make the competition unfair; and I think a big ass hurricane 2 weeks before the deadline is a pretty unfair thing to happen to East Coast filmmakers.

Having said all that, a tiny part of me hopes that Doritos WON’T extend the deadline. I’m high and dry here in Illinois and I’m filming my submission on saturday. No deadline extension just means my own odds of winning go up. But since I’m not a selfish douche I think that in the spirit of fairness the deadline should be extended…at least a tiny bit.

12/7/12 UPDATE: Last week, VCN reader RJ tweeted to say that his editor couldn’t work on their submission because he was still without power. RJ left a comment on this post today to say that he checked with Doritos and there will NOT be a deadline extension because of Sandy.

Home Run Inn Pizza: Your Halloween video contest is bad and you should feel bad!

Posted by Dan L. on November 2nd, 2012

….

Pizza, Halloween and video contests are three of my favorite things. So as far as I’m concerned the only thing better than a Halloween-themed video contest about pizza would be…oh I don’t know….a boob-themed roller coaster about chocolate cake. Unfortunately, those only exist in my dream journal. But Home Run Inn Pizza actually does run a Halloween-themed video contest every October. They’ve held the contest for the last four years and each time they re-launch it I get excited, read the rules and then get bummed. It would be so easy and fun to shoot a wacky, funny, scary video about pizza but for some reason the folks at Home Run Inn let votes alone determine the winners. So the people that enter this contest don’t really need to TRY when they create their entries. I could shoot a video of myself in a hockey mask cutting a pizza with a chainsaw and I could win the $2,500 grand prize if I was willing to spend 2 weeks hustling for votes. Now that I think about it, the people who won the contest this year probably spent 4 hours shooting and editing their submission and 40 hours trying to get enough votes to win.

I understand WHY Home Run Inn would run their contest this way; they want to try and get a ton of new people to “like” their facebook page and accept their app. But people who like a page so they can vote for their friend’s entry are junk likes. Most of those people will probably delete the HRI app and un-like the company’s page after their friend loses the contest. And let’s be real….there’s a good chance that a whole lot of the votes cast in this contest are fake. So the whole thing really sort of feels like a pointless exercise. If Home Run Inn really wants to increase the number of fans they have on facebook, and if they don’t care whether or not those fans are real people, they should just save everyone a bunch of time and buy likes in bulk from spammers in India.

Home Run Inn announced the of this contest on November 1st but I’m not going to bother posting the winning video because WHO wins this contest doesn’t actually matter. This is a voting contest, not a video contest. I think the thing that bothers me the most about this promotion is that if the sponsor’s just tweaked the rules a tiny bit it could be a really awesome contest. Instead of letting “the public” pick the winners, why not let votes determine a set of finalists and then Home Run Inn judges could select the best video? If they did it that way, HRI would get the traffic and likes they desire and they could also get some free press and some facebook “shares” if they posted a winner that was actually entertaining enough to re-post.