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Posts Tagged ‘poptent.net’

Tis the season for making money on Poptent!

Posted by Dan L. on December 5th, 2012

hello, gorgeous.

Every December I go on a full-blown video contest bender.  I don’t know why but it seems like a ton of really fantastic contests are launched this time of year.  And because a lot of filmmakers are either burnt out from entering the Crash the Super Bowl contest or distracted by holiday happenings, competition in many of these contests is pretty light.  So if you’re looking to make some money this season you should postpone your shopping and do some filming this weekend!

One of the best contests/assignments running right now is the Miller 64 assignment on Poptent.  I’ve been planning an entry for this one for a few weeks now.  (Last weekend I was shooting a party scene for some other video contest entry and when we were done, I made everyone hold a Miller 64 so I could get a quick shot.)  The Miller 64 contest jumped out at me for a few reasons.  Contests and video assignments for alcohol products are always good to enter because there are tight legal restrictions that will keep a lot of people from participating.  If you’re under 21 you can’t enter.  And thanks to federal advertising laws, no one that appears in your alcohol ads can be under 25!  So those two rules mean that a very large percentage of filmmakers and actors will have to sit this one out.  Just look at the number of “accepts” this assignment has compared to a similar assignment Jacuzzi ran a few weeks ago.  Both assignments offered one guaranteed purchase of $7,500.  But while 347 filmmakers accepted the terms of the Jacuzzi assignment, so far only 215 have accepted the Miller 64 one.  If you’re going to enter a Poptent assignment, there’s no shame in playing the odds.  Like I said, there are a lot of good contests and assignments running right now.  So it’s good strategy to budget your time and go after an assignment that you know can’t get a billion entries.

If you’re going to shoot an ad for the Miller assignment, you have two themes to chose from.  Option #1 is “a little extra.”  These would be videos about the little things you can do to lead a more balanced and healthy lifestyle (like taking the stairs instead of the elevator or you know….drinking a 64 calorie beer instead of a 180 calorie beer.)  Option #2 is “resolutions.”  For this theme you’re asked to tell a story about New Year’s Resolutions that are related to living a healthier life and more active life.

So that doesn’t sound too tough, does it?  Miller is guaranteeing at least one purchase of $7,500.  You still have until December 16th to submit a video so get your ass to the liquor store and but a 12 pack of 64′s and have a little filming party this weekend.  To accept this assignment and read the creative brief, head here:  http://www.poptent.net/assignment/608.  Because the sponsor is a beer company, there are some quirky rules for this assignment so be sure to read the brief carefully before you start writing.

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Garnier-Fructis buys $45,000 worth of Poptent videos

Posted by Dan L. on May 4th, 2012

Man, I’ll tell you what, I always manage to enter the wrong Poptent assignments.  I never seem to pick the ones where the brand decides to buy more videos than they promised.  These surprise, multiple-purchases are still the one thing that sets Poptent apart from all the other contests sites out there.  Other companies do offer more, smaller prizes per contest but Poptent is the only place where you might end up with more than one first place “winner.”

For example: this week, Poptent announced that Garnier-Fructis was purchasing 6 videos that were submitted to their recent “Live Fearless, Look Amazing” assignment for $7,500 each.  The company was only obligated to buy two videos but they were so happy with the results the decided they could use 4 more.  All the selected entries are pretty good.  I especially like this one and not just because it features a cute girl in a bikini.  The director made a great call and mounted a camera (a GoPro I assume) on the star’s surfboard.
 

 
Here’s another impressive entry.  It’s a simple little video but I was kind of amazed by the concept.  A Poptent member actually shot a Garnier-Fructis ad about gay men “living fearlessly” and the company it.  That’s kinda cool, isn’t it?
 

 
In all, Garnier-Fructis only received 73 submissions to this assignment.  So if you entered, your odds of making a sale were just 1 in 12.  I think Poptent really needs to encourage more brands to commit to buying multiple videos.  If a company has a budget for as many as 6 videos, why not promise to buy at least 3 or 4?  More guaranteed purchases lead to more and better submissions.  By playing it safe, brands are actually sabotaging there chances of getting high quality ads.  This time the sponsor lucked out and got some really good videos.  But if Garnier-Fructis had promised to buy 6 videos right from the start, they probably would have gotten 200+ submissions.
 

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Triaminic starts airing Poptent-made commercial

Posted by Dan L. on November 4th, 2011

The other day I was screwing around on the Internet and I had the TV on in the background.  Out of the corner of my eye I noticed a Triaminic commercial that looked really familiar.  I knew I had seen it before but I also knew I had never actually seen it on TV.  I turned up the volume and watched carefully.  I could not figure out how I could possibly recognize a brand new TV commercial.  What was really weird was that the ad was only 15 seconds long but I was sure I remembered it being longer.  About 20 minutes later it finally hit me.  I had seen the Triaminic ad on Poptent.  I checked the site and the video was created by Poptent’s Super-Salesmen “Bisbinetts” (AKA Joe) for a Triaminic assignment from 2010!  I guess Triaminc liked the ad and decided to hold on to it until the 2011 cough and cold season started.  I haven’t seen many user-generated ads on TV this year so good for Triaminic for running Joe’s spot.  Here’s the 30 second version:

Purchased by Triaminic.  Price: $7,500:
 

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Poptent opens new office in Brazil

Posted by Dan L. on July 12th, 2011

Are you a filmmaker that lives in South America?  Do you speak Portuguese?  Well if you answered ‘no’ to either of those questions, you can just ignore this article because it will be of no interest to you!  Ok, I’m kidding of course.  This story is important to anyone who enters video contests or who shoots ads for sites like Poptent.  It shows you just how huge “crowdsourced media” is getting.  When companies started using goofy web ads created by “users” it was called a fad by some in the ad industry.  But advertisers have really come to take crowdsourced media seriously.  When a company cuts out ad agencies and goes right to their consumers for content, not only do they save a fortune but they get fresh, outside-the-box commercials.

With the demand for User-Generated content on the rise across the globe, Poptent.net has decided to expand to its first international market, South America by opening a new office in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  Why Brazil?  Poptent’s press release about the Brazilian office lays out some amazing stats:

“Brazil is one of the world’s fastest-growing online video markets, with comScore reporting that Internet users in Brazil viewed a total of 26.2 billion online videos in 2010, and YouTube experiencing 33% year-over-year growth in unique viewership.  The country also has high rates of social media participation, as Facebook experienced 258% year-over-year growth in the past year alone and more than 70% of the country’s Internet users visit blogs, all according to comScore.  Overall, Boston Consulting Group projects that the country’s 2010 base of 40 million Internet users will grow 15% annually through 2015.”

Here’s the TL;DR version of the above paragraph; Brazil is huge and full of lots of people who spend a crazy amount of time consuming content on the Internet.  Poptent even calls the country, “one of the world’s fastest-growing and most engaged populations of Internet users.”

So are you going to get a crack at the assignments that come out of that new Brazilian office?  Well yeah….kind of.  The goal of Poptent Brazil will be to reach out to local filmmakers to create content in Portuguese.  But South American assignments are officially open to anyone.  Plus, there is a chance that Poptent might occasionally ask American creators to produce videos that can be dubbed into Spanish or Portuguese.  Poptent’s first South American assignment launched on June 30th and more assignments are coming soon.  So stay tuned to poptent’s blog or feed for more details.

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Poptent’s 2nd Chance and Demo Reel assignments

Posted by Dan L. on January 26th, 2011

poptent.net

So, are you still feeling bummed about not making the finals in Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest?  Well snap out of it already!  You’ve had almost a month to get over the bad news. It’s time to move on to something new!  The odds of making the CTSB finals are just insanely terrible.  For every one winner there was something like 560 non-winners!  So If the 2010/2011 “Crash” was your first video contest you really shouldn’t let that loss deter you from entering other, more win-able video contests.  You just need to pick your next contest a little more carefully.  And by that I mean you should try and focus on a contest that you actually have a chance in hell of winning.

A great place to start is one of Poptent.net’s “Ongoing Assignments.”  These assignments aren’t really like the commercial ones they run for other companies.  The open-ended assignments are sponsored by Poptent and don’t require you to shoot anything new!  So you’ve probably got videos on your hard drive right now that you could submit to these competitions.

Currently Poptent does two of these on-going assignments. The first is called “Demo Reel of the Month” and the name pretty much tells you everything you need to know.  Every month the Poptent staff picks their favorite directing, editing or cinematography reel and awards its creator 500 bucks.

The other Open-Ended assignment is the “Second Chance” contest which is co-sponsored by OnlineVideoContests.com. The concept for this one is pretty awesome.  If you shot an entry for a video contest and DIDN’T WIN any prizes you can submit your overlooked masterpiece and Poptent and OVC will award prizes to their favorite “non-winning” videos. So…maybe your Crash the Super Bowl entry will wind up winning something after all.

But money isn’t the only reason to enter these Ongoing Assignments.  The submitted “Second Chance” videos and Demo Reels help Poptent editors discover filmmakers that they want to work with in the future.  So even if you don’t win you might find yourself invited to participate in a private assignment.  And I can tell you, those are pretty sweet because the sponsors will actually send you free samples of their products so you can feature them in your ads.  Last year I got invited to a private assignment for the Nokia Neuron and Nokia sent me a sweet new cell phone.  (and yes, you get to keep the freebies)

Oh, one more thing; Poptent is apparently thinking about launching a third, Ongoing Assignment but they haven’t picked a theme yet.  Like the other two Open-Ended assignments they want to keep it so you don’t have to actually shoot anything new to submit. Right now they are leaning towards an “Indy trailer / film / pitch assignment.”  What do you guys think about that idea? Is that something you’d want to enter?  Or do you have a better suggestion?  If you’d like to share your thoughts on this leave a comment or e-mail me at and I’ll pass your suggestions on to the Poptent staff.

For details on the current “Demo Reel” assignment, click here.

For details on the Winter installment of the “Second Chance” contest, click here.

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Poptent’s Million Dollar Milestone

Posted by Dan L. on December 27th, 2010

Hey folks, today I’m happy to announce a new feature here on VCN; The Poptent Report.  The monthly report is being sponsored by our pals at Poptent.net and I’ll be using it to cover, what else, Poptent-related news!

And for the inaugural report I’ve got some legitimately astounding news to share.  On December 20th, Poptent announced that it had officially paid out more than ONE MILLION DOLLARS in cash to filmmakers.  That blew my mind when I heard that.  I knew Poptent was really growing fast but I didn’t realize just how serious things had gotten.  I became a Poptent member in the summer of 2009 and it seemed like most assignments paid out $3,500 to $5,000 each.  I’ve watched those figures creep up all year and $7,500 to $10,000 price tags are starting to become the norm.  Right now I’m working on a video for Poptent’s current Sprite assignment and in that one, Sprite is going to be buying FIVE submissions for $5,000 each.  Those are some really, really nice odds.

But the great thing about “winning” a Poptent assignment is that you don’t actually win at all…because Poptent isn’t a “video contest site.”  It’s more of a spec-video-crowdsourcing-social network type thing.  If you’re a filmmaker you accept an assignment, follow the sponsor’s creative brief, shoot an ad and then if the brand likes it, they literally BUY it from you.

What does that mean?  It means that aside from a big bag of cash you also wind up with something you can’t put a price tag on.  It means that technically the huge, well-known company that bought your work is now a CLIENT of yours.  Thanks to Poptent I’ve sold videos to Harley Davidson, Coors Light and Monograms Travel and so on my production company’s website I’m able to say “past clients include Harley Davidson, Coors Light and Monograms Travel.”  That’s hella impressive!  There are a few other contest-hosting sites on the web that are sort of similar to Poptent but the fact you can actually SELL work to big companies through Poptent is what really sets it apart from its competitors.

The other thing that sets Poptent apart is that they don’t screw around when it comes to paying their filmmakers.  Poptent doesn’t offer trips or laptops or giftcards or other prizes.  That million dollars they paid out was in cold, hard cash.  If you see other sites saying that they’ve given out X amount of dollars in prizes you should take that figure with a grain of salt.  The “Actual Retail Value” (AKA the amount you’re going to be paying taxes on) is a lot higher than what the sponsor actually had to spend.  For example, if an airline sponsors a contest and gives away a free plane ticket that ticket doesn’t actually cost them anything.

So anyways, congrats to Poptent on a really significant accomplishment.  Their success has apparently caught the attention of financial big wigs who have recently made multi-million dollar investments in the company.  (I’ll assume they saw some of my videos and realized what amazing geniuses poptent creators are.)  So it sounds like the company is poised to really make an impact on the advertising world (and hopefully my checking account) in the coming years.

If you’re interested in more details about Poptent’s Million Dollar Milestone check out this article from Online Media Daily:

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=141618&nid=121909

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