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Folgers refuses to help contestants after their video uploader crashes

Posted by Dan L. on March 12th, 2013

This lady is happy because she managed to upload her jingle before the site started freezing up

Believe it or not, Folgers’ 2011 Jingle contest was one of the popular video contests in history. According to the contest site, more than 3,000 entries were submitted and one lucky performer won $25,000. The coffee company brought the contest back this year and once again they asked musicians to create their new jingle. The songs could be done in any musical style; the only catch was that the new jingle needed to include the classic “The Best Part of Waking up….” melody and lyrics. Twenty Five grand is a hell of a lot of money and so as expected, the 2013 contest was a huge success. But in a way maybe it was a little too successful. Too many people tried to upload their videos at the last minute (and by “last minute” I mean the final 24 hours before the deadline) and a lot of entries never got through. People started to complain about the problem on Folgers’ facebook page the night before the deadline. Here’s a screenshot:

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But by the morning of the deadline, Folgers’ facebook wall was filling up with complaints. Someone from the company finally left a comment and posted a number for their “call center.” They said that someone at the call center would be able to help.

But of course no one at the call center knew how to fix an over-loaded website so calling the number didn’t do much good. One disgruntled contestant e-mailed me and explained what happened to him:

I tried on multiple browsers a full 24 hours before the deadline, nothing worked. Uploaded to yousendit and sent them the link, also posted the link on facbeook but they ignored it.

I called the number they posted, no help. They said “they’d give my contact info to the promotions department who would be in touch with me shortly.” They never got in touch. I asked to speak directly to the promotions department, they wouldn’t put my through. I tweeted to them, no response to my tweets. I wrote back on the facebook page (along with a lot of other people complaining) but they wouldn’t do anything to help us.

As the noon deadline approached, people started freaking out. Most of them had put a huge amount of time and energy into their entries and they were being screwed at the very last second by technical problems that were beyond their control. Apparently some people who called Folgers were told to try uploading their videos using Internet Explorer. That trick worked for some people but not for others. Folders’ facebook wall was soon slammed with comments from worried songwriters:

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A lot of people simply gave up and uploaded their videos to other sites. Then they posted links on Folgers’ facebook wall to prove they TRIED to upload their video before the deadline:

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I saw at least 5 posts like that and Folgers ignored them all. Finally, about 7 hours after the deadline had passed, Folgers announced that the entry period was over and if a video wasn’t accepted it was because it didn’t fit the contest guidelines or because contestants had experienced “browser and Internet connection problems.” So in the end they pushed all the blame onto the contestants and took no responsibility for their tech problems. As you can probably guess, this didn’t go over too well with some people:

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I didn’t personally enter the Folgers contest but I’ve been looking into this debacle and I’m positive that Folgers is 100% responsible for screwing up this contest.* Their video uploader sucked and that’s all there is too it. It wasn’t able to handle all the last minute submissions and it just crapped out and froze up. And if Folgers knew that everyone should use Internet Explorer to upload their entries, why the heck didn’t they say so right from the start? This is the 3rd time Folgers has run this contest and as I said, last time they got more than 3,000 entries. Didn’t anyone realize that hundreds and maybe thousands of people would try and submit videos on the day of the deadline?

Of course, I can understand technical difficulties….they happen. But Folgers’ reaction to these problems has simply been despicable. I’d estimate that dozens of people weren’t able to get their videos uploaded because of Folgers’ last minute glitches. Instead of trying to help these people, Folgers just threw up their arms and said basically said “Oh well! If you couldn’t get your video in it’s because YOU had a problem, not us!” That’s no way to run a promotion, a facebook page or a business. Folgers is supposed to announce a set of finalists this friday. Maybe they’ll come to their senses and un-screw all their unhappy fans by re-opening the uploader for a few hours before then.

*POST SCRIPT: It hit me that Folgers probably hired a third-party company to help them run their giant jingle contest. It looks like they did and that company seems to be Momentum Worldwide which is a part of McCann. Here’s how MW describes themselves:

Momentum Worldwide is the first and only marketing agency for the Phygital™ world and creates ideas that extend brand engagement with consumers through the interplay of experiences in both the physical and digital spaces. While the heritage of Momentum is built on live events and sponsorships, and our expertise now also spans sales promotion, sports, music and entertainment, shopper and digital marketing – we do not live in silos and are truly discipline-agnostic.

That has easily got to be the biggest load of marketing-speak bullshit I’ve ever seen. You know, it takes a certain kind of douche to come up with the word “phygital” but takes an even bigger douche to try and trademark the term. Momentum Worldwide’s facebook page says that they’re in Austin for SXSW right now. Guess that explains why they’re too busy to help the people that got screwed in the Folgers’ contest.

Genero picks their 2012 Video of the Year

Posted by Dan L. on February 17th, 2013

Holly Gennero: Die Hard’s wife and founder of Genero.tv (I assume)

It’s not easy to produce a decent, low-budget music video (especially when you can’t shoot new footage of the featured artists) but some of the winners that come out of Genero.tv are surprisingly good. Last year the crowdsourced music video site received more than 1,900 submissions and from those the ~~Gennero~~ Genero staff selected 140 nominees for their “Video of the Year” award. The big 2012 winner was shot for for Passion Pit’s “I’ll be Alright” contest by a filmmaker named Greg Barth. The video already earned $3,000 for winning the Passion Pit contest but the director will receive a $5,000 bonus for winning the Video of the Year competition. Here’s a little background info from the Genero blog:

Greg’s video became the official video for ‘I’ll Be Alright’ and has gone on to receive 400,000 views and counting on Passion Pit’s YouTube channel; it was also selected as a Staff Pick on Vimeo. The video is striking, surreal and packed with deeper meaning while being hugely entertaining and memorable. It’s a wonderfully realised concept, and expertly edited.

Greg describes the film: “A heart broken museum security guard sees reality shift after abusing his medication, bringing him back to a glorified vision of his past love. Each piece of art suddenly takes part in illustrating the love cycle surrounding him. From the triangle symbolizing Seduction (Gold), to the Fiery Passion that consumes a relationship (Yellow), the entangled and complicated Break Up (Red, Dynamite), ending up with the hopeful and healing Rebirth ( Green).”

Like most modern Internet-users I have the attention span of a drunk four-year-old so I rarely have the patience to sit through an entire 3 minute long music video. But this one really struck a cord with me for some reason and I watched it from beginning to end…twice. It’s a simple idea but it’s well executed and weirdly hypnotic.

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Genero also picked a “Director of the Year” and it was Julia Rogowska and her team, “OMGITSME.” Together they submitted 5 darn good videos in 2012 but it looks like they only had one winner. But the OMGITSME team will receive $10,000 for winning the “Director of the Year” award so that’s nice. You can see more of their work here.

Orbitz’ “Vacation Party Candidate” winner

Posted by Dan L. on October 2nd, 2012

Warning: If you wear a suit and tie while snorkeling you’re just gonna sink.

When I read the details of the “Vacation Party Candidate” video contest I kicked myself for not entering. I love to travel and the grand prize was $25,000 in travel from Orbitz. But when the 3 finalists were announced a few weeks ago I was actually pretty relived that I didn’t submit a video. That’s because one of the 3 finalists was video contest-super winner Walt Arnett of Lexington, KY. Over the last few years, Arnett has racked up more than $200,000 in video contest winnings. I’ve seen him pop up in a ton of contests and he definitely has a formula for success. It seems like he mostly enters facebook-based contests that decide their winners in two stages. In the first stage, judges pick some finalists and then in the second stage, facebook votes determine the ultimate winner. The thing about Arnett is that he is a vote-getting machine. I’ve seen him win more than a few contests by huge landslides. So if he can make a video good enough to make the second round of one of these contests, it’s almost guaranteed that he’s going to win the top prize. And that’s what happened with the Orbitz contest. Judges picked three finalists and then voters picked the winner. Here’s his winning submission. The point of the contest was to explain why you should be “elected” as Orbitz’ Vacation spokesperson:

Orbitz’ Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $25,000:

Click to view on Facebook

In addition to the cash, the winner also gets to go on a little goodwill tour. This is from an Orbitz press release:

“Arnett will be on a coast-to-(almost)-coast campaign tour where he will share his bold, pro-vacation stance, give out random acts of vacation kindness and most importantly show Americans how to vacation in style. Arnett will make stops at some of the most illustrious hotels in top vacation spots across the country: October 5-6: The Perry South Beach, Miami, October 12-13: Mirage, Las Vegas, October 19-20: The Peninsula, Chicago.”

Hmmm, I wonder what kind of “acts of vacation kindness” he’ll be performing. I know Walt is a reader of VCN and I happen to live in the Chicago area. If he’s giving out freebies maybe he can tell me where and when he’ll be and he can slip me a travel voucher!

Hey Chuck, thanks for the cash!!!

Posted by Dan L. on July 30th, 2012

Darn right, I did

Were you awake and watching CBS This Morning at about 7:40AM on Saturday? No?!?! Well that’s too bad because if you had tuned in you would’ve seen an interview with the $10,000 winner of Charles Schwab’s “Oh Chuck, I Blew my Cash” photo and video contest…and that winner was me!

On top of the ten grand, the nice folks at Charles Schwab also treated me to a trip to New York so I could appear on CBS’ morning show. It was a very surreal experience but overall I had a ton of fun. I would have promoted my little appearance ahead of time but I had to keep the news top secret. For this contest, people were supposed to submit a photo or a video and tell a story about something crazy that they wasted money on. (Money that could have been put to better use in a Charles Schwab account.) As soon as I read the description for this one I knew exactly what my video was going to be about. Here’s my submission:

Grand Prize Winner. Prize: $10,000 in a Schwab account and a trip to New York:

Believe it or not, filming that video was one of the most difficult shoots of my life! Because I’m an idiot I waited until the last minute and I wound up filming on one of the hottest and brightest days of the year. That’s why the colors look kind of weird. Even with my ND filter on, the sun just blasted everything out so I had to darken all the footage in post. This was literally the last video I shot with my big, bulky HVX-200. Have you every tried to hold a 15 pound video camera over your head while inside a bouncy house that was as hot as an oven after filming outside in the bright sun for a few hours? I have and I don’t recommend it. After I turned my camera off I basically collapsed onto the floor of the bouncy house. I had barely ate or drank anything all day (like I said, I’m an idiot) and suddenly I realized that I might have heat stroke. My head was throbbing, my skin felt like it was 105 degrees and I could barely move. The bouncy house had been stored in my grandmother’s garage and I did the shoot in her backyard. I was by myself, laying on the inflatable floor and I felt like I was dying. Then a terrifying thought crossed my mind; dying of heat stroke inside of a bouncy castle while filming a video contest entry would be the most hilarious and appropriate way I could possibly die. But there was no way I was going to spend my last moments in a goddamn bouncy castle so I forced myself to slither out of the little opening. I rushed home and looked in the mirror and my skin was blood red. I thought I had gotten a terrible sun burn. But after I took an ice cold shower and drank a gallon of water my skin color was back to normal. So it wasn’t a sun burn…it was a sign that I was you know, sort of dying of heat stroke.

But in the end my near death experience was worth it! I’ve won a $10,000 video contest prize before but since I got a free trip, this is technically my biggest win ever. And being on CBS This Morning was a great prize in and of itself. I was on with a financial consult from Schwab and he actually did most of the talking. The hosts just introduced me, asked me a question or two and then they started talking about fiances with the adviser guy. I did manage to squeeze in one joke and I think I accidentally embarrassed the consultant a little bit. The hosts asked if he had given me any advice about how how I should spend my prize money. I said something like “backstage this guy was telling me I should buy 10 more bouncy castles!” (I just noticed how shocked he looks in the screengrab about to post.) He was a cool guy though and he kept me talking backstage to help me from being nervous. So just for the record, he did NOT tell me I should buy $10,000 worth of bouncy houses.

Our segment is on the CBS This Morning website and you can see it by clicking this image of me cracking wise. By the way, my real, non-Beardy name is Dan but at the end of the video the host called me Don. (I assume it was because I reminded her of Don Draper.) So since Saturday I’ve got about 20 “Congratulations Don!” texts, calls and facebook messages from my wise ass friends.

You’ll have to sit through a commercial and a lot of finance talk if you watch the video. Sorry about that.

I’ve been to New York a lot of times over the years but my “Oh Chuck” adventure was definitely a lot classier than my past visits. Schwab put me up in the Parker Meridian which is a super swanky place. I had a totally baller hotel room over looking central park. I also had a car service take me wherever I needed to go and let me tell you, that little perk is priceless if you’re in NYC. Oh, and I also got my very first Per Diem! I blew about 25% of it having “James Beard Award winning” potato pancakes for breakfast in my hotel’s trendy little restaurant though.

In all, the Oh Chuck, I Blew My Cash contest received over 250 photo and video submissions so the odds make this win all the sweeter. A huge thanks goes out to the folks at Charles Schwab for being so cool to me and for running such an awesome contest. Even if I hadn’t won, this competition would have earned a place on my “best video contests of 2012″ list. This was actually a really huge promotion; four runners up won prizes of $5,000 each and several honorable mentions won $1,000 prizes. You can click to see the winning photos and to see the winning videos.

Ringo announces the winner of his video contest

Posted by Dan L. on May 10th, 2012

It seems like a lot of bands are running music video contests these days and I always stay far away from them. Producing 3 or 4 minutes of interesting video content is pretty damn hard. And for some weird reason, the prizes are usually pretty small. Ringo Starr just ran a music video contest for his new song “Wings” and even though Ringo has got to be like a mega-super-millionaire the grand prize was only $3,000. I happen to think Ringo is awesome and I doubt he had much to do with the contest. But these small prizes just guarantee that there won’t be too many great entries. Of course, the winner does get a credit as the director of Ringo’s official music video. And that’s pretty sweet. But that credit kind of seems less impressive if you know the video was made for a contest.

Anyways, like I said, Ringo is cool. And the video he made to announce the winner of his contest is pretty funny. You can tell that someone probably just pulled him into his backyard to shoot this. Then even though a incredibly loud plane flies right overhead, Ringo kept going. So one take was all that Ringo had time for. But he does say something pretty perfect at the end that saves the whole video:

And now here’s the music video that won the contest. As you’ll hear/see, this was a really hard song to make a video for since there were long breaks where there weren’t any lyrics:

You can read the details of the contest or see more entries right here. Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love.

eHarmony “Viral Video” contest winner

Posted by Dan L. on March 18th, 2012

Man, I must be slipping. EHarmony’s Viral Video contest is just the sort of contest I like to enter. They wanted wacky short films about eHamorny rather than traditional ads. But somehow, I totally missed this one. Judges picked four finalists and then the public chose the ultimate winner. The video that won the popular vote is amusing and pretty well done.

Eharmony’s First Place Winner. Prize: $8,000:

The winning filmmaker, Steven Huffaker actually shot two entries for this contest and his non-winning submission is so weird I had to post it too. As a short film, I think it’s pretty good but as a video contest entry, it’s totally insane. There is no panel of contest judges with balls big enough to put their company’s stamp of approval on a video that points out that Jesus’ death on the cross maybe wasn’t such a big sacrifice since he knew he was the son of God and that he’d be resurrected. Yes…for serious.

UPDATE: Hey now, the director of these two videos left a comment last night and said that the he shot the Jesus ad just for fun. It wasn’t actually a submission. That actually makes me like that video even more than I already did since it was just a crazy short film and not a contest entry.

One Million votes cast in the Street King video contest

Posted by Dan L. on March 12th, 2012

Fiddy's giving you the stink eye

My friends all know that I’m a video contest nut so every so often someone will hear about a contest and send me a link. A few weeks ago, I got a message from a friend telling me that 50 Cent was holding a video contest on facebook to promote some crappy energy drink company that he owns (what is it with celebrities starting energy product companies??) and that I should enter and try and win the $10,000 prize. So I checked out the rules and man….was I turned off by what I read. I’ve come to accept the fact that most big-money video contests involve public voting, but for some insane reason, people were allowed to vote up to 10 TIMES A DAY for the same video. So instead of begging friends for just one vote, contestants were expected to beg their friends to vote for them 10 times a day, every day for weeks. And to make matters even worse, the voting was happening during the submission period. That means that anyone who entered in the first few days would have an enormous advantage over everyone else in the contest. In fact, when I first learned about this contest I looked at some of the “most popular” submissions and some videos already had thousands and thousands of votes.

When all was said and done, 300 videos were submitted but over ONE MILLION votes were cast! According to my calculator, that’s 3,333 votes per entry. A million votes in a contest with a $10,000 prize is freaking ridiculous. Luckily, I didn’t waste my time and enter this train wreck of a contest. But I still feel bad for the 300 suckers that wasted their time (and their family and friends’ time) trying to win 50 Cent’s ten grand. My friend who told me about this contest is a pretty smart guy but even he didn’t bother to look into HOW a person was supposed to win the grand prize. Like most of the people who probably entered, he just heard that 50 Cent was holding a big video contest and got excited. So the lesson for today is look before you leap. I bet most of the people who entered the Street Kings contest shot entries and THEN read the fine print that explained what they needed to do to win.

Here’s the video that wound up receiving the most votes. It’s actually pretty decent. I’m guessing the guy who made this knew exactly what he was getting into when he decided to shoot a submission:

First Place Winner. Prize: $5,000 & trip to NYC to meet Mr. Cent:

Like I said, that was pretty good. But I’ve certainly never seen so much gun play in a video contest entry before. A lot of contests straight up prohibit the depiction of firearms or realistic violence but this contest was sponsored by 50 Cent’s company so I guess Fiddy obviously doesn’t really mind if people associate him or his “brand” with firearms.

Sheets Energy Strips cheaps out, gets a TV commercial for free

Posted by Dan L. on March 1st, 2012

yuk.

I don’t know much about basketball but I have picked up on the fact that Lebron James is considered to be one of the biggest jerks in the NBA. Well now it seems like he’s trying to become known as one of the biggest jerks in advertising. Last fall, Adweek ripped apart the ad campaign for a company that James represents and co-founded; Sheets Energy Strips. The site called their “I Take a Sheet…” campaign “the low point in 2011 advertising.“ If you’re not familiar with Sheets they are these little strips that you pop in your mouth. They’re just like those breathe strip things but these are filled with caffeine. The whole ad campaign for Sheets is based on an weird, poop-centric puns. Millions of people around the country have had crap like this forced into their brain over the last few months…..

Get it? It's a pun on "taking a shit!"

If forcing people at bus stops to picture middle aged ladies taking dumps on the floor of a library wasn’t bad enough, the geniuses at Sheets decided to expand their campaign with a new national TV commercial. But I guess that the 15 million dollars Lebron made last year (just from playing for the Heat) wasn’t enough to actually pay for an ad. So the Sheets team decided to exploit desperate filmmakers by holding an idiotic video contest. People were supposed to shoot 30 second commercials for Sheets and then get all their friends to vote for their entry. The ads that had the most facebook likes would go on to the finals and then Lebron and a few other celebrity judges (if you consider a guy named “PitBull” a celebrity) would choose the winner. The winning ad would then play on TV and in movie theaters nationwide.

Normally, a “low budget” TV commercial will cost tens of thousands of dollars produce. And decent ads can sometimes even cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. Just think about it….the sponsor has to pay SAG wages, they have to hold auditions, hire hair and make up people, get permits, rent equipment, hire a director that’s in the DGA and pay a small army of tech people to shoot and edit the thing. So getting a commercial from a video contest can save a company a small fortune. Even if they put up a prize of say $10,000, that’s nothing compared to what it would cost to fund a “professional” spot.

But the people Sheets didn’t think an “amateur” ad was worth even a measly grand. That’s right….there was no cash prize in this contest. Sheets wanted filmmakers to produce a TV quality commercial for them and then get everyone they know to like Sheets’ facebook page and vote for their entry and then sign the rights away so Sheets could use their work for ZERO dollars. The fact that the commercial would air on TV was supposed to be enough of an honor, I suppose. Oh, but at least the six finalists each won a pair of headphones. That seems totally fair, right?

The Sheets commercial contest ended last week and here’s the ad that the judges picked as the winner. I watched some of the other and this was really the only finalist that was even commercial-like, if ya know what I mean. One of the 6 finalist ads was like 34 seconds long. So pretty much this was the only viable, air-able entry I saw.

Sheets Contest Winner. Prize: Jack Sheet:

I think it’s absolutely awesome when companies “crowdsource” their ads but every once in a while you get some shitty company like Sheets that just wants to use filmmakers so they can get something for nothing. Folks seriously, if you ever see a video contest where the sponsors are offering a prize of zero dollars, don’t enter. If they think your work is literally worthless, don’t give it to them. I know that it might be cool to see your commercial air on TV but it probably won’t help your career in the long run. No potential employer is going to be impressed with the fact that you won a video some prize-less video contest because you were able to get the most facebook votes.