Video Winners of “The Office” Promotion

Here’s a page sporting the fine winners of the “Create Your Own Promotion” contest. NBC’s “The Office” gave amateurs 19 seconds to get your point across, and some very creative people made great use of that tight window. A few are obviously more than amateurs.

Since NBC hasn’t itself figured out internet video viewing 101, let me give you some advice before you go to the site:

• Don’t close your viewer. You’ll have to sit through a Kinkos ad every time you spawn another video. This makes viewing the winners only a real chore.
• If you stay inside the spawned video viewer, you can rollover thumbails for titles. You can’t click the same video twice in a row, which makes it annoying since some warrant a second view.
• Memo to NBC. If you’re going to do a promotion with YouTube, why not stream the videos via YouTube with rap around ads. You can live without the FedEx ad revenue.. it’s a damned promotion for The Office not episodes of SNL.

My Favorites (and I’d link to them individually but the stupid NBC technology won’t let me)

• Funny Business (this guy is RIGHT out of vaudville)
• Playing at Work (the fake typing is genius)
• Corporate Downsized (fantastic concept… the OTHER branch)
• Dark Dragon (really good acting)
• The Dominator (so random and irreverent)
• You Reap What You Throw (tossing computer over cube wall… why didn’t I think of it)

As for the winners? Not the ones I picked, but I did like a few key moments. “Sing Along” proves Chris Farley is still alive. And Rubberband Ball has a nice moment “some help here” with the guy peaking over the cube.

P.S. I couldn’t like Bobbleheads because it reminded me of a frustrating fact… The media company promoting this contest said they had some Dwight Bobbleheads and t-shirts, and asked if I’d help get the word out. In addition to blogging about it, I ran the ads for the show on CubeBreak.com for 30,000 impressions. Then they told me they ran out but they’d keep me in mind the next time they needed help. 🙁