Tag Archives: Contest

Online Video

Thanks for Helping Jack Up Votes on Video Contest

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It’s the kind of thing that drives semi-pro creators insane (see Jared’s VideoContestKing post). A video contest based not on the quality of the entries but the “popularity” of the creators.

I entered Great Wolf Lodge’s contest, but was amazed that despite family & friend e-mail campaigns that we couldn’t get beyond 2% of votes. My wife kept checking daily, and asking me what more she can do. So reluctantly, I posted this Uncle Nalts video, and now we’re in the running.

A big thanks to captvids.com for captioning my entry (Charlie is sometimes hard to understand in this entry).

P.S. Here’s another contest site: Video Contest News.

Online Video

Video Contests: Creative Awards & Popularity Contests (Butterfingers)

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Jared Cicon aka “Video Contest King” has some sage advice for would-be video contest entrants, and characterizes three types of contests (and which to avoid). Of course, he neglects to tell you not to enter a contest he’s entered. Your chances are slim against his polished creative. Don’t bother.

Jared doesn’t temper his resent against contests that allow video creators to leverage their existing fan base to jack up views and, in his view, manipulate contests. He prefers contests rely less on the creator’s social-media fan base and more on the video creative itself.

The problem, of course, is that the contest sponsor is often running a contest less to identify brilliant creative… and more to engage audiences. So a popular contest entrant with a luke-warm video entry is, to some degree, more valuable to the marketer or agency than a brilliant consumer-generated ad created by an unknown videographer. The advertiser benefits from free visits if the “popular” video creator sends his or her viewers to the contest site. Then the contest micro-site has actual visitors… something they don’t usually otherwise fetch without a significant online-advertising budget promoting it. Ideally when they get to the contest microsite, they’ll find more videos like Jared’s (versus some really poor samples I hazed on a previous post).

Nobody's Gonna Lay a Finger on my Butterfinger video contest

Fortunately for Jared — who creates television-quality commercials but has no major social-media fan base — most contests fail to capitalize on the audiences of popular video creators. For instance, I entered a Butterfinger Contest months ago (see contest site). Although the video was promoted heavily via Yahoo Video banners, my entry didn’t go to my Yahoo-Video profile but presumably to a dark FTP site. It’s not even showing up on the contest site, and I’m not even 100% sure it is being considered. Jared posted his entry on YouTube (an act of generosity or to show off his work) but says it’s disqualified because he used minors. Perhaps mine suffered a similar fate.

This is a contest built for Jared not me. I would not have likely entered knowing Jared was going after the same contest and the same category (gadgets). In fact I entered mostly because my wife kept asking me to do so (she was more optimistic than I that we could win the $25K grand prize). I typically avoid “top heavy” contests (where the winner takes all and the runners up get token prizes). Based on Jared’s previous post, I imagine he might have declined a runner’s up award… also more interested in $25K than a year’s supply of candy).

Had I teased my YouTube audience with out-takes of my contest entry, and sent them to the Butterfingers contest website to see it, the contest website would have likely had 5,000-20,000 visitors (generating that kind of traffic can cost $$$$ when you’re buying display ads). When you’re running a contest, you ideally want Jared-like creative samples (especially if you plan to use them offline) but also some actual traffic on the contest site so the contest is not an embarrassment.

So how could Butterfinger have engaged more target customers, and still ensure the winning video was actually good (and not just done by a popular creator who was able to mobilize fans to jack up votes)?

Two options: a secret panel of judges weighs NOT just the creative but the total views. Then I’ve got an incentive to send my audience to the contest (which I didn’t, if for no other reason because my video never showed). So Butterfinger gets the benefit of my audience, but I can’t completely manipulate the contest because Jared gets points for actually making a better video entry. Alternatively (and a more fair model): agencies judge a video strictly on its creative merit… then contract with popular social media and video “stars” to promote the contest by paying them to make an entry and invite their large audiences to check out the contest microsite. Babe Ruth has done this previously with Rhett & Link, although the video seems to have vanished. Maybe the pay-for-entry is disqualified from winning, or maybe the judges aren’t informed about these deals to avoid bias.

Why are contests still making obvious mistakes after three years of me ranting and ranting and ranting and ranting and ranting and ranting?

Perhaps the agency is cutting a turnkey deal with the video-sharing site, and is guaranteed a certain amount of visits/impressions (giving the contest owner little incentive to find more efficient sources of traffic).

Bottom line: Video contests are often under optimized, and its why PopTent (xlntads) and other companies exist. Jared and I offer two distinct benefits to a contest, and this is not well understood by most brands developing contests. Jared is a professional creator who will ensure the winning video can survive on television and impress visitors to the contest microsite. I have an active online-audience, and can help promote the contest to other video creators and ensure that the contest microsite actually has people to impress (without sucking away precious media dollars that might be better spent to promote the, er, brand not the contest).

Online Video

An Online-Video Contest Crisis Begs for Better Model

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I’ve written quite a bit about online-video contests as a win-win for producers and brands. Unless the agency insists on a giant microsite and excessive media buy, these give brands access to novel creative executions at a great price. And amateur producers can use it to promote their work, and make some bucks.

My support of Xlntads/Poptent is in hopes the startup can bridge the gap between brands (otherwise paying $200,000-$1,000,000 on TV spots in hopes they’ll land well) and the abundance of creative, talented directors who lacks the connections to become a candidate for a major shoot.

So I was rather surprised to see Jared, aka VideoContestKing (see blog) announce that he’s turning down more than $3,000 of prize money because it makes little economic sense for him. Jared, unlike me, has a television-quality production style and that comes with costs that can’t be offset with a year’s supply of Cheetos.

Last week,” said Jared, “I received and email from Right.Org informing me that I had placed 2nd and 7th with two of my video submissions to their contest. The total amount of prize money was $3,034.00. A tidy sum…but not enough for the job. I decided not to sell my creative property at the price point offered by Right.Org.

Here’s one of Jared’s entries, and you can certainly envision it on television:


Jared goes into great detail about his rationale and why it sets a bad precedent for someone making his income on producing television commercials and high-end content. It makes me wonder if Poptent.net can serve a higher niche (certainly that’s Poptent CEO Neil Perry’s vision). In the future, brands will (I strongly believe) engage lower-cost directors and develop a sleuth of TV-ready spots… then they’ll test them without the exhaustive research & revision process that currently goes results in cost-intensive commercial production (insight research, creative platform, message testing, concept testing, final execution). At the end of that process, sadly, we marketers and agencies never quite know if the ad fails or succeeds based on the insight, message approach, or creative execution. But what if you instead contracted with 6-12 producers, and tested numerous treatments online (not just asking “did the consumer like it and remember it?” but “did it increase your propensity to purchase?”

Risks are reduced, costs are minimized, risk is mitigated, and the final ad (whose director would get an additional premium for granting TV rights) would be more effective. Jared and I exchanged e-mails on this issue tonight, and he’s given me permission to share some of his thoughts. If you click “more” in this post, you can see some of the dialogue we’ve had. What do you think? Should Jared accept what he’s been awarded, or stand his ground with hopes of making a point?

Continue reading An Online-Video Contest Crisis Begs for Better Model →

Online Video

Bridal Dog Wins Costume Contest at Readers Digest

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Isn’t it true that the hard videos are never as popular as the easy ones. This video of Rusty and Triscuit (pets of babysitter of nalts) was viewed nearly 700,000 times on Yahoo Video. But my more recent video, “Confessions” was far more complicated, and has been seen 25K views. 

Well congratulations, sweet Rusty. You won the Readers’s Choice Award on Reader’s Digest.com!

And here’s your celebration video. Which was shot when Zipster decided to send Locomama to babysit our kids.

So that wraps up my 3-part series for Reader’s Digest. Thanks, RD! Do you suppose this will increase the odds that they accept one of my jokes or stories? I’ve been trying for more than 2 decades. 🙂

 

 

advertising, book

Winning Doritos Superbowl Commercial

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You won’t likely see this 30-second consumer-generated video in the Superbowl, but I decided to enter the contest anyway. I named this entry “winning commercial” for Google’s spiders not for you. It’s really a loser.

If I was smart, I’d focus on nailing another poorly promoted contest, instead of tossing my hat into this crowded ring.

Feel free to watch this video 9 times so that it makes it to the “most viewed” gallery. 🙂

Kudos to the agency for giving each entry a unique URL instead of the typical bloated flash website that has no way to direct link into a specific video.

The few videos I’ve viewed on the website’s gallergy pretty much suck, but as the deadline of early November approaches the semi-pros will storm the website with killer ads. Some of the entries last year looked like professional producers or agencies looking to get a big break. Here’s the best one so far (although the sex, TV, Doritos is a bit cliche, the payoff and execution is good).

Hey, good point there Nalts. There should be criteria. You qualify only if:

  1. you spend less than 3 hours from concept to uploading,
  2. you have the same person writing, shooting and editing, and
  3. your camera cost no more than $1000.

I suppose I should enter separately the footage of my kids (these two kids are not mine, but I rented them to play to Doritos target demo) scrounging up the dropped Doritos like pigeons at a park.

If my co-worker Mike is reading this, he can kiss my ass with his comments about how I should have used fishing line and a Doritos on a pencil so it’s spinning even on the crane shot (in which I use a pool net to have the camera in the air). Kiss my ass, Mike. Where’s your stupid entry with the guy in college who lives on Doritos and has furniture made of Doritos. That’s almost as bad as some of these other hopefuls.

 

book, Contest, Online Video

7 Commandments for Winning a Video Contest

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Brett Slater (Slaters Garage) was doing radio production, song writing and voiceovers about a year ago. Now he’s integrated simple video into his mix, and is sweeping up contests one after another. How does he do it? Check out his seven commandments for winning a video contest.

I’ll tease you with three:

  1. Thou shalt be brief. 30-60 seconds.
  2. Honor thy target demo.
  3. Remember thy deadline, and keep it holy.

When you’ve learned the rules, enjoy the simplicity of this winner of a “Piece of Maine” contest (by Maine Realtors). It’s a low-production video with a great tune and soulful lyrics. Here’s a guy that celebrates a mindset that where you are — right now — is exactly where you want to be. He shows a map with Maine in red, and the rest of the U.S. as “insane.” All this makes it almost okay that he bought land once stolen from Indians (snap). The song made me smile because the definition of insanity is wanting to be be someone or somehere you’re not. And Slater is celebrating what he’s got and where he already is. 

I used to “free associate” Maine with the madness of Steven King (and maybe lobster on the shore, which I have, incidentally, checked off my bucket list). Now maybe when I consider stopping by Maine, I’ll envision fewer tentacles emerging from The Mist, and instead see Slater on a hammock singing this earworm.

 

advertising, book, Contest, xlntads

How Much is that Viral Video in the Window?

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(This is a guest column by Erik Bratt, director of marketing communications for ProQuo. ProQuo helps consumers eliminate junk mail, and recently hired xlntads.com.

(a new-media promotion firm with whom I work occasionally) to solicit quality video entries that help ProQuo describe its value proposition in unique and entertaining ways.

Can you really buy a viral video?

by Erik Bratt, ProQuot
Conventional wisdom says no. By its very definition, a viral video is something that can’t be bought or made, forced or manipulated. A viral video – a viral anything – just ‘happens,’ striking some type of cultural nerve that prompts people to send it around.

Levi’s ad, levi ads doing model flips featuring male models doing back-flips (literally) into their jeans. The video, which racked nearly 4 million views on YouTube alone last time I checked, never mentions Levi by name, but it wasn’t hard to guess the driving force (Male models? Jeans?). I offer a more modest case in point: Our own video contest. Eager to spread the word about our service for stopping junk mail and managing catalogs (plug: www.proquo.com), we decided to launch a viral video contest earlier this spring in hopes of creating momentum for our free offering.

To get this done, we partnered with XLNTAds.com, a Philadelphia-based company that facilitates a community of 5,000 eager and talented semi-professional videographers. This was our first good decision. XLNTAds.com knows how to run a contest, and their members are fired up about creating great content. We were also fortune to have great subject matter – who can’t work with junk mail as topic? The contest rules were simple: keep it clean, make it funny, and focus on junk mail, not ProQuo. Because we are not as big of a brand as Levi, we also asked that they at least include our URL somewhere in their video.

The carrot? $1,500 for each of the top 10 videos. The contest “assignment” was posted on April 1. One month later we had more than 160 entries. Deciding on the top 10 videos was not easy, requiring several viewing sessions and at least one company viewing party (with blind voting). We finally picked our 10 winners and created a special page for visitors to interact with them: www.proquo.com/videocontest.

So, we had our funny videos, but what about the viral part? Instead of scrambling to post these videos ourselves, or buying space on different networks, we worked with XLNTAds.com to provide incentives to the winning creators to ‘viral-ize’ the videos on their own. We offered a tiered award structure for the creators who had the most number of views across multiple video platforms.

For the money, this was our second good decision.

We’ve been pleasantly surprised at the number of places our videos have popped up – on dozens of different video platforms, in blogs, and on web sites. At last count, we had more than 160K views on just those 10 videos (many of the runner-ups also got posted). We never could have achieved that many views on our own without paying for placements

So did we succeed in creating or buying a viral video? Not really.

We didn’t get on the front of YouTube (which requires at least 50K views) or any other video platform. We didn’t pop up in tens of thousands of emails within the span of few days saying, ‘dude, check this video out!”

What we did accomplish was to generate a large number of video views, as well as traffic and registrations to our site (made trackable from URLs placed high up in some of the video descriptions). We also provided entertaining content for our site visitors and registered users, whom we encouraged to help rate the videos

Another bonus was our engagement with the videographers themselves. We were touched by the effort that so many people and their friends put into the videos. In the end, that type of engagement and goodwill may be worth more than any viral video.

Editorial note (back to Nalts): This is a good case study, and shows a few key points: 

  • ProQuo could have tried doing this itself, but it would have been far more expensive and out of its core competency.
  • The value to ProQuo is being assessed comprehensively- as opposed to the views and clicks.
  • By leveraging xlntads creators with built audiences, Proquo had a way to reach far more potential consumers than they could have ever reached on its own.
  • Finally- with time, someone searching Proquo will find these creative executions instead of a video blog by someone who wasn’t keen on the offering. So for search engines alone, it might be justified.

Thanks, Erik, for sharing your story!

Online Video

Babe Ruth’s “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” Contest

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babe ruth contestNestle teamed with Major League Baseball on this “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” contest (they’ve even got a blog). Nestle’s agency asked me to propose concepts to promote it, but selected Rhett and Link, who did this clever Goth promo.

Now viewers will vote the winner, and I’ve got my favorite: Babe Ruth ulele (credit to the first video contest site that allows people to link directly to one video).

Sure it falls apart after 20-30 seconds, but the combination of a ukulele and a tuba is almost as funny as a Babe Ruth in a pool. You know, I totally wouldn’t have linked the “doody scene” from Caddyshack to this contest if they’d have picked me instead of Rhett and Link.

doody

advertising, book, Online Video

Consumer-Generated Ad: Oreo Global Moments Finalist?

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oreo naltsI usually don’t make a lot of noise about a contest I’m entering, and I’ve been entering fewer lately. The competition is high, and I rarely win (although often I’m a finalist). The Oreo contest intrigued me because certain YouTube creators were asked to enter, and I figured that would improve my odds. There’s going to be an open amateur contest too, but those will be judged separately. Here’s the clip because if I embed it, it kills the entire blog template.

In truth, the “behind the scenes” may be funnier than the video itself. What child says to his father, “are we going to get arrested again?” Let the record show we’ve never been arrested for making a video. We’ve been hollered at a few times maybe.

oreo I thought the deadline was next week, and then received an e-mail last evening before leaving work. Thanks to a vigilant babysitter, we conceptualized, shot, edited and sent it all last night. My wife was teaching, and we had to an attend an animal-shelter event. So everything was quite rushed. The concept emerged when Jo suggested making “Oreo Man” out of one of the kids. Jen, our sitter, then said she had an Oreo costume from her childhood. She took all four kids to her parents’ house and found the costume in the 100-degree attic. When she returned, we did the kitchen shot, and decided to get some cow footage (Charlie was going to be our cookie, but he wasn’t in the mood). Jen asked if I wanted to take along the cow suit, which ended up inspiring a nice resolution to the 2-minute spot. If I may be so bold, here’s what I like about the video (which is posted on my “responseofnalts” YouTube account).

  • The camera shots are amateurish, but the editing was a labor. It took about 3-4 hours to edit if you include the score. I finished it just in time for the midnight deadline.
  • Grant (the orange shirt Oreo dude) was priceless. He’s 5 and reminds me of Charlie Brown sometimes, and I gave him the “good grief” line to pay homage to Charles Schulz. Can’t you just feel his pain when his brothers laugh at him? And when he whispers in my ear, I melt.
  • The video — by sheer fortune, the sitter’s innovation, the kids patience, and careful editing — actually has a story arch (conflict, resolution, etc.). This, of course, was accomplished without a pesky script or storyboard. If I go there I almost always lose energy before I turn on the camera.

Typically consumers entering brand contests try to emulate what they believe should be a television ad. I think that’s where many miss the mark of consumer-generated ads, because they end up looking like lame cable-television advertisements instead of a crafty amateur spots. The only thing commercial about this video is the music, product shots and frequent messages of Oreo. I stayed faithful to the brief by telling a story about Oreos and milk. But I was careful not to sell Oreos… it’s more about creating an affinity moment than hocking some product attribute.

I think my chances are good, but I don’t know who else entered. And if all else fails, the good folks at Kraft did send me a giant box of Oreos. They’re really good frozen.

advertising, Blogs on Video, book, Making Money, Making Videos, Online Video, Video Advertising, Video Business, Video Contests, xlntads, YouTube

How to Win a Contest (Case Study)

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ZackScott, one of my favorite fearless video creators, returns for a guest blog post about winning a recent Xlntads ProQuo contest (disclaimer: Zack and I both contribute to Xlntads as members of a “creative advisor board, and he wins contests while I think about them). Zack told me yesterday, “I’m hoping people think I’m such an asshole when they read it.” See article below, and then click “more” to read some of the techniques Zack deployed.

Zack Scott has a big headHey party people. It’s the Zack Scott again. If you keep up with XLNTads, you might know that I recently won one of the ten prizes for the ProQuo contest that recently ended. I can’t take all of the credit though. My friend Samuel Seide and I both worked hard on putting together a cool video titled “Sick Mailbox.” I’ve decided to write this guest post so that I can give you a behind-the-scenes look at making the video.

I don’t know the exact reasons why our video was a winner, but hopefully analyzing the creative process will provide some insight. Maybe you’ll even find some of this information helpful when it comes to making your own videos. The main requirement of the contest was for the video to be funny while pointing out that ProQuo can help stop physical junk mail.

So my main goal was simply to make a funny video and then worry about how to squeeze the message in later.

proquo mailbox parodySamuel and I initially conceived a talking mailbox that vents its personal frustrations about junk mail. It didn’t really sound like a winning formula on its own, but we figured we could make it really cheesy and go for the “it’s funny because it’s so lame” type of humor. We then decided the mailbox should be sick of junk mail. Literally. And then we’d give him medicine. This turned out to be a great idea because the medicine could be ProQuo! Then the compact florescent light bulbs in our heads lit up, and we decided to do a spoof of those corny pharmaceutical commercials. I think we got a little mercury poisoning. When you see the video, it’s obvious that it is a pharmaceutical commercial spoof. But it may be interesting to know that we didn’t start working and scripting with that in mind. In fact, if I were watching the video for the first time, I would think the talking mailbox was a result of the pharmaceutical concept, not the other way around. I ended up being really pleased with what we did because it all fell together quite nicely. The pharmaceutical concept gave us a great template for a lot of different types of humor. I’m not sure how original it is to portray a product as something else entirely, but it did give us some creative leeway. If you haven’t watched the video yet, watch it now to avoid the spoilers below! 

Note: To read Zack’s techniques, click “more” below.

Continue reading How to Win a Contest (Case Study) →