We’ve just wrapped up our first contest, and it was awesome. We got lots of great submissions from people all across the country, but in the end the winner of the $5,000 Grand Prize was from right here in Philadelphia. Andy Gilligan took home the trophy for this ad he made with his friends on a micro budget (read the whole story here):
But Andy really wanted to go all out, so he went ahead and made two! We loved them both. Have a look at “Make Your Own TV”:
If you’d like to see all the contest winners, head on over to our YouTube channel. And of course, stay tuned for more. We’ve got another contest in the works right now.
Here’s an interesting interview on Vator.tv with TurnHere CEO Brad Inman, where he talks about organizing freelance video makers in a new model of selling affordable video services to businesses who haven’t thought of custom media.
In this blog post, TubeMogul, the online video stats site, calls for video sites to create a standardized model for view-counting. Earlier in the week, they posted a brilliant report about how different video sites track stats, with surprising differences.
The report points out some very interesting, maybe even shocking things. One of the most amazing things I found was that YouTube only counts a full view of a video in it’s statistics. Wow. So not only do they get by FAR the most views, they are getting whole views out of them. That’s pretty awesome. And important. Not unimportantly, therefor, the ‘most viewed’ videos are often the shortest. It doesn’t take long for a 5-second long Dramatic Chipmunk to rack up view stats. Long videos rarely reach their end and thereby subumb to a lack of numbers. Many views drive more views. Shorter vids = more views = more publicity = more shorter vids.
I agree with them on the need for standardization. As they point out, not being able to count views in a comparable way is hurting the industry and hindering a flourishing advertising market.
Consumer-generated ad contests don’t always go as planned. One recent contest for Malibu Carribbean Rum caused a stir among it’s participants and onlookers when the organizers botched the publicity surrounding the judging of the contest. This New York Times article gets into the story.
Interestingly, the by-product of all the hoopla surrounding the controversy is… more people are watching the Malibu commercials! In fact, when I Googled for it, I came up with non-winning entries that I watched first. The contest may have had it’s trouble, but for the brand, the outcome is not too shabby.
I guess it’s about time this happened. I’m actually surprised it took this long. Mashable! is reporting that the Lonelygirl15 team is scripting in a new character who is basically there to sell Neutrogena. While of course, most people’s first reaction is, ‘what sell outs!’ I think it’s important to remember that those guys were all just prosumers like the rest of us. Making videos in their bedroom during free time.
And while no one has really yet figured out how to monetize consumer-generated content, Lonelygirl15 is taking a step in a new direction (a long proven one for networks and film studios).
My only question is, who’s next? Nalts using Gillette’s line of shaving cream next time Renettoshaves his head? Oh wait, maybe he’s already one step ahead of us:
Get yrs now! Here’s a video of a ripoff iPhone being pulled out of the box. The video’s probably worth it’s weight in gold to Apple’s marketing department having already gone viral, even though they’re probably scrambling to stop the makers.
