They are just GIVING money away on YouTube, huh.

Did someone say more YouTube contests?

- Smell like a Puma, or tell them what gets you going, I think.
- LG wants you to have 18K. Not 19 or 17, but 18.
- Tom Cruise doesn’t know what you stand for.

Previous YouTube prize fun:
1) Hanes.
2) Axe.
3) Novartis.
4) McDonald’s.
5) Tiger Balm.
6) Miss Horrorfest 2007.
7) Nesquik.

Only you can prevent unwanted condom designs.

By designing something people like. One brand condoms is looking for design submissions for 2008 for their condom packging. Deadline is Dec.31st. Enter now. (Ouch.) Speaking of clichés, dig a little deeper than a White House series please: logo over Bush, Cheney, etc., ho-hum. Next.)

Tags: One condoms

Okay armchair Spielbergs, YouTube wants your backyard mishaps.

“Hello. My name’s Jason Reitman. HP is sponsoring this contest. If you wi...”
CUT. From the top please.
“Hi, I’m Jason Reitman and I’m here to te...”
CUT. Again please.
“Hey guys, my name’s Jason Reitman. Wanna hang with real filmmakers like me and listen to my dad’s Bill Murray stories?”
CUT.
“FUCK! What was wrong with that one? Okay. Gimmee a sec ... motivation, motivation. Okay. I’m good. Let’s go!”
“Hi. Check out another YouTube contest. Thanks.”
CUT. That’s a Wrap. Nice job Jason.

Previous YouTube prize fun:
1) Hanes.
2) Axe.
3) Novartis.
4) McDonald’s.
5) Tiger Balm.
6) Miss Horrorfest 2007.

Tags: HP, Project:Direct

Hot chicks covered in real fake blood.

Figured that was a better title than “Be the next Queen of Scream.” As for YouTube contests, spoke too soon. There’s one more: Miss Horrorfest 2007. It’s really just a continuation of the same contest the 8 Films To Die For festival has been running from last year, but hey, $50,000 is $50,000. If you’re female. And hot. And covered in blood. Otherwise, go spray some Nesquik on something and enter that contest.

Tags: 8 Films To Die For, Miss Horrorfest 2007

Nestlé wants you to shake that shit up yo.

Okay, if no one else wants it, I’ll be the Official YouTube Consumer-Generated Contest Sweepstakes Prize Thing blog. So now Nestlé is dipping their toes in the loser-generated waters with a graf-inspired promo for their contest. Edgy! Look at Nestlé gettin all street n shit. So shake something you own, attach a Nesquik logo to it, and then win cash. (Maybe I could duct tape a bottle to a .50 cal from the earlier gun video.)


Previous YouTube prize fun:
1) Hanes.
2) Axe.
3) Novartis.
4) McDonald’s.
5) Tiger Balm.

Tags: Nestlé, Nesquik

Hanes Quest For Comfort.

Over on iFilm, Hanes and SPike TV want you to upload a video in their Quest For Comfort contest about how Hanes makes you comfortable. Did you say cash? I sure did, try $5,ooo big ones. Judging from the rules though, good luck making anything creative. I know brands are leary of the type of submissions they’ll get from the public, but the myth of ‘consumer’ generated content will continue until people have freedom to do what they want with the brand in contests like this. (On a side note, neither this or the Axe contest were mentioned at all on their respective brand’s main websites. Why would you miss a chance to get the word out like that?)

Tags: Quest For Comfort, Hanes

Get dirty with David Spade.

Ironic too, David once did a bit about a falling star on SNL. Was Paulie Shore too busy? Guess what user-gen x: make a dirty video about getting clean, then upload it, then win stuff. Check out all the fun here. (And isn’t there something just a little wrong about letterboxing an Axe spot?)

Tags: David Spade, Axe

Novartis wants you to gain valuable street cred as a YouTube filmmaker.

Yep. Floodgates. YouTube. Brands. Contests. Overrun. Easy Novartis. These are the YouTube waters off Australia and there are plenty of Great Whites waiting to tear you up with bloggers like me ready to chum the waters–or since we’re talking flu, ‘sniff out’ the fakes. Can you handle it? After hearing the rules to this FluFlix contest, I doubt it. When will brands learn. Please stop making your brand’s ‘features’ and ‘target demos’ such a required part of loser-generated anything. Want to know what the only must-haves for a contest should be?

A LOGO OR MENTION OF THE BRAND SOMEWHERE.

Period. Doesn’t have to be persistent, just get it in somewhere. If your brand is established, it won’t hurt if the damn logo isn’t front and center the entire time. And the direction for the spot should be this: just make a cool as hell video about the brand/product. In this case, it’s about getting a flu shot. (I guess they must have resolved that pesky shortage thing from last year. Ouch.) Doing it that way is better. You’ll get what you get. Some lousy, some funny as hell. But it’ll be genuine and most of them will be a helluva lot better than anything produced under the rules typically required in contests like this.

But they won’t. The coolest vids in this thing will get overlooked because they’ll be judging them through the same guidelines-driven eyes that they do with their regular agency creative. “I like this one, but the logo isn’t really big enough. This one doesn’t mention what we do enough. That one said a bad word.’”

And since I’m in idea mode, why not have a microsite off this that has people voting on the ‘Flix’ that made them the most ill? (Gigli in a landslide.) Or the best shot at something they ever took? It’s Novartis so there must be plenty of career-changing soccer moms with stories about going back to school later in life.)

I’m here all week.

Tags: Novartis

Is McDonald’s just trying to be BK now?

Setting aside the fact that the floodgates are now open for brands to take over YouTube, here’s what the fast food industry playbook for 2007 appears to be: let’s just all do weird shit. BK did it first with Subservient, so let’s copy them, right? Maybe some of it will work. Maybe some of it won’t. Doesn’t matter. Let’s just try anything. So go to this contest page on YouTube and watch Napolean Quarter Pounder dude change into shorts. You could win stuff. Oh, and because the MD–yeah that’s right, I said ‘the MD’–has become all things to all demos, read the comments and see just how much the masses really are ‘Lovin’ It.’

How long before the pendulum swings back towards normal though.

Tags: Dollar Menunaire, BK, McDonald’s, The Savvies

Calling all jackasses: Tiger Balm needs painful videos.

Or something like that. Another loser-generated contest involving tigers, pain and YouTube. Or something like that. Check out the details and rules for more info. Look, why don’t they just give the money to Johnny Knoxville, have him or his minions run into shit around town, film it, and there go your spots. It’ll get more views than they could ever want. Or is it just me.

Tags: Tiger Balm

Acceptable.tv

YouTube 2.0 meets SNL mixed with product placement and a consumer-generated chaser. Acceptable.tv is but one of the next steps in integrated/branded entertainment. Props to the agency who pulled it off. “Hey, what if we take YouTube and have people vote on our SNL-style skits. We’ll have people who can actually write and perform though. (But we’ll also let the public upload their stuff.)” I like the concept. Vote on skits that didn’t suck so they would return next week. On second thought, Lorne Michaels couldn’t do this–nothing would make it through to week two.

Overall, the skits were ok. Jack Black is an executive producer, but his appearance is more for show. Homeless James Bond was good, probably as funny as anything on SNL lately. As for product placement integration, Amp’d Mobile sponsored this week’s show. Not unusal, but what is is that one of the videos they created featured the product openly, almost to the point of absurdity. And I would’ve liked to see a trackback to the show from amp’d’s website, but that’s small.

Coupla two, three things else though.

First, with product placement so openly on display, does it interfere with the skit too much? Mike Meyers did a great spoof on this n Wayne’s World by holding up a series of products while breaking the fourth wall and talking to us about each one. Funny there, but will a steady diet of it here be overkill? Gimmee some entertainment, light on the hardsell, even if it is over-the-top on purpose. Trading Spaces and all the other Lowe’s/Home Depot-sponsored shows on TLC pull this off smoothly.

Secondly, how much has time compressed now with regard
to how far we go back in mining pop culture and media, (such as myspace and YT). Used to be we’d go back 20 years for those funky ‘retro’ references. Now we go back six weeks, if that. Like the kid at Christmas who can’t wait to move on to the next present before opening the one in front of him, have we’ve seemingly replaced YT before it’s reached its full potential? In a way, the show format also compresses the time it takes to measure success. Sitcoms go how long before being judged by ratings, six shows, a full season before changes are made? Here, it’s during the show with people voting online up to three days after.

Another cool thing is that ATV lets you download their clips. Who does that? Copyrighted material on YT is a major problem. People grab a clips with a third-party app or Tivo something and upload it illegally. Here, they’re saying go ahead, download it, mash it up, upload it again. We don’t care. Even though the skits need to be more consistent and the cast looks a little too much alike, a nice template has been set up for brand integration with this thing.

Tags: Jack Black, Acceptable.tv

Consumer generated annoying.

Not sure if this is the winner of the create your own Firefox spot, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Tags: Firefox

Dove’s real ad, sorta.

I’m numb at this point really. Winner of the submit another user-generated idea, etc. Good for the winner, but it feels like this one undermines the Real Beauty campaign both in terms of message and execution. Someone on a blog post a few weeks ago hit it on the head after seeing the Doritos Super Bowl spots: all CGC has done is allowed users to mimic the typical ad format. After years of being fed a steady diet of :30 spots, it’s inevitable consumers would spit it right back at brands.

Tags: Dove, Campaign for Real Beauty

Play Station Ratchets it up again.

Then Clanks the shit out of it. Toad found this :30 for the PlayStation game Ratchet and Clank as part of a consumer-generated take. Me, I just love this series of spots from TBWA\Chiat\Day. My all-time fav is the tractor beam ad from a few years ago, here. (Since you didn’t ask, my others include the outpost.com gerbil and wolves and AOL topspeed spots.)

But back to Toad’s point, this and the older R&C spots have that consumer-generated feel: shot on video, the actors look like the idiots you see on YouTube , and they’re about to make the Darwin Awards. (If you like gravity-defying tractor beams that can move mobile homes – I do.)

Tags: playstation, Ratchet and Clank

Consumer generated Budweiser?

A few Logo freaks sent in stuff on Bud’s upcoming spots. Adrants has it as well. Got me thinking though, they haven’t belly-flopped into the CGC swimming pool yet. No beer has actually. Closest I can think of with an amateurish YouTube look was the Ted Ferguson stuff from Bud. I probably jinxed it now. Next week: the Budweiser homemade rocket. Sponsored by these guys.

Tags: Ted Ferguson, Budweiser, consumer generated content, Super Bowl commercials