This Is That Guy Who Wins All The Lame Corporate Video Contests

Today the NY Times profiled a guy named Joel Moss Levinson, who makes his entire living (over 200k so far) by entering those usually-lame corporate user-generated video contests. He brilliantly figured out that since most people who are good at making advertising videos are too busy making advertising videos in their jobs to make free advertising videos in their spare time, most of the entries were going to be shit. So he made entries that weren't total and compete unwatchable crap, and so he won. Genius. Here's the video that won him the Klondike contest. (Note: I'm not saying it's not extremely dumb, I'm just saying this dude has a smart strategy):

Joel uses Facebook and Twitter to get people to vote for his videos, which makes sense, but this part of the article didn't really make sense:

He even calls 24-hour customer service lines at night, when he thinks the representatives are bored, and asks them to vote for him.

No, New York Times, he was either fooling you or he did that exactly once, because that doesn't make sense. (Thanks for the tip, Scott!)

Posted by Lindsay at 1:30 PM in Ad Wizards, Viral Marketing
Tags: Joel Moss Levinson | Klondike

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9 Comments

If I didn't know that this guy was a douche-nozzle who is a career contest enterer, I would have actually liked this commercial
But.....no, lame. I have friends in college who can make video's as creative and clever, and yet, they're about to start real jobs.

Posted by: CarolineA at 10/28/08 1:58 PM | Reply
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"No, New York Times, he was either fooling you or he did that exactly once, because that doesn't make sense. (Thanks for the tip, Scott!)"

Hi, Videogum. Trust me. He does that. Imagine if "making sense" was some kind of illness. Now imagine Joel as the vaccine, full of tiny dead bits of making sense. Just...just trust me.

Posted by: shekb at 10/28/08 2:13 PM | Reply
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did he win this one?

http://videogum.com/archives/sponsored-post/sponsored-fujifilm-z-spot-new_020631.html

Posted by: bearface at 10/28/08 2:31 PM | Reply
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He had the time/money to travel to the arctic to see polar bears, but not the time/money to visit his family?

Posted by: kristen at 10/28/08 2:40 PM | Reply
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this guy worked with me at summer camp one year. he sucks.

Posted by: justin at 10/28/08 3:44 PM | Reply
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One time I was hanging out with this guy and he said that he hated the kid from Jerry Maguire.

HOW?: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RWaWKQqoyu4

Posted by: I PEE GOLD  in reply to justin's comment at 10/29/08 12:19 AM | Reply
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Instant hate

Posted by: Zingers at 10/28/08 5:28 PM | Reply
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Thank god people are making the effort to write in about what a horrible human being this guy is for writing silly songs and winning lots of stuff. He seems dangerous!

Hopefully, with enough negativity sent his way via website comments you guys can either stop him from committing these horrible acts ON YOUR INTERNET, or at least make him feel self-conscious about using some of his ADD energy to write songs about Klondike bars and earn $100,000 for it.

I'm not saying this guy is better than you; I'm just saying you're way worse than him.

Posted by: todd at 10/29/08 1:15 AM | Reply
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"I'm not saying this guy is better than you; I'm just saying you're way worse than him. "

I don't think you understand how logic works, todd.

Posted by: Elliot  in reply to todd's comment at 10/29/08 3:56 AM | Reply
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