15 second clip competition by AmEx

Some more video related stuff for you guys before the day ends...

American Express is sponsoring a video contest: submit 15 seconds of "film", get judged by Scorsese and M. Night, and win a trip to the Tribeca Film Festival. Sounds simple enough.

Unfortunately, I'm not very impressed by the batch of videos on there now, just seems kinda blah. With only 5 days left to submit, I'm hoping it gets much better. Seems to me they're not screening content either (see first sentence) so at least they're keeping options open.

This is not quite as limited as the Chevy thing where you had to make ads based on a templated set of content. Not quite as brand based as the Converse thing (yes, this is the third time I've linked to this in BN; it's tough to find a new good example!) since AmEx is not asking people to shill the cards in the video. It's more of a lifestyle awareness/association tactic, which is fine but I am not relating to these videos.

The consumer generated media thing is tough to do. You really have to mobilize your fan based and tap into their skillsets. The Converse thing works because their target audience skews young, hip and tech-savvy. The perfect target to create cool videos. AmEx skews the other way and even if part of their target bleeds into the younger crowd, I just don't know that many young professionals that have the necessary skills or creative talent, myself included (I'm a card holder, twice over).

I'll check back in a few days to see if it's improved.

(Image is from entry: "Having Fun: Skateboarding With My Bulldog... by Darrin Stout". For some reason, I liked this one. Fits the brand and had a simple skateboarding retro-video vibe.)