For a full explanation of all that’s going on you can scroll down further and read to your heart’s content, but for right now all that you need to know to vote for our video is explained in the photos below.
To create a YouTube account and vote just follow the steps outlined below. Click any image to see the full size version.
Registering on YouTube (if necessary) and voting shouldn’t reasonably take longer than 10 minutes or so. Watch and vote for our video here.
As a last step to help our mini-viral campaign please consider emailing a friend, posting on a blog, updating your Facebook status, or Tweeting about our grass bomb. Voting ends at 11pm CST on September 15th. Feel free to leave a comment on this blog post and let us know what you did.
Our long explanation:
Q. Who are you guys?
A. We’re just 2 guys from the Austin area who think film-making is kind of cool. More specifically you can call us Alex Lerma and Paul Hastings.
Q. Why are you doing this?
A. We’re both students at Austin Community College. We submitted an entry into a nation-wide commercial contest for Higher One, Inc. and were selected as 1 of 3 finalists.
Q. What’s the catch? Do you win something?
A. Good question. First place will earn $500 in addition to a cool looking award that can be added to a resume. Well, that and an ego boost.
Q. You’re doing all of this for just $500?
A. Hey, couldn’t you do with $500? But that’s not entirely all of our motives. If you promise to keep quiet then we’ll let you on in a little secret… we’ve a got a surprise project come spring-time that’s going to require a lot of grass-roots support. So consider this grass bomb as an early experiment.
Q. A surprise? Like what?
A. Well, if we told you then it wouldn’t be a surprise.
Q. Where can I see the other 2 entries?
A. You can see them here and here. As far as we know neither of them have a launched a grass bomb of their own.
Q. You keep mentioning the term “grass bomb,” exactly what is that?
A. Ah, another good question. A “grass bomb” is basically a “grass roots viral marketing campaign,” it’s just a shorter way of saying the same thing.
Q. How is the winner chosen?
A. Winners will be selected by total number of views, comments and overall rating. So essentially, you choose the winner.
Q. Hey, I just watched the commercial and it stinks! It looks nowhere near the quality of an ad on television. What were you thinking?
A. Hey, you have to start somewhere, right? We assure you, if we had the money and time of a film studio it would have looked nicer. But we’ll admit that we’re still learning. Incidentally, we conceived, filmed, edited, and submitted the entire commercial in 24 hours.
Q. Hey, I just watched the commercial and it’s awesome! Where did you find your talent?
A. Ah, we perceive that you have good taste. Actually, the actor would be Alex and the voice-over is Paul.
Q. Anything else I should know?
A. Like we said a little earlier, please consider helping our mini-viral campaign by emailing a friend, posting on a blog, updating your Facebook status, or Tweeting about our grass bomb. Voting ends at 11pm CST on September 15th. Feel free to leave us a comment on this blog post to let us know what you did.
Thanks,
Paul and Alex
P.S. If you still haven’t then watch our video here.
