Brother, Can You Spare a Quarter Mil?

The sponsored video on the homepage of YouTube (in the right panel) is a 24-hour placement. Asking price: $250,000. (Negotiable, I'm told.)

H&R Block chose to hype its TaxCut software using this space today. They are trying desperately to compete with what has been robbing them of revenue, namely the superior TurboTax software.

H&R Block is featuring the winners of their "Me and My SuperSweet Refund Video Contest," taking "user generated content" to an all time low. Each video even has a preview title screen with some sort of wreath-like thing, as if it won some prestigious film festival award. The idea of the contest was to share what you would do with your "super sweet refund." (Yeah - if we use the words "super sweet", that'll guarantee the kids will be all over this, 'cause kids say "sweet" all the time....dude.)

Grand Prize goes to Wacktube, one of the worst actresses in the history of acting, with a failed "makeover" premise in a barely watchable, nearly two minutes of pure idiocy.

2nd Prize goes to Nandrews, of My Hands are Bananas fame, who gives us what is in my opinion the best of these three lame comedic efforts with a Kids in the Hall-like, seemingly half-scripted sort of improv bit.

3rd Prize goes to TheBigBadWolf, who's got the best cinematic eye, even if his faked Jamaican accent and silly premise kept him down in the rankings. Also, he failed to write an ending. Or maybe it was because he's black.

It's nice, I guess, that young filmmakers are being encouraged to share their talents, but at least come to the table with an idea that might work. If this sort of stuff keeps up, we'll be smelling the death of user generated content soon. I see $250,000 wasted by H&R Block. If these three were the best, they clearly didn't get enough entries to justify the contest.

He is handling the money
He's serving the food
He knows about your party
He is calling you "DUDE!"

He was Born Robert Matthew Van Winkle

Shame on TurboTax and Intuit for this atrocity.

I'm not sure which is sadder; the shameless, endless calls for consumer generated content disguised as "contests" or the cheapening of everyone's allotted 15 minutes, which is now down to about 10 seconds. And Robert Van Winkle gets a second shot? Something is wrong.

Alerted to this horror by AdFreak.