Zooppa

Get your Entry Disqualified in Three Easy Steps:

1. Don’t Follow the Brief

Briefs are very important to us. We spend a lot of time going back and forth with the client to make sure that each punctuation mark is sending the right message of what they want. Unfortunately, even though you have an endless pot of gold of brilliant, amazing ideas on how best to advertise a restaurant, not all of them are going to fit with the brief. So if we ask for an ad on your favorite memory at, say, Burger King, don’t write them a new jingle and set it to animated animals. Give the client what they ask for and they will be more willing to give you money.

2. Copyright Infringement.

Sigh…

Look, we all love music. Music is a great way to convey an emotion in your video and make it more fun. But the rights to use music are really, really expensive. Companies often have to pay millions (!) of dollars to feature 30 seconds of a song in their commercial. Unless you can show a written license that gives you the rights to reuse a song (iTunes receipts do not count) you won’t be able to use it in your video.

Other things to be careful of: Brand names and logos can’t be seen anywhere in the clip. Not even if you own the thing it’s on. For instance, that Abercrombie-emblazoned hoodie? Yeah, you don’t have permission to have Abercrombie represented in your film. Blur it out.

3. Sending in something you feel “meh…” about

They say beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but at Zooppa, a great idea almost always trumps shiny production quality. When the clients go through the submissions, those are the ones that stand out. It’s the “X factor.” Clients love it, we love it, your fellow videomakers love it.

Don’t send in a “meh” concept. You know you’re better than that.

In sum:

Basically, to win at Zooppa, don’t do these things:

Seriously, what was going on there?!

For advice on how TO win on Zooppa, keep reading the blog. You’ll learn all our secrets.