Fusing rap and tax returns is not for mainstream media, but it works very well online, Intuit demonstrated on April 15, when “It’s Just a Breeze G,” the $25,000 Grand Prize winning video in The TurboTax Tax Rap contest, played on YouTube.
“It’s pretty interesting for a financial company to feel comfortable doing this,” said Seth Greenberg, Intuit’s group manager of online advertising and Internet media. “The goal was to engage a broad array of tax payers.”
The idea wasn’t to create an ad from the winning video that can be played on TV, but a video that played on YouTube, which has an audience that rivals TV.
“We executed a home page takeover on YouTube on April 15 that drew over 10 million views and 250,000 downloaded the video,” Greenberg said.
YouTube also hosted the contest, which ran from February 8 to March 30 and drew 370 submissions. YouTube visitors selected the top 13 videos and Vanilla Ice, the popular rapper, chose the winner.
It’s a video by Zeke O’Donnell and Christian Pulfer, associate editors with Fluid, the New York-based music and editorial company that has done work for HP, Bank of America and Red Stripe Beer. O’Donnell shot the video, and Fluid composer Judson Crane wrote the rap music. Pulfer starred in the video as the rapper who uses TurboTax to get a big refund: “Cuz if you need a dollar, holler, cuz I got a lot back,” he sings, gleefully.
The crew used a Sony VX1000 camera to shoot the video throughout New York City, “from Soho to Redhook to Park Slope to the roof of fluid on Broadway,” Pulfer said. The video uses a combination of indoor and outdoor shots to follow the main character as he relates his experience and demonstrates how to use TurboTax. A number of “compositing tricks” were used, according to Pulfer, including reverse footage that shows money flying into Pulfer’s hands and the insertion of the TurboTax logo with After Effects.
The winning video played on Youtube on April 15, but the excitement continues with a rap off now taking place between Fluid and a team of rival video creators who believe they should have won. “It has an afterlife, with the rap off and the stories that are coming out,” Greenberg said. “They’re blogging about it. It’s the perfect example of using this channel in a way that resonates.”
Celebs Among Thousands Evacuated in Los Angeles Fires
Wildfires in and around Los Angeles have burned several celebrities' homes and forced stars including Mark Hamill, Mandy Moore and James Woods, to evacuate. Cary Elwes and Paris Hilton are among the stars who said Wednesday they had lost homes in the Palisades fire. California firefighters are battling wind-whipped fires tearing across the area, destroying homes, clogging roadways as tens of thousands fled and straining resources as the fires burned uncontained Wednesday. The Pacific Palisades neighborhood is a hillside area along the coast dotted with celebrity residences and memorialized by the Beach Boys in their 1960s hit "Surfin' USA." In the frantic haste to get to safety, roadways became impassable when scores of people abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot, some toting suitcases. "Evacuated Malibu so last minute," wrote Hamill in an Instagram post Tuesday night. "Small fires on both sides of the road as we approached (the Pacific Coast Highway)." Less than 72 hours before, Hollywood's highest-wattage stars had convened to walk the Golden Globes' red carpet, the first major event of the exuberant and, for many, triumphant awards season. The revelry of awards season had quickly been snuffed out, too: Premieres of contenders like "Better Man" and "The Last Showgirl" were canceled, the Screen Actors Guild Awards nominations were announced via press release instead of at a live event and weekend events like the AFI Awards were preemptively scrubbed. The Oscar nominations are also being delayed two days to Jan. 19 and the film academy has extended the voting window to accommodate members affected by the fires. Here's how celebrities and entertainment companies are being impacted by the fires burning in and around Los... Read More