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CommaKazi Speek

A blog (weblog) containing harsh realities, bitter truths and other reasons to smile

Saturday, July 15, 2006

Why you'll never see the best "Office" promos

YouTube and the people behind the hit television show, The Office, launched a contest to let people create their own 20-second promos for the show. Selected entries will appear on YouTube.com and NBC.com, and the winners will air on NBC during The Office this summer.

I doubt that we'll see the best promos, unless the promo creators have either:

  • Super-understanding, cool bosses, or
  • Another job waiting.
When I heard about the YouTube contest, I immediately came up with an idea, and I knew that I had the perfect video footage to use. My idea was to use some hilarious footage that I shot during a company meeting. The person who led the meeting planned some team-building activities, and boy, did we have some doozies!

I knew that I could tape myself saying something, and then let the team-building video carry the promo to victory.

Then reality set in.

None of the people who participated in the team-building activities had given me permission to use their images outside of official company purposes. Some of the people had since left the company, and I didn't know how to contact them--even if I thought that I had the slimmest chance of their agreeing to be laughed at on national television.

If I thought that it would be hard to get buy-in from the people in the video, I knew it would be nearly impossible to get my management to see this as a positive for the company. Although I might be able to keep the company anonymous in my video credits, a simple Internet search would quickly reveal the name of my current employer.

I'm curious to see the winning promos in the YouTube contest. I look forward to reading where the creators wind up a year from now.

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