Well the contest has closed and the winners were announced. Before I go on with my rant, I do want to congratulate the two winners. Out of all the videos submitted I do actually believe that theirs were in the top 5 for sure. The winner “Captain Kirk” I thought very early on had a strong chance of winning, and I do believe that he was a good choice for the grand prize winner.
But here are my complaints.
The rules stated that the grand prize winner would be chosen by a panel of judges from the top 10 videos with the most votes. Second place would be determined by the video with the most votes.
Well, it seems that for some reason the judges scrubbed ALL the votes resulting in a score of zero for all videos. They then chose the grand prize winner out of ALL videos, not just the top 10. Kirk was somewhere in the mid-teens in terms of his position.
If for some reason they deemed the voting system to be flawed and as a result resent it, then fair enough, but then why was the second grand prize winner chosen based on votes, should he not have also been chosen by the judges review? Perhaps he was, but there is simply nothing stated about this…
I am not at all upset that I didn’t win – to be honest, my video was far from the best, and others deserved to win over mine. My only complaint is the lack of clarity towards how the winners were chosen, seeing as how it is obvious that it was not based on the criteria stated in the official rules.
Many submitters went out of their way to try and promote Lottomax and this contest by means of blog posts, twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, not to mention word of mouth. (I for one am certain that my twitter followers probably got a bit annoyed with me).
Lotto max still got additional exposure by people assuming that votes mattered and spreading the word, but in the end all this time was basically for nothing as the change in rules seems to have made votes irrelevant. (If votes had nothing to do with it, entrants would probably keep their mouths shut as it could create more competition, so the whole angle of votes helped to promote the contest)
I would love to see an official statement from Lottomax as to what has happened and why. Perhaps some transparency in the whole situation will make it seem less like some kind of a scam.
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Thank you for your comments about the LOTTO MAX contest. You raise a valid point, and while it may appear to the contrary, the winners were chosen exactly as the site indicated they would be.
The Rules and Regulations state: “The top ten videos, after voting, will be viewed by the judging panel and one Grand Prize winner will be chosen from the top 10. The Secondary Prize winner will be won by the entrant with the highest volume of legitimate votes.”
Your votes, and those of your network, absolutely did matter. In this contest, votes determined the winning video, as well as the ten finalist videos. After voting had closed, but prior to winners being announced, memelabs, the company that managed the contest, performed a secure vote auditing process. During this process, it was determined that some of the votes were faulty. The voting totals you saw before were blanked (indicated by a 0) as they were not the legal totals following the audit. This rearranged the order of what you may have perceived to be the ten finalists and top-ranked video.
Based upon your feedback, we will be placing a finalist sash on the eight other videos (after the two winners). We will also provide contestants with memlabs contact information if they are interested to find out their final audited vote amount.
Thank you for your attention to detail. We hope that this explanation helps to clarify matters for you.
Should you have questions about your video in particular, or about our vote auditing process, we would be pleased to address them.
Please do not hesitate to contact BCLC Consumer Services at 1-866-815-0222 or at consumerservices@bclc.com
Yes, the votes were zeroed out to remove the non-legit votes, however, how would they ALL be zero? Are you telling me that not one vote in the whole contest was legit? I find that rather hard to believe…. Only the illegal votes should be removed, leaving tallies for everyone to see at the end, so that users can see the legit votes.
until I see the actual vote counts for legit votes, I will continue to believe that there is something shady going on here, and will continue to have doubts.
(On the flip side, I have heard that the two winning videos both had copyright music in their videos – a violoation of the terms of the contest… yet they still win?)
Hi Scott,
I hope I can shed some light on the above.
In a Memelabs contest, every vote is vetted for accuracy, and faulty votes are purged. In the case of this contest, the prizes were determined as follows:
* Grand prize was a jury decision from the top 10 videos, after the votes had been audited & verified
* Secondary prize went to the video with the most legitimate votes
Since the grand prize is judged by a jury, the actual vote count of each video becomes moot once we’ve identified the finalists by vote with an audit — at that point determining the winner is up to a judging panel. In these situations, we sometimes set all votes to zero. Similar examples include:
http://memelabs.com/happyhour/
http://sponsormespring.ca/osb/
If you or your readers have questions about their video vote count, or the contesting process, please feel free to contact us at info@memelabs.com
Grace Carter, Director of Social Marketing
Invoke (founders of memelabs)
Actually, the vote counts do not become moot – they are very important to prove that the winner was in fact chosen from the top 10.
How are we supposed to know that everything is legit, when all votes are displayed as 0. If the vote counts displayed the actual legit votes, there would be no question, but by making all votes zero, this opens up the option for it to all be a scam.
From an outsider looking in there is no way to show that the “finalists” are legit, we are forced to only take your word for it. That’s not good enough. There is no way to tell if the jury liked a video from outside the top 10 the most, so they simply reset all votes to zero to allow them to choose it.
Show the votes and I’ll stop questioning it… until I see the actual vote numbers, I will forever think this is one big rigged contest. I had an email saying that I could find my legit vote count by emailing and requesting it… that means that in theory the figures exist… so why not post them for all to see???
If you think it’s rigged then you should sue them. Maybe the winners work for Global. Personally I think it was legit as it seems the ones who won had the best videos.