A NEW "REALITY SHOW"

If you haven't done so already, be sure to scroll down to read all the posts regarding Home Depot's $25,000 YouTube Gift Card contest, and how they allowed the winning video to re-edit AFTER the contest was over, just to avoid being disqualified.

While the winning video was cute and catchy... a Home Depot marketer's dream... the question is: How far can a company legally go to keep their favorite a winner? Can they bend the rules? Make special rules? Or are they required, as I presume, to follow their Official Rules to the letter? (NOTE: Home Depot has since deleted their rules from the YouTube site, but you can read them here if you scroll down)

Home Depot disqualified another video (the Bork family) for rules violation. As Home Depot stated, they are "legally obligated to follow the rules", in fairness to the 260+ other entrants. When they then allowed an entrant to re-edit their video to avoid being disqualified, AFTER the contest was over, well... many people had some strong opinions. Here are some things that some of the 260+ other entrants have e-mailed me, after the official winner was announced. It's a tale of how this affected many of the people who worked hard for their chance to win:

"This whole thing upset me...I feel like me and my family wasted our time now...I feel like this contest was fake."

"Wow, that is unbelievable, can they legally let that happen, aren't they violating their own rules??!?!"

"I noticed they have shut down the message board..tells me they want it all to go away."

"I, too am appalled at HD's behavior. I was able to read the main discussion thread this morning before all the discussions were removed completely. Do you know if HD has done anything beyond issuing the lame excuse?"

"I was reading up on all the controversy today and HD's lame response/excuse...then they suddenly took down all the discussion threads! Very, very poor showing by HD."

"This was a big HD blunder !"

"Excuse me. My head just exploded."

I've also received a few comments in support of Home Depot, like these:

"I think it's a great video. I think it's great that companies like Home Depot have these contests and pay 20K. I think it's great that HD saw the great video - and allowed the video makers to make it 100% legal"

"I don't really care about 3 or 4 Home Depot employees missing some copywrited material in a home movie. Sure, maybe the family that won may not have been the most needy, but the movie was cute and fun."

Regarding that last quote, you can be sure there were more than 3 or 4 employees involved in this contest, to comply with regulations intended to ensure a legally run contest... I get the feeling that there were a few people involved that were in way over their head in this contest, then others were forced to bury this as quickly and quietly as possible. It didn't quite work out as they had hoped, I would imagine. Do you have a comment? Let us know.