Several moons ago I heard that Canadian Club Whisky was reviving their Hide A Case program and looking for people to compete in a contest for $100,000. Being inclined towards such things, I entered.
The whole thing was an extension of a scavenger hunt promotion that Canadian Club did back in 1967, where they hid cases of whisky in strange locations across the world. They posted clues in magazine ads, and sent people searching from Kilimanjaro to San Francisco to find the cases. A few went undiscovered, and periodically Canadian Club would revive the campaign and dole out a few more clues. Pretty cool idea, I thought.
This time they wanted to a put a team together to compete in finding a special case. Participants went through several levels of puzzles, and the final round involved submitting a 2 minute video about why you would make a good member of the team. I made it through all the rounds and submitted the video below.
Be warned, it is quite possibly the goofiest, cheesiest thing I’ve done:
I warned you.
I was bummed when I didn’t make the team, but was genuinely annoyed when I saw who did. Most of the people had an existing connection to the contest, having searched for (or even found) some of the previous cases. A few had decent videos, but others weren’t that interesting. Were they all better than mine? Quite possible given the sheer dorkiness of what’s embedded above, but it left me feeling like nothing I could have done was enough because I was up against hidden criteria. Giving preference to previous hunters would have been fine if they had told anyone up front.
It was still fun to do the video, but seeing the team results took away all interest I had in the contest, the brand, and the whisky. Although I somehow doubt it will stop me from making a fool of myself online the future. Some habits are just too hard to break.