Utah Student Video Contest Rules, Guidelines, and Timeline

Start by reviewing the Eligibility, Terms, and Waivers page. Before you can submit your entry, you should review the rules, guidelines, and timeline to make sure your video submission is accepted and that you're eligible to enter. Please scroll down to view the Judging Criteria, Contest Rules, and Timeline. If you have any questions, please Contact Us.

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Theme

This year, we're asking you to create an innovative video in 60 seconds or less about an aspect of what BBB does. Show off one of BBB's free services to the public, which you can learn more about on the Theme Page, where we've listed several options in detail to make it as easy as possible for you to make something creative.

Judge's gavel with computer keyboard on grey background. Top view.
Judging Criteria

You will be judged based on:

  • Production Quality
  • Creativity of Message
  • Representation of Theme

Those points will be tallied up, along with a score to represent your video’s likes, to come up with your final total out of 100.

Students & Teams

The contest is for high school students at a private or public Utah school listed on the state’s school directory here.

Students can submit videos in teams or individually. Teams can be students in different grades, but everyone needs to be from the same school.

Each student can only submit one video for consideration to the contest.

Every student or student team needs to have a teacher sponsor who BBB can contact if you win (this will probably be your digital media teacher, or another adviser at your school that can help oversee your creation). Most likely, this will be the teacher who told you about the contest in the first place.

Each student team needs to decide in advance how the prize money will be divided between team members, should your group win.

Video Creation

These are the guidelines and rules for creating your video:

  1. Video Length: 60 seconds or less
  2. Video Format: minimum resolution is 1280x1080p. File format must be .mov (mp4).
  3. Content Guidelines: 
    • Must feature a service listed in the Theme.
    • The target audience is 15-25 years old.
    • The featured BBB service needs to be explained so that it can be understood by someone who is not familiar with the service or with BBB.
    • There needs to be a call to action to visit our website, such as “Go report a scam today at bbb.org/scamtracker/utah”.
    • The video needs to feature the BBB logo.
  4. Information Quality: everything you say and show about BBB needs to be accurate. This especially includes any links, screenshots, descriptions of BBB, etc. Please make sure you know how to pronounce and spell Bureau, and that you correctly identify BBB’s website as “.org”.
  5. Logo Quality: Your logos need to be current, up-to-date, high quality, and correctly colored. If you would like a graphic, we would be happy to send one to you!
    • To get an image, email pr@mw.bbb.org.
  6. No Copyright: Videos should not contain any copyrighted music.
  7. UPLOAD GUIDELINES: You will need to upload your video to Dropbox or Google Drive and share with us the link in our submission form so we can go download it ourselves. Make sure your permissions allow us to access and download your video.
  8. PARENTAL APPROVAL: If you or someone in your team is under 13, the parents have to sign a waiver for that kid. It must be send to BBB via email, fax, or letter to be eligible for the contest.

Video Promotion

Part of the contest includes BBB uploading your submissions to our YouTube channel, where you will then promote the video to get likes. This is a fun part of the contest, but please understand that the most likes does not mean the video wins. As noted above, your video will be judged off of several aspects—not just like count.

  1. One like per video per person. You must have a YouTube account to vote.
  2. All votes must be acquired for free through unpaid word-of-mouth promotion. No paying to promote your tweets, etc.
  3. Dislikes won’t be counted. We only take the likes into account.
  4. No cheating. If the judges or BBB determines you have been cheating by breaking any of these rules, not only will your video be disqualified, but you will be disallowed from participating in the contest again, and may cause your entire school to be blacklisted. Better Business Bureau stands for trust, and we simply cannot tolerate cheating. We have caught students before—it isn’t worth the risk! Believe in your content!
First Place

First place receives $2,500 from BBB Mountain West for your audiovisual or arts department in your school. BBB will split up an additional $500 among the winning student team.

Second Place

Second place receives $1,000 from BBB Mountain West to go towards your audiovisual or arts program in their school. An additional $250 will be split among the second place student team.

Third Place

Third place receives $750 from BBB Mountain West to go towards the audiovisual or arts department for your school. No student prize is awarded.