Last week I covered the SmartPower and YouTube Clean Energy Ad Challenge. SmartPower is a nonprofit marketing agency that promotes renewable energy, and their challenge to the YouTube community was to create a compelling public service announcement for the agency with the idea that “clean energy is real. It’s here. And it’s working.”

The winner was announced on June 18th. Dan Sheppard, age 19 and a student at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, was awarded the $10,000 top prize for his ad “Telephones.” Although it didn't fall into my top favorites (you can see the top 10 finalists here), but it was simple, well-made, and earns a chuckle. Congratulations!

What do you do when you’ve got a problem like communicating the need for renewable, efficient energy to hundreds of millions of people? Harness the web, of course.

SmartPower, a nonprofit marketing organization that promotes clean energy, used YouTube to form the Clean Energy Challenge. The aim was to create an ad for SmartPower around the belief that “clean energy is real. It’s here. And it’s working.”

After reviewing 150 submissions (not a ton, but not bad for such a wonky topic whose actors have virtually no chance of finding a mate on national TV), the $10,000 winner has been chosen. But in the true style of any reality show, the final results are drawn out over several days. The top 10 ads were posted on June 10th and for every day until the 18th one ad will be removed, finally leaving the “last ad standing” on Monday.

The winner will be announced via webcast at 5:00PM on June 18th and all finalists voted off are highlighted on the SmartPower Blog.

I was impressed with the quality of most of the finalists – these weren’t all made in someone’s basement. I’m a big fan of “Reading Light” and “Time Machine” because they made me laugh. And the kid in “It’s Your Choice” is really quite good. What's your favorite?

SmartPower