Pretty funny. Nothing spectacular. Verizon’s “Can You Hear Me Now” Guy and The Network stalk a real person. I got bored after the first half, but credit where credit is due. Good idea. Executed pretty well. Is this a full blown campaign or just a one-off stunt?

Verizon Wireless Surprises Customer - Watch more free videos

Thanks to Bill Irvine from The Above Network for pointing it out to us.

Head on over to Kevin Nalt’s Will Video For Food and read his post on video sponsorships, product placement and selling out. Its spot on.

In it, he cites 5 trends for online video product placement. I particularly liked #4:

4. There will be no trend four. Trend four is often wrong, which itself is a growing trend.

So go read the other trends, and the rest of the post.

The folks from Fox Sports’s Best Damn Sports Show Period have created a music (well, sorta) video ahead of this weekend’s football draft.

I hope they can analyze draft picks better than they can rap. Pretty funny, though. Lucky for us, the title of the post works because there isn’t a whole lot of pre-draft viral video floating around. Or is there?

Finally, some UGC thats worth talking about. Ahead of the MTV Movie Awards, scheduled for June 1st, MTV has partnered with a few major UGC sites to create the MTV Movie Award Spoof Contest.

Submissions and voting are accepted on through Photobucket, MySpace, Daily Motion, Break, Buzznet, Heavy and FunnyorDie. The deadline for submissions on partner sites is May 11th.

Personally, I think this award is already locked up by Brandon Hardesty, who has created a series of re-enactments of his favorite movies. If you haven’t seen them, you aren’t in touch with viral video.

Forget American Idol (except if you are buying ads from Marc, below), and check out WoozyFly’s WoozyIdol contest.

Music media and social-networking website WOOZYFLY.com will be hosting an unsigned band contest entitled WOOZY IDOL, offering all unsigned bands a chance to win a recording, distribution and promo deal worth $150,000.

WOOZY IDOL is open to bands and artists of all genres. Simply upload your original music, and tweak the page to enter! It’s that simple.

One grand prize winner will be selected by a panel of industry veteran judges composed of:

* Michael Bull of Caroline Distribution
* Elliot Goykhman, CEO of PAYPLAY.FM download music store
* Jane Grodd Bronstein, A&R executive of JGB Entertainment
* Duncan Hutchison. EVP of WOOZYFLY.com
* Andrew Krents, Industry Attorney
* Eric LeMasters of Koch Distribution
* Jamie Roberts of Big Machine Media
* Joel Simon, owner of JSM Studios
* David Steel of Steel Synch music licensing agency
* Daniel Wilk, SVP Business Development of Defiance Entertainment

After two days at OMMA, where “widget” seemed to be every other word spoken, I was just struck by a bone jarring irony. While I praised CNBC’s Fast Money widget for its features and functionality, I can’t help but laugh my a&& off watching a television commercial promoting their widget.

TV commercials to promote widgets? Col. Kurtz said it best, “The horror…..the horror!” What a change of heart in just 24 hours.

Sometime during the 8 hours of pre-pre-red carpet coverage, check out the finalists of the Dove Body Wash Ad contest over on the Oscars site.

As anyone with a broadband connection knows by know, Dove’s “Real Women” video and following ad campaign has been nothing short of a spectacular success, and they’ve continued to find smart ways to keep the mojo flowing.

The five finalists’ videos are on the site, and you can vote for your favorite. Two will be chosen to be aired tonight, and Oscar viewers will be able to choose the ultimate winner during the show.

You can see all of the submissions at dovecreamoil.com. There’s nearly 1300 submissions, so you won’t have to suffer through Ryan Seacrest asking, “Who are you wearing?”

My only criticism of the contest is that the submissions aren’t embeddable. I’m sure there are some legal reasons behind that, but if you ‘really’ liked an ad and wanted to get your friends to vote for it, too, I’d have made them viral, too.

Still my favorite (and not part of the promo)

I’m hunting for any brave soul’s who asked their significant others to marry them via online video. Send along links if you find any good ones…..like this one, from 1999. Since the creation of this video, Corey Weiss has gone on to become a pioneer in online video marketing and is currently the vice president of integrated marketing at Palisades Media. He’ll also be speaking at the upcoming OMMA Hollywood conference in March.

This one is the winner of 1800Flowers.com’s contest:

And in the meantime, this should make you chuckle.

The good folks at Video Search News, who are hosting the 1st Annual Video Search Summit, have been kind enough to offer OVW readers $100 off the registration fee.

When you register, use promo code: onlinevideowatch (all one word) to receive your discount.

The event is April 8-9th in San Francisco. Book now! And use that promo code!!!

Why go out when you can stay in and catch the electronic, rock, punk and heavy metal grooves (if that’s your thing) from DUB TRIO’S new album, “Another Sound is Dying.” WoozyFly.com will present exclusive online video of Dub Trio’s show at New York City’s Luna Lounge, as the band gets ready to launch its new album “Another Sound is Dying” on January 29th. The concert can be viewed at www.woozyfly.com/dubtrio.

NYC locals can catch Dub Trio’s next Luna Lounge gig live for their record release party next Thursday, Jan 31.