Nothing gets people familiar with a new social tool quite like making a competition out of it. And so, Dave Rolfe, head of integrated production at BBDO in New York, got almost everyone in his department to learn Vine, Twitter's six-second video app, by challenging them to create the best videos they could with it—for its first Vine Film Festival.

For Rolfe, it was a contest born from a certain amount of shame. "I joined Vine through Kate Upton," he tells AdFreak. "We were doing a shoot for Gillette with Kate Upton. And we were sitting there talking, and she was like, 'Are you on Vine?' And I was embarrassed because I was like, 'I've heard of Vine, but I don't really know what it is.' I had definitely heard of it, but I didn't use it. And here's Kate Upton telling me about a social-media platform."

Once he did get up to speed, Rolfe saw value in having the producers in his department learn it collaboratively in a fun way. So, he set up four categories: Sweet, Funny, Cool and Series. He got more than 200 submissions in all. "This is the epitome of conversational media," said Rolfe. "It's instructive in terms of how people share stuff, and how they'll do it on video, and it's also interesting to see how people create narrative around an intensely short-form format."

Check out the winners below. Now that the production guys have thrown down the gauntlet, BBDO's creative department will surely be next to give this a try.

 
#Sweet
Elise Pavone, "Baby"

 
#Funny
Daniel Blaney, "Single White Producer"

 
#Cool
Lawrence Chen, "Took a Fall in the Hall"

 
#Series
RaniV, "Concert Series"

 
Grand Audience Gold
Mike Gentile, "Park"

 
Honorable Mentions
Anthony Curti, "Get Back in There"

 Julian Katz, "Being Followed"