Gold Peak Tea, a Coca-Cola brand, has launched a new campaign on Facebook entitled “Take The Year Off” where it offers fans a chance to win $100,000 to pursue their dream. That dream could be to simply take a year off and relax or it could be to start a new business venture or pursue a creative endeavor such as making a film, writing a book or making an album and getting it sold on iTunes or Amazon. Whatever the dream, people have until July 13th at 11:59pm EDT to enter.

The mechanics of the “Take The Year Off” Facebook campaign require entrants to “like” the page, complete the registration form, which includes providing a valid email. After that each entrant has to then answer two short questions (140 characters each), write a brief essay (1,500 characters) explaining what they would do if they were given the opportunity to take a year off with a $100,000 salary, and submit a recent and “recognizable photo” of themselves. The brand will select the top entries.

The top candidates selected become the semi-finalists and move into the next phase of the campaign. Each semi-finalist will be required to submit a 30-60 second video that fits the campaign’s theme of “Enjoying the Comforts of Home.” The videos are then judged on the following criteria: 1) Compelling Quality of Submission (33%); 2) Creativity/Originality of Submission (33%); and 3) Fit to Promotion Theme of Enjoying the Comforts of Home (34%). Based on that criteria the brand picks the top finalists.

The last phase of the campaign is public voting, where the public gets to vote on their favorite video and finalist submission. The finalist with the most valid votes will become the grand prize winner and will get to take the year off with a salary of $100,000. In addition, the campaign also includes a sweepstakes for the fans who vote. The sweepstakes prize is four tickets to a Live Nation concert, which includes roundtrip air travel for four and three nights’ hotel accommodations. The voting and sweepstakes phase of the campaign runs from August 6-24, 2012. 

The campaign platform/provider is ePrize, a leader in interactive promotions and loyalty programs.

In general, video contests tend to garnish the lowest amount of entries compared to other contests and sweepstakes where there’s a lower point of entry, such as entering a name and email only. However, given the attractiveness of the prize and the fact that the video portion is only one component of many, I suspect that Gold Peak Tea’s “Take The Year Off” campaign will do quite well. They were smart to add the sweepstakes component, which will increase the total number of votes and overall participation in the campaign.

What would you do if you could take a year off with a salary of $100,000?