Five years after its original “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, Doritos is once again inviting consumers to create :30 commercials for the tortilla chip maker to run during the Super Bowl.
Parent company PepsiCo has also extended the promotion to its Pepsi Max brand, offering up even more chances for contestants to have their ads aired during the year’s most heavily televised football game on February 6.
Here’s the deal: Create a :30 video commercial (I know, I know, easier said than done) that showcases your love for Doritos tortilla chips or Pepsi Max, and upload it to crashthesuperbowl.com between September 27 and November 17. Ten finalists — five for Doritos and five for Pepsi Max — will be announced in January 2011 and posted online for fans to vote on. The four spots with the most votes, along with two chosen by Doritos and Pepsi Max executives, will air during the Super Bowl.
The final prizes will be determined by how well these ads perform against USA Today’s Ad Meter, which tracks the real-time responses of a panel of ad viewers during the Super Bowl broadcast to determine which ads were liked most and least. If your ads happens to be the most-liked spot of all the commercials to air during the Super Bowl, you’ll awarded $1 million dollars. The consumer goods brands have pledged $600,000 for second place and $400,000 for third.
If consumer-created Doritos and Pepsi Max ads manage to garner all three positions on the list (a statistically unlikely feat, for sure), an additional $1 million will be awarded to each of the three winners. In addition, whoever creates the highest-ranking ad — whether or not it makes it into the top three — will be guaranteed a contract to create another ad for the two brands in 2011.
To celebrate the launch of the contest, Doritos and Pepsi Max are hosting an event with famed advertising creative directors Jeff Goodby of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Rob Schwartz from TBWA\Chiat\Day, who will discuss the elements involved in creating a successful Super Bowl ad. They will be joined by actor Betty White, whose Super Bowl ad for Snickers (embedded below) topped the Ad Meter chart earlier this year. The event will be held in L.A. and broadcast live on Ustream at 1 p.m. ET today, September 15.
Increasingly, brands are forgoing high-budget, agency-created TV commercials to pursue more interactive opportunities with consumers. Last year, Pepsi decided against airing a Super Bowl ad in favor of a $20 million social media campaign, dubbed Pepsi Refresh. Pepsico brand Mountain Dew has similarly forgone more traditional routes with its social media-heavy Dewmocracy project as well. Amazon has also jumped on the consumer-created ad trend with its “Your Kindle” commercial contest, which it launched for the second time this year.
Are you a fan of the consumer-created advertising trend? Do you tend to prefer ads created by advertising agencies or by consumers?
Last Year’s Winning Ad Meter Spot
More About: contest, doritos, MARKETING, pepsi max, pepsico, Super Bowl, Super Bowl ads, super bowl commercials, trending, video
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