I don’t know if this article appeared in the print addition of Adweek magazine or just on the website.  But I do know the author of the piece, Barbara Lippert pretty much thinks Doritos’ Crash the superbowl finalists and most User-generated content, suck hard.  Here’s a taste of the article:

“I’ve just looked at the six finalists in Doritos’ “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, and before going any further, I’d like to ask: Do I really have to pick one?  Chosen from more than 4,000 entries by Doritos marketing people and agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, among others, these six really are that bad. Basically, the choices boil down to how you like your main character — smacked, zapped, bloodied or strangled. Oh, there’s also a fat slob who’s voluntarily been buried alive in a coffin full of Doritos. Hey, even Homer Simpson didn’t think of that one!” (lol, but I did!- Beardy)

“There’s no use bemoaning the uniformity of lame ideas here. Cheap production budgets produce cheap laughs. (And obviously, particularly since the advent of YouTube, the American public has been fed a steady diet of violent and dumb video jokes over the years.) The end product, the Super Bowl spots, are the Oreos atop the cake, the icing on the salty snack.”

Well shit lady, tell us what you really think!  Obviously, a lot of people think the Crash the Superbowl finalists this year are kinda on the lame side.  But the author of the adweek article uses the crappiness of some of the Doritos videos as proof that we little guys can never match the brilliant work that Madison avenue cranks out.  She says….

“Here, in a nutshell, is why we need real newspapers, not just bloggers, and real ad agencies, not just amateurs trying it at home. Depth. If Apple’s “1984″ were made by these people, you could forget about allusions to a famous book (what?) or political philosophy (huh?). The sledgehammer would hit Big Brother in the balls.”

If Apple were to put up 5 million in prizes for  “deep” Superbowl commercials you know what would happen?  They’d get 4,000 entries and I bet at least 6 of them would be hella’ deep.  But we’re talking about a contest held by a chip company, aren’t we?  There’s not a lot of room for depth now is there.  Just think, have you ever seen a “professionally” made Doritos commercial that was deep?  Plus, comparing a legendary, 26 year old,  Superbowl commercial with 6 user-generated ads from 2010 is a little unfair.  If the author wanted her comparison to be more appropriate, she would compare this batch of finalist entries to commercials that ran during the most recent Superbowl.  Like maybe that Cheetos ad where the girl gets pigeons to attack (and presumably poop on) a loudmouth on a cell phone.  Or maybe any Godaddy.com ad ever that features a girl stopping just short of getting naked and then implying you can see the uncensored version of the ad on the Godaddy website.  Yep….pure class.  We amateurs should be ashamed of ourselves.

At least the author is willing to admit that last year’s winner, Free Doritos wasn’t as terrible as this year’s finalists.  She says “Compared to this year’s crop, that ad was positively Bergman-esque.”  Then she goes on to bash specific finalists:

“Most of the credit for this year’s ideas should go to Mo, Larry, Curley & Associates. There’s yet another entry involving a vending machine, and one with a dog who puts his no-bark collar on a cruel human. The faux corpse munching on chips in his coffin is an insult to people who value a Christian funeral, never mind an affront to sexy, non-slobby vampires everywhere.”

You really should check out the whole article.  It’s brimming with disdain for “user-generated content.”  Here it is:  CHIPS OFF THE OLD BLOCK.

The comments from people that obviously make their living creating commercials are pretty harsh too.  Last week, I encouraged VCN readers to support and vote for the Crash the Superbowl finalist that I though had the best chance of scoring in the Top 3 in the ad meter.  (Underdog)  It’s not so much that I am worried how Doritos will look if they have to air 3, kinda lame ads, but I’m worried that we, the amateurs, the content-creating users, the freelances and the little guys will look like we weren’t able to step up and create top notch material even when 5 million bucks is on the line.

Did Doritos do a great job picking their 6 finalists this year?  No.  Will marketing people watch the 3 CTSB commercials that air during the superbowl and assume that Doritos picked bad ads?  No.  They will simply assume that the 3 ads that air are the best of the best.  They must be, they made it to the Superbowl, didn’t they?

And that’s what frustrates me.  The more successful the Crash the Superbowl campaign is, the more imitation contests will spring up this year.  Most of us will never win a big-money contest like CTSB, be we sure as heck have a good chance at winning smaller contests.  And the reason there are so many of those smaller contests happening these days is because Doritos showed that when given a chance, we the viewers could deliver awesome content.

But what is Doritos showing the world we can do this year?  If YOU weren’t impressed by this year’s crop of CTSB finalists, imagine how people in the ad industry (the ones who might want to do similar contests of their own someday) will react to the selected ads.  Oh…I guess you don’t have to imagine.  Just read the Adweek article.