Yesterday, voting in Doritos’ Crash the Superbowl contest came to a close and I’m sure all the finalists are relived that they can finally stop hustling for votes and catch their breath.  By now, Doritos probably knows which three ads will be airing during the big game but for the rest of us, we won’t find out until the winning commercials actually air on Sunday.  As if the month of vote-grubbing wasn’t brutal enough, the finalists won’t even know if they won or lost until they are sitting in the Doritos skybox, watching the game on TV.

A free trip to the Superbowl has got to be a lot of fun.  But how much can you enjoy it if you have to spend the whole weekend wondering what the fate of your entry is?  It’s gotta be rough.  And Doritos films all the finalists as they sit and watch the game happen on TV.  Imagine what it would feel like to be one of the 6 finalists on Superbowl sunday.  You’re watching the game from the skybox and then the Doritos folks hustle you over to a TV.  You sit and watch and….a commercial that isn’t yours plays.  The winner flips out and you congratulate him and go back to the game.  Now there are only two spots left.  So you have to wait and wait and endure this pattern two more times.

Here’s an interesting news story I found from last year about the Herbert Brothers Crash the Superbowl experience.  If you skip past their ad, you’ll see some footage that was shot inside the Doritos skybox.  They even show the moment when everyone saw that “Free Doritos” was the ad that made it to air.  (as a surprise, they also aired a second CTSB ad later in the game.)  When the big reveal happens, everyone seems pretty happy for the Herbert Brothers, but I bet there was more that one person in that room that felt like jumping through the skybox window at that moment.