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Has the 3rd Doritos winner been leaked too??

Posted by Beardy on February 5th, 2010

Image from the Sacramento Bee website

Yesterday I explained that on Wednesday night, CBS seemed to reveal 2 of the 3 winners of the Crash the Superbowl contest in their special “The Superbowl’s Greatest commercials.” Near the end of the show they featured a montage of new commercials explaining it was a “sneak peek” of ads that were going to air during the big game on Sunday. Two of the commercials in the montage were Crash the Superbowl finalists: Snack Attack Samurai and Kids These Days.

One of the most interesting things about the Doritos contest is that no one, not even the finalists are supposed to know who won until the three winning ads appear on TV during the Superbowl. However, the 6 videos that made it to the finals were also supposed to be kept secret but USA Today revealed one finalist (“Casket”) early in a story about Superbowl ad sales. So it seems that Doritos may be trying to milk the CTSB contest for all its worth by seizing every media opportunity that is presented to them, even if they have to share a few secrets to ensure coverage.

Possible case in point, I saw this really weird article from of all places, the Sacramento Bee. The piece is about a local actor and in the article they repeatedly assert that Casket WILL be airing on Superbowl Sunday. They even go so far as to say when “Casket” will air. Here’s some of the piece:

“Rocklin High School grad and actor Nick Armstrong has a lot riding on Sunday’s Super Bowl.

The Sacramento native will appear in a Doritos commercial that’s scheduled to air sometime before the halftime show. It’s one of three Doritos commercials competing in the chip company’s “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, and the most popular will win $1 million.

Four thousand commercials were submitted to Doritos, and three of them – including “Casket,” which features Armstrong – will be broadcast Sunday. USA Today’s Super Bowl Ad Meter – a survey of television ads conducted as a live poll during the telecast – will determine the most popular.

Besides the $1 million for first place, Doritos will pay the second-place finisher $600,000 and the third-place finisher $400,000.”

Notice what was missing from that article? The “ifs,” and “maybes.” The paper wrote about “Casket” like it was a done deal. So does the Sacramento Bee know something we don’t? Ehhh, maybe not. This article does have one red flag in it; the author seems to imply that the 3 Doritos commercials that air will receive a cash prize even if they don’t make the Top 3 on the USA Today ad meter. It seems like they got their facts mixed up. So maybe they got the rest of the facts mixed up too? It’s a tough call, the author really makes it sounds like he’s privy to some inside information.

You can check out the rest of the Bee’s article here: http://www.sacbee.com/ourregion/story/2511957.html

CBS announces 2 of the Crash the Superbowl winners early!(?)

Posted by Beardy on February 4th, 2010

Last night, CBS aired a special called “The Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials.” It was basically just an hour-long run-down of popular Superbowl ads from the past. But at the end of the show, they revealed snippets of several ads that will be airing during this year’s Superbowl. Here’s what the host said when introducing the montage:

“Here’s a sneak peak of a few more spots that will air during the big game.”

The montage didn’t include many commercials, but it did include footage from 2 of the 6 Crash the Superbowl finalists; SNACK ATTACK SAMURAI and KIDS THESE DAYS. You can watch the entire show at CBS.com for free, but the sneak peek segment is actually available on it’s own. Click here to watch it.

I really don’t know what to think about this. Did Doritos really just announce two of the three commercials that won the Crash the Superbowl competition early? I’m leaning towards “yes.” CBS just declared to the world that those commercials “will air during the big game.” That’s a definitive statement right there and if CBS doesn’t air those two ads, I’m sure a crafty lawyer could paint that as breach of a verbal contract or something. At the very least, they’d be unfairly getting the hopes up of the projected winners. I mean, could you imagine the phone calls that the makers of these two entries must have been getting when that show aired? Would Doritos really put them in a position where they would have to tell all of their friends and family that CBS was wrong about which ads CBS was going to air on Sunday?

The case for the early reveal seems more plausible when you remember the way that the top 6 finalists were announced this year. Hours before the official announcement, USAtoday ran a story about this year’s Superbowl ads that identified “Casket” as one of Dorito’s finalists. So clearly, Doritos already broken with tradition this year and leaked information early to the media.

On the other hand, if you watch the entire montage you’ll notice something fishy. Remember the Careerbuilder “Hire My TV Ad” Superbowl commercial contest? Careerbuilder picked three home-made ads and then re-shot the ideas professionally. All three of the re-shoots can be seen here: http://www.careerbuilder.com/tv/

According to the Hire My TV ad website, Careerbuilder was going to pick JUST ONE of these three remakes and air them during the game on Sunday. But the “Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials” montage includes footage from ALL THREE Careerbuilder ads….including the commercial that CBS already turned down because of lewd content, i.e., a flaming fart. The Hire my TV ad website has that ad, entitled “Worst Seat,” as labeled “Too Hot For TV.”

So either Careerbuilder decided to buy 2 more commercial slots and CBS changed their mind about the “Too Hot for TV” ad, or the above montage contains commercials that will not air during the Superbowl

Think about it this way; it must be hard to get companies to reveal their Superbowl ads early. Maybe that’s why 5 of the ads in the montage are commercials that have already been seen all over the web. So it’s quite possible that the producers of “The Superbowl’s Greatest Commercials” were just lazy and instead of explaining that some of the featured ads MIGHT air on Sunday, they just lumped them in with the other sure things. I guess we’ll find out the answer in just a few more days.

2/6 UPDATE: Hmmmm, yesterday, USA Today released it’s official list of all the commercials that will air during the Superbowl. Careerbuilder is listed as only airing one ad. So now we know for sure that 2 of the ads in the CBS montage won’t air during the game. Unless the careerbuilder contestants already knew which ad was going to air, that was areal punk move by CBS. The might have got a lot of people’s hopes up for nothing. Same goes for the Crash the Superbowl finalists. I still think that the two featured Doritos ads will air, but now nothing looks 100% for sure.

Crash the Superbowl: It’s all over but screaming

Posted by Beardy on February 1st, 2010

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.

Tim Tebow’s Crash the Superbowl entry!?

Posted by Beardy on January 29th, 2010

By now you’ve probably heard that CBS has agreed to air a pro-life commercial featuring Heisman troy winner Tim Tebow during the Superbowl next month. In the ad, Tebow supposedly discusses how his mother got sick on a missionary trip while she was pregnant with him and despite doctor’s advice to get an abortion, she didn’t. Tebow isn’t shy about his Christianity (see picture left) and he raised the $2.5 million necessary to air the ad during the big game himself.

But 2.5 Million dollars is a lot of money. So that wasn’t his Plan A. Apparently, Tebow originally hoped that he could get his message out for free by winning Dortios’ Crash the Superbowl contest. Check out Tim Tebow’s anti-abortion/pro-dortios entry below!

UCB's embed feature is wonky so click the pic to watch the video

Ok, obviously that’s not real and was produced by the Upright Citizen’s Brigade. But if you take out all the non-doritos stuff, that would be a really decent Crash the Superbowl entry! All it needed was some canned classical music and a ninja or a zombie and I would have believed it was a real submission.

Adweek says: The Crash the Superbowl finalists suck

Posted by Beardy on January 24th, 2010

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.

Re-made Taxslayer.com winners start airing

Posted by Beardy on January 20th, 2010

Last spring, Taxslayer.com befuddled many a video contestant when they awarded first place and $25,000 in their annual Taxslayer commercial contest to frequent contest winner, HappyJoel Levinson. Here’s his winning entry:

Winner, 2009 Taxlsayer commercial contest. Prize: $25,000

The other contestants were befuddled because well….that’s a really weird video! It’s funny but obviously it wasn’t something taxslayer could actually put on tv. And that’s why so many of the other contestants were confused. The year before, Taxslayer aired the winning entry as-is. (click here to watch it) So contestants assumed that Taxslayer would be doing that again and many of them sunk a lot of time, money and production values into their submissions. I actually entered this contest and it was my first video contest loss. (winning was pretty easy back in 2007 and 2008.) In the days after Happyjoel’s video was picked I followed the reaction and let me tell you, people were PISSED. I’ve seen a lot of angry youtube comments in my day but damn, the other contestants flipped the fuck out.

Taxslayer explained that what they liked about Happyjoel’s video was the idea and they weren’t actually going to air the commercial. Instead, they were going to have professionals re-shoot it. I only spent about 80 bucks on my entry but I remember some really slick submissions. (here’s the one I was positive was going to win) If Taxslayer had let everyone know they were looking for “ideas” and not ready-for-tv ads, they would have saved a lot of filmmakers a lot of money.

Fast forward to tax season 2010. Happyjoel’s re-made video has finally hit the airwaves:

I’m glad that happyjoel actually got to play the part he created in his contest entry. But you know what? I think I prefer the original version. The (somewhat) fancy re-make is a bit stiff and the orginal was watchable because of how super weird it was.

Speaking of super weird, Taxslayer apparently decided to re-shoot a second entry from the 2009 contest. Here’s the re-make:

Yeah…that was pretty lame. But the weirdness deepens. Check out the entry that commercial was based on:

The orginal was funnier and more interesting than the remake! Whoever posted the re-shot version to youtube added this note: “Tax Slayer 60 second spot. This commercial was derived from contest creative. The spot was toned down to not look like an abduction, but rather a spoiled brat not wanting to conform.”

I cannot for the life of me figure out why Taxslayer chose that ad to remake or why they turned it into something that was thoroughly not funny. Whoever wrote that remake forgot the oldest rule in comedy; abduction victims are way more hilarious than spoiled brats.

Crash the Superbowl: Ad Meter Predictions

Posted by Beardy on January 17th, 2010

A few posts back I said I’d be reviewing all 6 of Doritos’s Crash the Superbowl finalists. Well, after discovering a free graph making program on-line where you can make the points look like little Doritos, I’ve decided to do something way geekier. Instead of doing straight reviews, I’m going to throw some hardcore graph action in your face and try to predict how each commercial might score on the real USA Today Ad Meter.

These graphs won’t show my personal opinions. Rather, they will show what I expect the average opinions of everyone in the USA Today focus group might be. If you missed our explanation the other day about how the USA Today Superbowl ad meter works, check it out here. Remember, USA Today’s focus groups include people from all walks of life. So no matter how much 90% of the group likes a certain ad, there will always be at least a few people who dislike it.

Predicting how a commercial will score on the Ad Meter isn’t actually that tough. The moments that people will score highly are easy to identify. So even if the scores on these graphs don’t match what the real scores would look like, the peaks and valleys will appear in the same places. So here we go. I’ll put the ads in order of best scoring to worst:

1. UNDERDOG. PREDICTED SCORE: 8.19

SUMMARY: The guys who made this spot knew what they were doing. It’s essentially designed to score well in the Ad Meter. EVERYONE loves dogs and EVERYONE hates jerks that are mean to dogs. And history is on the side of this video. Remember that Budweiser commercial where the dog trains the Clydesdale, Rocky-style? That scored 1^st on the ad meter in 2008. Like I said, everyone loves dogs. Plus, the cuteness and comedy in this ad start early which means which means viewers will “like it” for longer. Based on last year’s ad meter results, a score of 8.19 would get Underdog into the Top 3.

2. SNACK ATTACK SAMURAI. PREDICTED SCORE: 7.46

SUMMARY: This spot isn’t the most original submission I’ve seen but I bet it will make a lot of people smile. It’s got kind a kooky vibe that I think viewers will find appealing, even if they don’t know why. It LOOKS funny and FEELS funny, so even if it’s not actually super hilarious, I think it will score decently.

3. KIDS THESE DAYS. PREDICTED SCORE: 7.15

SUMMARY: Since a commercial’s final ad meter score is an average of how every second of the ad scored, Kids These Days probably won’t fair too well since it takes a while for the comedy to start. But the main gag is a strong, likable one. After Mr. Popped Collar gets shocked, I’m guessing viewers will keep their dials turned up as a retro-active sign of appreciation.

4. THE SMACKOUT. PREDICTED SCORE: 7.02

SUMMARY: This spot was perfectly cast. Unfortunately, it wasn’t perfectly shot. The color is just plain messed up. I like this story and think it was very well acted but it looks bad at times and I think that will be a turn off to viewers. The use of cleavage was also a little gratuitous and I suspect a lot of women will punish this ad by keeping the score a little lower than is reasonable. The slapstick is funny but not really Superbowl funny and I don’t think many viewers will be extremely impressed.

5. CASKET. PREDICTED SCORE: 6.85

SUMMARY: This is the best looking of all the CTSB finalists but all the other commercials airing during the superbowl will look as good as “Casket” or better. So production values won’t get them much ad meter juice. (Though I think the pretty church setting might result in an initial spike) This video has two things going against it; One, the protagonist’s plan is cruel and feels like a weak excuse for the guy to be in the casket and two, I think the “dead” man was miscast. Much of this commercial’s comedy comes from looks on the “dead” man’s face. I think the actor that was cast is simply annoying looking and I bet a lot of viewers would agree with me.

6. HOUSE RULES. PREDICTED SCORE: 6.29

SUMMARY: My gut reaction to this spot is that I like it. But unfortunately, because of the way it’s set up, it’s doomed to perform poorly on the ad meter. The graph tells the whole story. A whopping 22 seconds go by before the real comedy starts. That’s an eternity for a Superbowl commercial. I think that not only will viewers not start scoring the commercial positively until the action starts, I think some may even start scoring it negatively if they start getting bored.

When you look at each ad charted out like this, you kind of have to wonder why Doritos picked some of these ads for the finals. I mean, I was able to whip up these graphs in like an hour. Millions and millions of dollars are at stake in the Crash the Superbowl contest so it seems hard to believe that Doritos wouldn’t have somebody analyze each finalist’s chances in the Ad meter. Last year, a commercial needed to score at least a 7.49 just to make the top 10. So if Doritos did graph these out, then they already know that several of these videos just have zero chance of scoring “in the money.” Hmmm, could it be that’s what they’re counting on?

So, how does the USA TODAY Ad meter work?

Posted by Beardy on January 13th, 2010

I get the dial, but what's the pen for?

Yesterday I explained that the best way to ensure that Doritos will bring the Crash the Superbowl contest back next year is to help get the videos most likely to do well on the USA Today ad meter to air during the game. If ads that are doomed to flop make it to air, no CTSB ads will place “in the money” and Doritos might decide the contest isn’t worth the trouble and expense anymore. But if Doritos pulls off another high-profile ad-meter win like they did with “Free Doritos” last year, the company would probably want to stick with what was working for them. As long as just one CTSB entry makes the Top 3, that will be big news and result in lots of free publicity.

And this wouldn’t just be good news for people who are hoping for another shot at Doritos’ prize money. It would be great news for anyone who’s out there making money in online video contests. Video contests were few and far between just 2 years ago but the success of the Crash the Superbowl contest has inspired tons of other companies to hold their own user-generated content competitions. So the better Dortios does in during the superbowl, the more smaller video contests will spring up later this year.

Over the next week or so, we will be reviewing each of the 6 Finalists and analyzing their chances on the ad meter. (If you look to the right of your screen though, you will see that we already recommend that you vote for UNDERDOG since it’s the entry most likely to crack the Top 3.) But before we start, it’s important to quickly explain how the USA Today ad meter works….

Every year, USA Today gathers approximately 300 random Americans of all types to rate Superbowl ads. This is done in 2 locations in different states. These 300 or so people watch the Superbowl commercials with little dials in their hands. When the viewers see something the like, they turn the dial to the right. When they see something the don’t like, they turn it to the left. The more they like or don’t like something, the farther they turn the dial.

A number system is used to give each video a score. When a commercial starts, everyone’s dial is set to “neutral.” Data from the dial is recorded for the entire duration of a commercial. The scores for each individual’s dial are averaged out to one number for each ad. Then, all those average scores from all those dials are averaged out to give one, official score. After the game, those scores are tabulated and the ads are ranked by USA Today. Here’s USA Today’s list of the Top 10 ranked ads from last year.

So as you’ll see, last year, the Crash the Superbowl ad made the top spot with a score of 8.46 and the 2nd and 3rd place ads also had scores over 8.0. So in our analysis, “8.0” is our magic number. If an ad isn’t likely to score higher than 8.0, it probably doesn’t have a shot at making the top 3.

Help ensure that Crash the Superbowl will be back next year!

Posted by Beardy on January 12th, 2010

Not pictured: you.

It’s been a week now since Doritos announced their 6 Finalists in the Crash the Superbowl contest and it seems that the unanimous opinion of the people of the Internetz is that Dorito’s “Top 6” selections are….not wonderful, which is surprising because last year, all 5 Crash the Superbowl finalists were exceedingly wonderful! They were all tremendous, hilarious and totally original. (Well, that one with the cat wasn’t that hilarious but I’m trying to make a point here.) I hate to say it but pretty much every finalist commercial from last year is better than every finalist commercial this year. With one exception…but I’ll talk about that in a second.

I entered the Crash the Superbowl contest this time around and of course I would have loved to get to the finals. But because of the extreme level of quality seen in last year’s finalists, I didn’t get my hopes up. This was the first year I entered the competition and in all honesty, I saw my CTSB experience this year as a test run for next year. This year I figured out what I could pull together and for how much and in what type of time frame. So I wasn’t heart broken when I didn’t get an e-mail from Doritos before the official notify date. I was actually really looking forward to the announcement of the finalists so that I could see some kick ass video contest entries.

But there isn’t a ton of kick-ass going on in the official Top 6. All of the finalists are…ok. Two of them though are so technically flawed that I am stunned that they could have made it this far. A third has an inexplicably cruel story that makes absolutely no sense. But it looked slick so I guess that was good enough to make it this year. Not making the finals is not a big deal. But seeing sub-par ads reach the Top 6 really stings.

A bizarre mix of WIN and FAIL

So we’re all upset. But what can we do about it? Right now, I think the best course of action for all us disgruntled Doritos fans should be to start looking towards next year. The smartest thing we can do now is try to ensure that Doritos will bring the Crash the Superbowl contest back this fall.

How do we do that? By helping Doritos score another USA Today Ad meter win. As our pal Rummy once said, You go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had. That means instead of moaning about what videos SHOULD have made it to the finals, contestants should focus on ensuring that the best videos of the Top 6 make it to the Superbowl. Breaking into the Top 3 on the Ad Meter is the entire point of this year’s contest,. So if the selected commercials flop and don’t accomplish that goal, Doritos might decide to try something different in 2011.

So, for the next week or so, we will be reviewing all 6 of this year’s Crash the Superbowl finalists. Not only will we be critiquing these entries, but we will be analyzing their theoretical chances on the USA Today Ad Meter poll. We’ll be explaining which videos would have a fighting chance and which would be doomed to be remembered as the lamest spots of the game.

Spoiler alert! We have already been calculatin’ the odds of each video and have determined the entry that has the best chance of scoring a Top 3 spot is UNDERDOG. Not only does it have the best chances, it was actually my personal favorite video before the finalists were even announced! So in the case of Underdog, I was very happy to see it make the finals. We’ll have more on UNDERDOG and why we think it has what it takes to score another big win for Doritos, later. But since there are only 20 DAYS left to cast your votes, I wanted to declare Underdog as our official pick right now. If you look at the upper right hand corner of our sidebar, you’ll see a little daily reminder to vote. Click that banner and you’ll go right to Underdog’s page on the Crash the Superbowl site. And if you head to Doritoscontest.com, you can learn more about the entry and the guys who made it.

If you want another chance at Crashing the Superbowl, you first have to help make sure the contest comes back. So do like Beardy and vote everyday for the unstoppable juggernaut that is UNDERDOG!

Juding the Crash the Superbowl Judges

Posted by Beardy on January 7th, 2010

Should that have been you up there?

First of all, if you’re new to the site, welcome! We’ve been getting hundreds of new readers a day thanks to the Crash the Superbowl contest. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be covering the contest closely but we’ll also be doing our regular thing which is covering video contests of all sizes. If this year’s Crash the Superbowl contest was your first video contest experience I recommend that it not be your last. You may not have made it to the finals, but there are plenty of other big prizes out there waiting to be won. I personally have never won a big money prize but in the last two years I’ve won a total of $30,000 in smaller contests. And there are plenty of other folks on the web who have won a who lot more than that. So I hope you all enjoy both our Dortios and non-Doritos related posts and share your own opinions in the comments sections. If you’d like to be know whenever we put up a new post, just click the yellow RSS button to the right to subscribe to the blog.

Doritos announced their “Top 6” on Monday night and now that I’ve had a some time to let the finalists sink in, I’ve warmed up to them. All of them are at least decent. Unlike a lot of unhappy folks, I wouldn’t classify any of them as “sucking.” Are all of them good enough for the superbowl? Maybe not. We’re there better entries that got overlooked? Yes. I think the Doritos judges were just maybe 2 or 3 choices away from having a really awesome Top 6.

But not everyone thinks so. In fact, based on the e-mails and comments I’ve been getting and from what I’ve read on the Crash the Superbowl forum, a lot of you really, really, REALLY hate the choices Doritos made. I’ve read lots of theories. Including:

1. The judges intentionally picked bad finalists to ensure the company would not have to pay out 5 million bucks.
2. One finalist entry was picked solely for politically correct reasons.
3. The USAtoday article that revealed “Casket” as a finalist gave them an unfair advantage
4. The contest was “rigged” in some way for some reason
5. Doritos picked 2 videos from the makers of the commercial that won the first CTSB competition in 2007 because they know them and like them.

One disgruntled contestant went so far as to create a facebook group in protest of the judges decisions:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=search&gid=234804648719

Personally, I won’t be joining that particular group. I think that 3 of Doritos choices are funny and good enough for the game. And three good ones are all you need. I even think one of them has a shot at the top spot on the USAtoday ad meter. I’ll be listing my three personal choices as well as my three predictions in the next few days. In the meantime, why don’t you guys let us know what you think in the comments section? Did the judges blow it or did they nail it? What ads do you think were robbed of a finalist spot? Which commercials do you think suck and why? Which one will you be voting for?

And I am looking for an answer for a specific question. I didn’t enter or even pay attention really to the CTSB contest last year. After the last year’s Top 5 were announced, what was the reaction? Did people instantly love “Snowglobe?’ Were people claiming the contest was rigged or that the judges picked 6 awful entries? If you followed the contest last year and can fill me in on what the consensus was, lemme know in a comment.

Video contest winner attacked by poisonous jellyfish!

Posted by Beardy on January 3rd, 2010

The happy dude in that pic right here is Ben Southall. Last spring his audition video took first place out of more than 34,000 submissions in the “Best Job in the world” video contest. His prize was to spend 6 months “working” as Tourism Queensland’s Islands Caretaker. Basically the lucky bastard was a paid spokesman and his biggest duty was blogging about his experiences in the islands around the great barrier reef.

Last week, during the final days of Ben’s 6 month gig, he was out jet-skiing when he was stung by some super-tiny but crazy-deadly jellyfish. He rushed right to the hospital and the doctor knew right away he had been zapped by a “Irukandji” and fixed him up. But it sounds like it was sort of a close call. Apprently at least two people in Australia have died from Irukandji stings since 2002. Again, that dude is one lucky bastard.

So Ben is fine and probably back to the real world now. You can read all about his jellyfish encounter on his Best Job in the World blog. And hey, I found the video that got him his nearly-fatal gig. Here it is:

Hartz contestants get a surprise in the mail

Posted by Beardy on December 14th, 2009

Though the Hartz “Crunch n’ Clean” video contest (objective: create a funny video of you brushing your dog’s teeth) had just one grand prize of $1,000, all 24 contestants got a nice surprise from Hartz after the winner was announced. Everyone would be getting a special prize pack just for entering. Grateful contestants recived their packages last week and posted some photos on the contest’s facebook page. Check this out:

That’s a lot of stuff. All too often contest organizers totally forget about all the people who took the time and made the effort to create an entry for their video contest. So it’s great to see a company that realizes that it’d be a good idea to say “thank you” to people who are obviously loyal to their brand. Maybe the prize packages only cost Hartz 50 bucks each to put together but the good will they will receive in return is really valuable. All 24 contestants will tell God only knows how many people about the super cool prize pack they got just for entering. So giving away sweet prizes to the “non-winners” is good for their reputation in the long run. Way to go Hartz!

The WTF-were-they-thinking awards

Posted by Beardy on November 13th, 2009

I didn’t keep a close eye on the Doritos Crash the Superbowl Contest last year and now I can’t find an exact number of entries received. I’ve seen the number “1,900” a few times but I’ve also read that there were around 2,200 entries. I’ve decided to just go the lazy route and say that in 2008, about 2000 people entered the Crash the Superbowl contest. Sound good?

As for this year, after a few days of processing time it looks like the final number of entries for the 2009/2010 installment of CTSB is 3923. My God….if right now you decided to watch every CTSB entry it would take you more than 32 straight hours of viewing to get through them all! Wow….to the good people at Doritos, all I can say is “Good Luck!”

At this point I’ve watched (when I saw “watched” I mean I clicked the play button and gave each video a chance before clicking “next”) 2200 or so entries but I still haven’t seen a hands down winner. There hasn’t been one entry that I’ve seen where I said “yes! That’s a finalist.”

However, there have been plenty of times where I watched a video and thought to myself “GOOD GOD, NO!!!” So for fun, I thought I’d post a few of those commercials that will never, ever, EVER win because they have some kind of horrible, freaky, disturbing flaw. Think of these as the winners of the WTF Were They Thinking awards:

This first spot is called “Creepy Doritos Man” and boy does it live up to its name. The parents of the kid who made this need to get him into some therapy right away.

The videos that make it to the finals won’t just be awesome videos. They will be videos that the maximum number of people would enjoy since Doritos’ goal is to have their commercials take all three top spots on the USA today Ad meter. So it amazes me that so many people entered incredibly gross videos. Who would ever turn a dial to indicate that they loved watching someone do something like this……

At least it was a really well produced spot. And so is this next one. This next video is actually awesome. I think it’s the work of an evil genius. It looks and sounds amazing but it is so dark and depressing it just has no chance.

This is kind of weird but I have noticed a lot of entries that incorpotae negative stereotypes about Hispanics. Specifically I’ve seen a lot of sombreros and heard a lot of really bad jose Jimenez-esque accents. Can you imagine the PC apocalypse that would occur if Doritos aired a commercial like this during the superbowl?

The WTF-were-they-thinking rating of this next video is off the charts. The message of this commercial is that Doritos will kill you dead and then explode out of your corpse.

Finally, here’s the commercial with the biggest WTF moment of them all. It’s subtle and it’s fast so watch carefully.

No it’s not the seagull poop that I think was a bad idea. It was the attempt to get a laugh using a photoshoped picture of the destroyed World Trade Center.

Crash the Superbowl: 24 days to go

Posted by Beardy on October 16th, 2009

I seriously was eating some of these like an hour ago

I can’t believe there are only 24 days to go before the deadline to enter the Doritos Crash the Superbowl contest. Time is flying by. So far, only about 100 people have submitted entries. Last year, Doritos received more that 1,900 entries! So to keep up with that number, 75 people a day will have to start uploading commercials. However it’s probably more likely that a thousand videos will be uploaded during the last week of the contest. There does seem to be a whole lot of interest in the contest at least. Even videos that just went up have hundreds of views.

But maybe there just won’t be as many entries this year? For one thing, most of the country has been a lot colder than normal this month. The area where I live has had rainy and colder than average weather for the last 20 days or so! That makes filming your big picnic scene or whatever kind of hard. But of course the big factor this year will probably be the economy. Last year the winners of the million dollar “snowglobe” commercial spent $2,000 on their spot. Know many people who are willing to spend that much money on a project that might get them nothing in the end, these days? I guess we’ll see. I have a feeling a lot of entries are going to be shot this weekend.

Doritos has made some nice improvements to the contest site in the last few days. For one, they mercifully added a “MUTE” button so that you could turn off the annoying rock music that plays in a loop. They also added a feature where you could link to or embed specific videos. So I thought I’d give it a try. Out of the 108 videos that have so far been submitted for the contest, these two are hands down, without question, the best:

The one with the shark is pretty good and was made by Jared Cicon who was a finalist in the contest in 2007 I think. That shark is by far the best prop and best sight gag used in any of the entries. The one with the guy putting his head through the roof IS one of the best of the submitted videos but I think by next week it will fall out of the running. For a video that relies on slapstick and action I think it’s lacking a really strong punchline and isn’t crazy enough for the superbowl. But still, it’s funny and pretty well done.

So, those are the two best entries. If the commercial you’re planning to shoot isn’t at least as good as these then you might want to go back to the drawing board while you still have time left.

UPDATE: Jared, the creator of the Shark commercial wrote a great blog post about the making of his spot and included some nice strategic tips. He even came to VCN and left an informative comment to this post. So to read more about “The Video Contest King” check out his website and click the “View Comments” button below to learn more about his Crash the Superbowl plans.