Poptent.net is kind of a mysterious site. There are different levels to Poptent that the vast majority of members will never gain access to. Most filmmakers who join Poptent are allowed to submit to any of the Public Assignments that are posted here: www.poptent.net/assignments. But if you actually manage to make a sale, you might be invited to take part in a special “Invite Only” assignment. As the name indicates, only invited filmmakers are allowed to participate in those. And let me tell you, these closed assignments are pretty sweet. Usually the invited filmmakers get a little (or even a lot) of guaranteed cash to help produce their submissions. I think one of my greatest video contest victories was the one time I managed to win one of these private assignments. I was competing against the cream of the poptent crop so I almost couldn’t believe it when the brand actually picked my commercial. If you’ve never seen an Invite Only assignment before, click here to see what one looks like: https://www.poptent.net/assignment/24 That was a private assignment Omni Hotels ran last year. I got invited to that one and everybody that shot entries got a free hotel room for a night and a hundred bucks. One of the only negative things about private assignments is that once you accept an invitation, you’re obligated to shoot a submission. If you don’t do an entry, you seriously hurt your chances of ever being invited again. When it came time to shoot my Omni submission, I was terribly, horribly sick. But the folks at Omni went through a lot of trouble to get me a room in Chicago so I figured it would be kind of a dick move not to show up and shoot in it.
Beyond the Invite-Only assignments, there’s another level to Poptent that even I haven’t gotten to see. At the top of the assignment pyramid there are “Direct Assignments.” Only a tiny number of people are asked to participate in those assignments and sometimes, that number is ONE. Yes, sometimes Poptent runs one-person assignments. Basically, filmmakers in these super-private assignments are sort of hired directly by the brand and poptent acts as a middleman. Sometimes two or three members might be asked to submit scripts and then the brand will pay to produce the idea they like the best.
And that’s what happened in this Direct Assignment that was run by the non-profit organization, ChildHelp. Two members were asked to write scripts that would feature Shaquille O’neal and Betty White. Child Help picked the script they liked best and the director got to shoot it. The PSA that was created for this assignment is pretty good and it’s cool to see a Poptent video that has big celebrities in it.
Purchased by ChildHelp. Purchase Price: $7,500:
It looks like ChildHelp also paid for the director to create a behind the scenes video. It’s actually very interesting to see how the project was produced so I’ll post it. To my surprise, it looks like the PSA was shot with a DSLR.
Purchased by ChildHelp. Purchase Price: $3,500:
So, now that I’ve got you excited, I bet you’re wondering what you have to do to get invited to one of these super secret, ultra exclusive assignments. Well guess what? That’s something I’d like to know too! Poptent’s method for selecting filmmakers is kind of a mystery. But someone on the staff once told me that it has something to do with a member’s unofficial “karma” score. And I got the impression that your score is based on how many assignments you’ve entered, the number of medals you’ve won and how you treat the other members in the community. So if you play nice with others and if you do great work, someone on the staff will probably, eventually notice and send you an invite to a private assignment.
Over the year’s I’ve reported on a lot of really bizarre Video Contest News. But this is story is especially weird. You remember Man’s Best Friend, right? It was the Crash the Super Bowl ad that featured a hilariously gigantic dog that bribed a guy with a bag of Doritos. The commercial wound up being ranked the best ad of the Super Bowl by USA Today’s ad meter (the real one, not the bogus online vote one) and so the creator of the spot, Jonathan Friedman, received a million dollar bonus from Fritolay. Friedman is from Virgina Beach and the town decided to pay tribute to his accomplishment by presenting a key to the city to Huff, the great dane from the ad. Yes, the dog is the one that got the key to the city. If that wasn’t strange enough, the mayor’s office actually made a crazy video about the whole thing. I won’t try describing it. Just watch it and be happy that there are still people and politicians in this country that aren’t afraid to get weird once in a while.
This isn’t exactly “video contest news” but it certainly is interesting. If you enter video contests it’s pretty much guaranteed that you’re shooting with a DSLR or a digital HD camera. In the last few years, the picture quality of consumer-grade and pro-sumer grade video equipment has skyrocketed while the price for this kind of gear has plummeted. Consequently, first-time directors are now shooting and editing commercials for no money that are good enough for broadcast. Just look at the Crash the Super Bowl finalist “Man’s Best Friend.” The guy who made that ad shot it with a DSLR for about 20 bucks. But it’s now airing on national TV and most viewers would never guess the spot was created with a consumer-grade camera.
So the world of independent filmmaking has changed a whole hell of a lot in just the last few years. I figured it would take a generation for Hollywood to switch from film to digital but it seems like one big name director after another is ditching celluloid. I don’t know where Keanu Reeves stands on the issue of Film vs. Digital but apparently he produced an entire documentary on the subject entitled “Side by Side.” The trailer looks really cool and I’m looking forward to the seeing the whole film. The doc premiered at the Berlin International film festival this month and hopefully it will eventually make it’s way to a theater near me.
It looks like pretty much every famous hollywood director alive appears in this doc. Guess a lot of people are passionate about this issue. Personally, I think film can suck my balls. It’s a medium for the rich and the elite. After 100 years, “making movies” will soon be an art form that every person on Earth can try for themselves.
Hey, here’s a incredibly obscure fact for you: Two of the five finalists in the very first installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest (Duct Tape and Mouse Trap) were actually shot on film. Contestants would have shot their entries way back in the fall of 2006 and at the time, film was still one of the only ways an amateur could crate a professional looking, TV-quality ad. Six years later and Doritos is still airing Mouse Trap and you know what? It still looks great. On the other hand, the 2007 finalists that were shot on HD don’t really hold up very well. Five years from now we’ll probably look back at the 2012 finalists that were shot with RED cameras and 7Ds and think they look like crap compared to the footage that you can get with the consumer grade digital video cameras of 2017.
If you’re reading this post, chances are that you’re either a filmmaker or a Russian spammer who is going to try and leave a comment about where people can get a Microsoft Zune for cheap. Either way, you probably have a twitter account that you use for online networking. It took me a long time to get into Twitter but I now hate it a lot less than I used to. Turns out twitter can actually be a helpful tool if you’re into video contests. For example, I’ve learned that if you want to get a response from a contest sponsor, sometimes you should try sending them an @ message on twitter. Most companies monitor their accounts closely and apparently they actively try to make it look like they’re friendly, responsive and easy to deal with. Last summer I spent months and months trying to get one company to pay me a big contest prize they owed me. I sent tons of e-mails and my contact just kept giving me the run around. But then I sent a tweet asking why I hadn’t been paid my prize yet and BAM….the response was immediate. My contact was unhappy that I made my “problem” public but it finally forced them to take care of the issue.
But of course, you can use Twitter for nice things too. I follow a bunch of video contest companies on twitter and you know what? You should too. They tweet out a lot of good info. Case in point: I’m shooting an entry for Mofilm’s Walmart competition this weekend and just yesterday Mofilm tweeted that new video assets had been added to the project. I’ll use one of those clips for sure in my commercial and I wouldn’t have even know they were available if it wasn’t for twitter.
So for the first time ever, I thought I’d take part in the weekly twitter tradition known as #FollowFriday. It’s where users tweet out suggestions of who to follow. So here are my #FollowFriday suggestions:
And of course, if you don’t already follow VCN on Twitter, you should add us too. And because I’m feeling saucy today I’ll even follow back any new followers VCN gets this weekend. Yarg…sentences like that are one of the reasons twitter still annoys me a little.
Now that the Super Bowl is over and the final ad meter results are in, the 2011/2012 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest is officially over. So you know what that means right? It’s time to start thinking about next year’s contest! No seriously…I’m not joking. This year, Doritos gets to boast that they won both of USA Today’s ad meter polls. Man’s Best Friend won the real ad meter and Sling Baby won the online vote. So both the Sling Baby team and the Man’s Best Friend team will be receiving million dollar bonuses. Yeah, ok sure….Sling Baby only won the online poll because the producers of that spot got a small army of people to give bad scores to all the other ads in the competition. But that little fact kind of makes their “win” sound a lot less impressive. So I’m going to guess Fritolay is just going to pretend that stuff didn’t happen and focus on the double victory. And I think that double ad meter victory pretty much guarantees that the Crash will be back this fall.
So for VCN’s final CTSB post of the season, I thought I should revisit a topic that I hope will get a lot of discussion this summer at Fritolay HQ. About three weeks ago I got to do something that thousands of disappointed video contest filmmakers across the country would probably love to do; I got to talk to some of the judges of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest and ask them about how they select their top five finalists every year. Though I had a million random questions I wanted to ask, our conference call was set up to address just one specific issue: Do former Crash the Super Bowl finalists have an unfair advantage in Doritos’ annual commercial contest?
I’ll go over conversation below but first, here’s why we discussed that particular topic: It turns out that even though Doritos received 6,100 entries last fall, three of the five 2012 finalists had co-written, directed or produced commercials that had made the finals in a previous installment of the contest. One winning ad was actually shot by two 2011 finalists that met at the SuperBowl last year and decided to join forces this time around. Another 2012 finalist, Kevin T. Willson has now seen his work make the finals three years in a row. But what was really amazing is that three winning entries, Dog Park, Bird of Prey and Sling Baby were created by a group of friends that attend the same church in Hollywood. So even though the odds of making the finals were 1 in 1,220, three people who all knew each other and who all had co-created ads that had won this contest in the past managed to win again this year.
And 2012 was by no means a fluke. A surprising number of people have made the finals more than once. In fact, there has been at least one repeat finalist EVERY YEAR for the past four years. Now to be fair, some of the past repeat finalists, without question, made the best entries EVER submitted to the contest. (Specifically I’m thinking of “Free Doritos” and “Underdog.”) But in the last two years, things have been getting kind of ridiculous. For instance, there is no question that one 2012 finalist spot, Dog Park wouldn’t even exist if the director and the producer hadn’t met at the Super Bowl last year. That team won again this year because they made a good entry….but they were able to make that entry BECAUSE they won the contest last year. So now more than ever it feels like the Crash the Super Bowl contest was become an insider’s game where the same group of people all get to take turns being finalists.
After the 2012 results were announced in January I blogged about the repeat winners and explained why I thought former finalists might have an edge over the rest of the people who enter the Crash. Here’s a quick rundown of the reasons I listed:
1. PERSONAL RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE JUDGES: When you win the Crash the Super Bowl contest you get to spend several days at the Super Bowl hanging out and partying with the people who actually run the contest. The contest judges get to know the finalists personally and it’s just natural that everyone would get friendly with each other. In my article I theorized that some finalists and some judges may even stay in touch after the game. (Turns out I was correct) I don’t think anyone has ever won this contest because they were pals with one of the judges. But being friends with the people who pick the winners certainly can’t hurt.
2. INSIDE INFORMATION: I suspect that finalists may benefit from talking to the reps from fritolay about the contest during the Super Bowl trip or later in the year if they keep in touch. For instance, I have a feeling that former finalists probably find out (either via hints or direct info) that the CTSB contest will return before that news is made public. If my hunch is correct, past winners basically get a head start over everyone else who enters the contest.
3. MONEY: When you make the Doritos finals you win $25,000. Many finalists turn around and spend a huge chunk of that money on a new entry the following year. For example, the 2012 finalist ad Sling Baby cost about $2,700 to produce and it was made by a director who had already made the finals twice before. So it was easily one of the most expensive commercials submitted to the contest last fall. It’s just not possible (or wise) for Doritos to pick commercials that look crappy so I think people should absolutely be free to spend thousands of dollars on their submissions if they want. However, few people spend that kind of money because it’s just too much of a gamble. But I think former finalists are willing to spend big bucks on their submissions (and I consider anything over $500 to be “big bucks”) because they’re gambling with “the house’s” money.
4. SPECIAL ACCESS TO RESOURCES AND TALENT: Lots of producers have access to money and talent but CTSB winners can get access to those things because of their previous win. This contest can open doors for the people who win it. What actor, crew person or investor wouldn’t want to team up with some who has already made the finals and had their Doritos commercial air on TV? You can’t blame a contestant for taking advantage of opportunities that come to them because they have won the Crash before. But it’s just one more thing that makes the process easier for them. On top of that, as we learned this year, finalists are actually allowed to team up with other former finalists and pool their resources and talent. Now that someone has actually pulled this off, I think we’re going to see more cases this fall where former finalists collaborate and form their own little Super Teams.
The article I posted on January 4th was entitled A Crash the Super Bowl Bummer: Three of the five 2012 finalists were made by past winners and you can read the whole thing by clicking that link. The story quickly became VCN’s most popular post ever and it looks like it was read about 10,000 times (for this site that’s an insane figure.) After it was up for a while, I thought it would only be fair to get Fritolay’s side of the story. So one of their PR reps was good enough to set up a conference call so I could talk directly to two of the people in charge of the Crash the Super Bowl contest; Brian Kuechenmeister who is the head of Public relations for all of Frito-Lay and Jeff Klein who is a senior marketing director for Doritos.
If I were a better writer I would weave their answers into an in depth article about fairness in the Crash the Super Bowl contest. But this is a blog, not Newsweek so I’m just going to hit you with some bullet points. Here’s what I learned from talking to Kuechenmeister and Klein of FritoLay:
1. The two reps were adamant about one point in particular. They said that personal relationships with the judges will not help a finalist make the finals again. They said the official judging criteria listed in the rules are the ONLY thing that matter. Here’s how the rules say entries are score:
1. Originality and Creativity – 40% 2. Adherence to Creative Assignment – 30% 3. Overall Appeal – 30%
2. Some of the people who judge the contest do get to know the finalists during the trip to the Super Bowl. Some judges and some finalists do become friendly and they do stay in touch after the game. One specific example that I was given was that former finalists sometimes update the Doritos team about new projects they are working on. However, the reps also said that they also stay in touch with filmmakers they’ve met who have never won the contest.
3. Former finalists do not get to jump the line. By that I mean that former finalists do not get to send their new entries directly to the judges. I was told that former finalists have to go through the same judging process as everyone else.
4. This one surprised me: The judges know the name of the person who submitted each entry before the final decisions are made. I was told that as long as a former finalist enters under their own name, the judges will know which entry is theirs. This means that the judges know that former finalists have a shot at winning again when they start making their final picks. It also means that there is no surprise moment when the judges realize they just picked the same person’s video for the second or third year in a row. I asked if being a former finalist helped or hurt a person’s chances of winning again. The reps said that issue isn’t a factor during the judging.
5. The rules state that employees or contractors of Fritolay are not eligible to enter the contest if they worked or were contracted by Fritolay in the last 12 months. Even though Doritos purchases all of the winning commercials and airs them for years, finalists are exempt from this rule since the judges consider them to be “contest winners.” So if you are a finalist this year you can be a finalist again next year.
6. EVERYONE who has ever won the Crash the Super Bowl contest is eligible to win again. Even the Herbert Brothers who won the million dollar grand prize can enter again if they want. A former finalist is only ineligible if they were hired by Fritolay to promote the contest that year.
7. I asked if the reps thought that repeat finalists had a financial advantage because they could reinvest their prize money into future entries. They said some people choose to spend a more money on their submissions than other people and that’s up to individual contestants.
That’s a hell of a lot of info and I REALLY appreciate that the reps were so open about the whole process. But I think this contest looks very different to people who are on the “inside.” So I’d like to address a few points from the perspective of any outsider:
First, on the topic of money: If you can get your hands on the right equipment and if you’re willing to spend a few thousand dollars on your submission you’re going to be a serious contender in this contest. And as I’ve said, I think that is totally fair. The winning ads are going to air on millions of HD TVs on Super Bowl sunday! You can’t run an ugly-looking commercial if you want to have a shot of scoring well on the ad meter. During my conversation with the reps from Fritolay, I realized that Doritos NEEDS filmmakers that are willing to make expensive, professional-looking entries. And every year some of the slickest submissions are made by former finalists. I think this is one reason finalists are allowed to enter again the year after they win. It’s like an insurance policy that guarantees that Doritos will always get at least a few tv-quality entries from past winners. If finalists were required to take a year off after winning then Doritos would miss out on those “safe bet” entries.
Now, on the topic of personal relationships with the judges: The thing that bothers me most here is the fact that the judges allow themselves to to become friends with the finalists. And I don’t mean “friendly.” Judges and finalists apparently become actual friends. If you spend a few days with a group of people on a SuperBowl trip you’re just going to naturally bond with them. But as I said, Kuechenmeister and Klein insisted that the judges aren’t picking people for the finals because they all partied together last year. And I believe them 100%. The Crash is a multi-million dollar ad campaign. It would be ludicrous to pick Doritos’ Super Bowl commercial just because the guy who directed it is an awesome dude.
However….the judges in this contest are human beings. Human beings have feelings and human beings have brains that work on a lot of levels. Imagine that you’re a judge in this contest and you’ve got to decide between two commercials. One was made by Potential finalist A and the other was made by Potential Finalist B. Potential finalist A is a total stranger. Potential Finalist B was a finalist in the contest last year. You know that finalist’s name, you’ve met him, you’ve met his girlfriend. You went to parties and concerts and bars with both of them. You watched the Super Bowl from a private skybox together. You got to see the excitement in this guy’s eyes as he waited to see if his commercial was going air during the game. And maybe you got to see the defeat in his eyes when he learned his ad didn’t air or that he didn’t win one of the bonus prizes. Then after the game you stayed in touch. Maybe you even became friends on facebook. If you did, you would get to hear about every up and down in that person’s life. You would know if they were struggling or if they got a great job thanks to the contest. If they didn’t win one of the big prizes you would know if it was their dream to make the finals again and win the million dollars. Maybe you would even offer them encouragement. Maybe part of you looked forward to seeing what Potential Finalist B was going to do this time around.
So…in this scenario, who would you rather be? Potential finalist A or Potential finalist B? Even if the judges TRY to remain totally objective, isn’t it unfair to the other 6,000 contestants that the judges even HAVE TO try to be objective? Wouldn’t it be more fair if they just WERE objective?
I feel like kind of a jerk for even saying this but just now, on a whim I signed into facebook and checked to see if Mr. Kuechenmeister had a profile. He did and it’s set to “public.” I looked at his list of friends and it looks like he is Facebook friends with almost every Crash the Super Bowl finalist from the last 3 years. (He only has about 500 friends so he’s not a public figure or anything that people can just friend out of the blue.) This is relevant for some very important reasons. Brian Kuechenmeister is the head of Public relations for Frito-Lay and he’s one of the top decision-makers in the Crash the Super Bowl contest. I would be willing to bet that no video can even make the finals without his approval. Only a tiny, tiny percentage of people who enter this contest every year will know the names of any of the judges. But if you do know who the judges are, and if are able to stay in contact with them between contests you’re basically setting yourself up to be a front runner next time around.
For example, the reps told me that former finalists don’t send their new entries directly to any of the judges. But when a filmmaker enters the Crash the Super Bowl contest, what’s the first thing he or she does when his or her entry appears in the video gallery? They post the link to their submission on facebook, of course. I checked and that’s what three-time Crash the Super Bowl finalist Kevin Willson did on November 20th last year. Willson is facebook friends with both Kuechenmeister and Klein. Which means that one day before the contest deadline, Fritolay’s head of Public relations and the Senior marketing director for Doritos would have seen this in their facebook feed:
Did Willson do anything wrong here? Hell, no. The guy should be able to post his entries on his facebook page like everyone else. I just think that it’s inappropriate that some of the judges in this contest have chosen to follow the efforts of a handful of contestants. As I’ve said, Doritos received 6,100 Crash the Super Bowl entries this year. It would take one person about 50 hours to watch every, single submission. I’d be amazed if the big wigs at Fritolay watched more than a few hundred entries. They probably only watch the very best submissions. Willson didn’t need to worry about his entry making it past round after round of judging. If just one of the contest judges saw that link on Facebook they would have probably though something like “Well, Kevin’s a contender again this year.” Of course, that would only happen if the entry was any good. But lots of good entries get snubbed every year. If two filmmakers each make excellent submissions and one has to survive multiple rounds of judging before it gets to the head of PR for Fritolay and another can get his entry in front of that person before the submission period is even over, is that really a fair process?
And I think I can offer one more piece of evidence that supports my theory that the people who run this contest just get a little to close to some to the winners. All last month, Doritos had been airing this commercial to encourage viewers to vote in the Crash the Super Bowl contest:
The ad features clips of several entries that have won the contest over the years. But it also includes shots of a few non-winning submissions. I thought the commercial was a fantastic idea when I first saw it. It was awesome of Doritos to showcase the weird and wonderful work of so many past contestants. Sure, it would be incredible to make the finals but just having even a few seconds of your goofy Doritos entry air on TV would be pretty sweet. Plus, it’s fun for viewers to see clips of strange Doritos commercials they’ve never seen before.
But there was one shot in the commercial that seemed familiar to me. I recognized one of the clips but I couldn’t remember why. It took me a while but it finally hit me. I was even able to find the complete submission online:
That entry is entitled “ChainSaw” and it was shot for the 2010/2011 installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest. It didn’t make the finals. But it was directed by Kevin T. Willson and produced by Heather Kasprzak. Willson has directed ads that made the CTSB finals for the last three years. And Kasprzak has produced ads that have made the finals for the last two years. Kasprzak actually produced Willson’s 2010-11 entry. Between them, Willson and Kasprzak have created FOUR COMMERCIALS that have made the Crash the Super Bowl finals.
So it’s obvious why “Chainsaw” appears in that promo. It was convenient. In the last two years, the Crash the Super Bowl contest has probably received 10,000 entries. But the folks at Doritos knew the producers of “Chainsaw” personally. They didn’t have to dig up their contact info. They could just call them and ask for permission to use that clip. And a post-production intern didn’t have to spend weeks searching for a non-winning entry that had something to do with “love.” I’m sure the judges just remembered that Willson & Kasprzak had shot a high-quality entry that would fit their concept. Heck…maybe this ad even inspired their concept. Oh and as a bonus, Doritos didn’t even have to pay to use the clip. I actually asked and Willson and Kasprzak weren’t compensated for the use of their footage. I’m guessing that’s because if they got paid they would be considered “contractors” and they would not be eligible to enter the contest again next year.
So to someone on the “outside” it looks like Doritos has a few “go-to” filmmakers that they just seem to like to work with every year. Do I think that anyone at Fritolay is actively conspiring to pick the same winners in this contest over and over? Absolutely not. All of the 2012 finalists made entries that were good enough to win…but so did a lot of other people. To win this contest you need to have talent and make an awesome, hilarious, professional looking submission. And Doritos gets lots of awesome, hilarious, professional looking submissions every year. But for some reason it just seems like “the system” favors contestants that have won the Crash before. Former finalists have lots of cash to play with, they are able to work with the best actors and tech people they can find, they may know the contest is happening again before the news is made public and they just happen to be friends with the people who will be picking the winners. So it’s not really surprising that the same people can win two or even three years in a row. But….is it fair?
Hey, Forget the ad meter….if you want to know what the biggest commercials of the Super Bowl were, just watch Saturday Night Live the weekend after the big game. If a commercial gets a joke or even a whole parody you know it made an impact on people’s brains. Last night SNL Live did a sketch about MIA’s middle finger “controversy” and the Crash the Super Bowl ad, Man’s Best Friend got a pretty funny mention. I won’t spoil the joke. Just skip ahead to like the 1:15 mark to hear the reference. Or just watch the whole thing….it’s Sunday and it’s February. What the hell else do you have to do today?
If you’re still bored after that, go check out SNL’s parodies of Clint Eastwood’s “Halftime in America” commercial. I know it doesn’t have anything to do with video contests but f*ck it…it’s funny so just watch it: http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/
Wow, where did January go?? Voting is now over in Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest. The contest site has been keeping track of the voting and it looks like just under half a million votes were cast! There were only five finalists so (obviously) that’s about 100,000 votes per video. With numbers like that, you have to wonder if an individual finalist’s efforts to get people to vote for them are just a waste of time. Think about it; let’s say you have a social network of 300 people. Even if every one of those people voted for you every day for 30 days that would only equal 9,000 votes. But unlike most video contests, people vote in the CTSB contest because Fritolay gives out big cash prizes to random voters….not because they know one of the finalists. So this may be the only video contest in history where “the public” really does pick the winner. Despite the big numbers, the 2012 finalists still campaigned like crazy. Last week a reader name Chad e-mailed me about something funny he saw on TV that morning. Here’s what he said:
I was watching the Today Show this morning and they were interviewing Michelle Williams when my mouth dropped to the floor. Just look in the background of the photo I attached to see what I mean. And no, there was nothing on the show program today that even mentions CTSB.
And here’s the photo he sent me:
Screen shot of the Today Show
Sling Baby is of course one of the five Crash the Super Bowl finalists. That stunt was funny but I’m not sure that type of thing will generate a lot of votes. So anyway, who will win? Damned if I know. But I’m predicting HOT WILD GIRLS will wind up receiving the most votes. Why? Because its title is “Hot Wild Girls!!” Imagine you were a random guy who didn’t enter the CTSB contest. But you saw an ad online and you decided to to cast a quick vote so you could have a shot at winning one of the Voter Prizes. Which of these 5 ads would you want to click on?
Just from the titles and the thumbnails you can tell that two commercials are about dogs and one is about a baby. “Bird of Prey” just looks like it’s about some guys in an office. So I think most people (both men and women) would click on Hot Wild Girls just out of curiosity. And if you don’t care much about who wins, you’re just going to vote for the first video you watch.
Final predictions: Doritos is scheduled to air 2 commercials on Sunday but I bet they’ll air three. I think Hot Wild Girls will get the most votes and I think Fritolay’s picks will be Bird of Prey and Man’s Best friend. That’s a nice mix; you get one ad about a hilariously giant dog, you get one about a crazy bird man and you get one that’s about technology….and rottweilers. The other two ads, Sling Baby and Dog Park are getting crushed in the unofficial view count race on the CTSB youtube channel. So I think Doritos will have to go with the most popular, most exciting ads. But I don’t think any CTSB ads are going to land in the Top 3 on the USA Today ad meter. A lot of this year’s Superbowl ads have already been made public and the competition is looking very, very tough. Seriously….have you seen Volkswagen’s official Super Bowl commercial?? Holy shit! Not only does it have a dog, it has Hammerhead and Ponda Baba from the original star wars! If you haven’t seen it, head here to check it out. And man, don’t even get me started on that Ferris Bueller ad. If a CTSB entry lands in the Top 3 this year it will really be an amazing accomplishment.
Quick Note: We’ve got a big post in the works so check back tomorrow for some very interesting inside information about the Crash the Super Bowl contest. Quick Update: Actually, I’m going to wait to post that story until after the Super Bowl. More details coming soon!
A funny thing happened the week that Doritos announced their five picks for the Crash the Super Bowl finals. As usual, a lot of media outlets and bloggers covered the contest and announced the start of the voting. But instead of featuring one of the winning commercials in their stories, a lot of writers chose to embed a video that didn’t actually make the final five. The ad is called “Make Your Own” and it is weirdly hilarious. If you haven’t seen it, here it is:
The reason why all these news outlets decided to feature the same, non-winning video is kind of a mystery. I remember that the official Crash the Super Bowl winners were already on youtube the day the results were announced so all those journalists could have just posted one of the official ads. At first I thought maybe someone, somewhere had falsely reported that Make Your Own had made the top five and other writers had picked up the false lead. But many of the articles I read actually lamented the fact that this spot didn’t make the finals. A piece on the Huffington Post went so that Make Your Own “snubbed” despite being “brilliant.”
The entry went on to be featured on the front page of Yahoo, CBS This Morning, NBCsports.com, Mashable and a ton of other websites. But things really got crazy when Make Your Own appeared on the front page of Reddit. After that the video just went fully viral. Today, Make Your Own has recived 2,378,000 views on youtube. Here are the current stats for the five videos that actually did win the contest this year:
Man’s Best Friend: 199,903 views
Hot Wild Girls: 199,966 views
Bird of Prey: 200,486 views
Dog Park: 128,736 views
Sling Baby: 112,536 views
Combined total views: 841,627
So Make Your Own has a view count almost three times larger than all the finalist ads combined! That is simply an amazing accomplishment and it’s certainly no fluke. This is an awesome submission and I think it would have made a kick-ass finalist. The hilarious dude playing the host is named Byron Brown. The concept is great but I think it’s the Brown’s performance that added just a bit of insane magic to this ad. The guys who actually made this entry are three friends from Austin TX; David Ward, Jack Dreesen and John Ramsey. This is their third year entering the Crash the Super Bowl contest and this time around they shot 3 (very good) submissions. You can seen all their various entries on Ward’s youtube channel. Oh wait a second….as I’m writing this I just noticed these guys created one of my favorite Doritos submissions of last year’s contest!
Back to Make Your Own; because the ad has become so popular, the producers have been asking fans to tweet at Doritos and ask them to “reconsider” their entry. Obviously it’s way too late for this ad to become a finalist but Doritos does love to pull surprises on Super Bowl night. I think it would be freaking amazing if they actually decided to run this spot; if not during the superbowl then maybe at some later date. After all, I think Doritos really owes these guys. Look at all the free advertising they got out of this one entry that didn’t win a dime! If Fritolay were paying one cent per view, they would owe the producers of Make Your Own more than $23,500! if you’d like to join the campaign to get Doritos to air this ad, click here: http://clicktotweet.com/dlO2L
