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.

When I was a kid, Old Spice meant one thing; an easy Christmas present idea for Grandpa. Old Spice After Shave had become such a cliche’ “old man’s” product that 5 years ago the company seemed bound for extinction. But old man Old Spice or whoever was running things over there must have retired because recently, Old Spice has gone balls out to re-brand themselves as a cool and even SUBVERSIVE line. And guess what? It’s working! Old Spice isn’t just an after shave any more, it’s a BRAND….a brand that promotes itself with hilarious and faux-serious ads featuring cocky centaurs and Bruce Campbell crooning Hungry Like the Wolf. Suddenly we find ourselves living in a crazy, topsy turvery world where Old Spice the brand seems to be totally in tune with what gets the attention of young males.

A few months back, Old Spice took another step in what they must think of as their “let’s get relevant campaign” by announcing they would be teaming up with Poptent in a search for user-generated video content. If you don’t know what Poptent is it’s like a video contest website….except that it isn’t. I’ve been noticing more and more third party websites running other companies’ video contests and I usually try and stay away from those. My thinking is that if a company cared enough they would just run the contest themselves. More importantly though, who needs a middleman getting in between filmmakers and the money companies have to spend?

But Poptent is different. They seem to be on to something there. They’re focused on building and keeping a community of talented filmmakers. And talented people seem to like Poptent. The quality level of submitted videos is very, very high. In the Old Spice competitions, serious productions actually outnumbered videos that were shot on cheapo cameras by bored teenagers!

The best thing about Poptent though is that they don’t run video contests. They hold open calls for video content. If a sponsor likes your work they don’t give you a prize, they BUY your video. So if a Poptent client like Bounce or Harley Davidson buys a video you submit then you can list those big name companies as clients. That is huge.

Anyhoo…today it was announced that Old Spice bought two videos made by Poptent creators for $5,000 each. One was a commercial for Old Spice Deck Scrubber and the other was for Old Spice Everclear. The chosen videos are pretty decent. Observe:








They’re not as good as the Bruce Campbell commercial where he walks in front of the giant painting but hey, what is?