About two weeks back I blogged about Dortios’ Canadian video contest, Viralocity. The objective was to come up with a name for Doritos’ new mystery flavor chip and then make a video explaining the suggestion. The winner was to be determined by points that were earned by how many views, stars, tweets, posts, links etc a video got.

Back on March 23rd, the video that was leading the pack was this unpleasant, racist entry from some internet-famous dude named Peter Chao:  http://www.doritosviralocity.ca/Gallery/VideoDetails.aspx?v=440481

The maker of that video apparently has an online fan base so big that his other entry was also ranked #3. But the Viralocity contest ended last Wednesday and the next day Doritos announced that another video had scored the most points and was the winner of the $100,000 prize. Aside from the money, Doritos is also going to name the mystery flavor the winning suggestion. Here it is:

First Place. Prize: $100,000

That’s an amusing video and Spice 2.0 is a decent name for a chip. It’s especially appropriate considering the nature of the contest. So Doritos really dodged a bullet here. What would they have done if the racist entry had managed to stay in first place? Would the company really want to stand up and say “Congratulations to our winner, Peter Chao for his hilarious video about how funny Asians are when they try and speak English!”

I’m glad the racist New Moon parody video didn’t win but….you can’t help but wonder if maybe that video had some “help” slipping into second place. After all, the point system Doritos devised is complicated and contestants don’t get a full accounting of where all of their points came from. This reminds me of the movie Election. Remember that one? Matthew Broderick was the teacher who ran the Student body president election? And Reese Witherspoon was the perfect, horrible candidate Tracy Flick? Matthew Broderick’s character was in charge of officially counting the ballots and after he realized Tracy had won by one vote, he just crumpled up two of her votes and declared the nice guy she was running against the winner. If Doritos wanted to rig this contest it would be just as simple as crumpling up (or adding) a few thousand electronic points. If they did that, who would ever know? Just maybe the head of the contest and one IT guy.

But I don’t think that happened. I’m sure the Spice 2.0 guy won fair and square. Peter Chao probably slipped out of first because he exhausted his fan base early on. The Spice 2.0 video was funny and topical so it kept getting passed on.

So I don’t believe that Doritos did anything unfair here. But fans of Peter Chao do. If you check out his and Doritos-Canada’s Facebook pages you’ll see a lot of angry comments from them there. The hilarious irony is that many of them are accusing Doritos of racism! They suspect that Doritos rigged the contest because they didn’t want the winner to be Asian. Sometimes, when I see how stupid some of the people of the Internet can be, I fear very much for our future.

Whatever happened, don’t feel too bad for that racist goofball. His two videos scored 2nd and 3rd place and so he should be receiving $15,000 and $10,000 prize. Lots of other cash prizes are going to people who scored well. You can see all those winners here:

http://www.doritosviralocity.ca/Gallery.aspx

Any video that scored 14th place or better will get at least $1,000. Most of the videos aren’t too great though since this was a contest about “viralocity” and not quality.  That’s just one reason why running this kind of social network-fueled contest is a bad idea.  Another reason is that everyone who didn’t win walks away pissed at the sponsor.  Just go to Peter Chao’s facebook page and look and see how many of his 100,000+ fans are screaming “Boycott Doritos!”

In his e-mail, the guy said that Doritos initially rejected his video because it contained unauthorized music.  But he didn’t use any music, just chip bag sounds.  So he missed out on a week of exposure.  There are still 5 days left in the contest so if you want to help this guy in his quest for Viralocity, visit his page on the Doritos’ site and facebook and tweet him and link him and stuff:  http://bit.ly/bjjyT0

I also got an update from the guy who made the for-charity, Viralocity video. (check my last post for the full story)  He said his entry has started to creep up the rankings so if you want to support a good cause, go spread this video:  http://bit.ly/djGMqG

On Tuesday I blogged about Doritos’ odd, Canada-only video contest called Viralocity. Basically whoever can make their Doritos-naming video go the most viral, wins. Today, a filmmaker name Mark sent me a message. Here’s part of it:

“I created a video for the contest, but with the intention of donating all prize money to cancer and kids charities. Figured I’d rather give the money away than to some yahoo.” (Like the guy currently in first place- Beardy)

“I’m currently #26 out of around 1,200 entries and proud to say I’ve done it without spamming, proxy views or any other ways around the terribly designed scoring system Doritos has created.”

Feel free to check it out and help promote if you want – might be able to scoop some of the prize for a worthy endeavor…

http://www.doritosviralocity.ca/Gallery/VideoDetails.aspx?v=6435

Being #26 out of 1200 is pretty good. Since this is for a good cause I thought I’d increase the video’s viral-ness by posting it here. If you want to help Mark win won of the top prizes, you can start by watching his video below. If you want to really help him, visit the link above and get links to spread the videos on facebook, twitter, etc, etc, etc.

Good luck to Mark.  We’ll let you know how he does.

Poor Canada.  Those chip-loving hosers weren’t eligible to participate in Dorito’s Crash the Superbowl commercial contest.  But now that CTSB is over, Fritolay decided that our neighbors to the north deserved a contest of their own.  So they launched a new video contest, “Doritos Viralocity,” just for them.

The premise of “Viralocity” is pretty neat but the execution is just….whoa, kinda nuts.  Doritos released a new, un-named flavor of chips in Canada and asked the public to name it.  Entrants were supposed to shoot a video that shows why the new flavor should get their suggested name.  Like I said, it’s a cool idea.

If I were eligible to enter, I'd have called them "Beardy's Choice"

But considering how well-executed the Crash the Superbowl contest was, “Viralocity” is just plain crazy and confusing.  The winner of the contest and the recipient of the $100,000 (CD) grand prize will be the video that goes the most viral.  Doritos has a whole system of points set up to measure viralness.  For example, every time a Canadian views an entry, that entry gets 5 points.  But if someone outside Canada watches an entry, it gets 100 points.  And each time it gets facebooked or tweeted or Dugg, different points are awarded.  Some accomplishments can get you as many as 1,000 points.  If you’re interested in the specifics, click here to see the full breakdown.

So what’s wrong with this system?  Well for one, it’s basically just a giant online free-for-all.  There’s no way Doritos could ever track all those views and clicks and posts so if someone really wanted to inflate their video’s score, it’d be very easy.

But worse than that though, it seems like the contest was almost intentionally designed to pick a terrible, horrible winner.  Anyone who knows how the internet works could tell you that this contest is going to be won by some annoying guy with an idiotic show on youtube that’s super-popular with tweens and his video would some how be related to something those tweens really, really love.  Like, I dunno…Twilight or something.  There are still 10 days to go before the final scores are tallied but right now, it looks like this video, with a score of 1,852,667 points will probably wind up being the winner:

I knew the most “popular” video wouldn’t be very good but I never expected it to be straight up racist!  Yeah the guy in the video is asian but that doesn’t mean it’s no big deal if he runs around mocking Chinese people.  If that video wins, is Doritos really going to want to associate themselves with such an offensive caricature?

As expected, this dude who made that video has a very, very, very popular youtube channel and his “show” is just one big joke about negative Asian stereotypes.  In fact, this guy’s channel is so popular that his other entry in the contest is now ranked #3.  If his videos were awesome this wouldn’t bother me but both entries are lame and the flavor names he picked have no relation to the videos.  And it sorta seemed like that was the point of the contest.  The only reason this dude is going to win is because he has a big social network.  That means that every single filmmaker that actually tried to make a decent entry for this contest wasted their time.

Doritos should have seen this coming a mile away.  When you let the internet decide what’s popular, you’re gonna wind up with some pretty lame, offensive, lowest-common-denominator type stuff.

And trust me, this guy IS probably going to win.  The Viralocity website is set-up in such a way that you can see the most-popular videos.  Since the Asian-bashing Twilight spoof is ranked #1, everyone is going to click it out of curiosity….and that of course keeps jacking the video’s score higher and higher.

It looks like Doritos managed to get a whopping 1,200 entries for this contest.  If you’d like to sort through them, here’s the video gallery:  http://www.doritosviralocity.ca/Gallery.aspx

In the Doritos Skybox. From left to right: Kyle Gerardi, Nick Dimondi, Joshua Svoboda, Barrett Phillips. Not Pictured (others involved in the commercials) Wes Phillips, Dale Backus (Producers) Brian Oliver and Rosie the dog (Actors in Underdog) and Wayne Phillips (the old man Kids These Days).

Though four consumer-made Doritos commercials aired during the Superbowl back in February, the big winner of this year’s Crash the Superbowl contest were a group of friends from North Carolina who operate under the banner, 5 Point Productions. Last December, that small team of independent filmmakers learned that both entries they shot for the 2009/2010 installment of the contest made it to the finals.  When you consider that Doritos received more than 4,000 submissions this year and only picked 6 finalist videos, getting 2 of the 6 top spots is really an incredible achievement.

And if you aren’t impressed enough yet, here’s another amazing fact;  The 5 Point Productions team also WON the Crash the Superbowl contest the first year it ran in 2006/2007.

When I first heard that one team had gotten two commercials into Doritos’ “Top 6” I was stunned.  And when I realized that these guys were the same filmmakers that won the first CTSB contest I was almost ready to start screaming “shenanigans!”  But before I could even develop a decent conspiracy theory, I got a message from one of the producers of the two 5 Point entries (entitled “Kids These Days” and “Underdog”) and he explained that Doritos had no idea that the two entries were made by the same team.  It‘s easy to believe it was all just a coincidence because both of the team’s entries are just that good!  “Underdog” was actually my favorite entry even before the finalists were announced and I thought it would have a very good chance of scoring big on the USA Today ad meter.  Turns out I was right. “Underdog” went on to be one of the four finalist videos to air during the superbowl and was ranked the #2 best commercial of the game on the USA Today Ad Meter.  That feat earned the team a bonus of $600,000 from Doritos.

When you ball all that good news together you know what you get?  The greatest set of accomplishments in video contest history, that’s what.  Sure, the Herbert Brothers landed the #1 spot on the USA Today ad meter and earned a million dollar bonus last year for their CTSB entry, “Free Doritos” but I think the combined achievements of the 5 Point Productions team top that easily.  For God’s sake, they won 2 out of the 3 years the contest has been run!  That’s amazing.  I was really interested in hearing some behind the scenes details about this whole thing and one of the producers of “Underdog” and “Kids these Days,” Kyle Girardi offered to answer a few questions.  Before we get into his answers, here are his team’s Crash the Superbowl spots:

The above is the 5 Point Team’s entry for the 2006/2007 Crash the Superbowl contest, “Live the Flavor.”  This commercial went on to be the CTSB winner and aired during the game in ‘07.  This was for the first installment of the contest and back then, the prize for making it to the finals was $10,000 and there were no bonuses to be won if your ad made it to air.

Here’s the team’s 2009/2010 entry “Kids These Days.”  This spot was selected by Doritos as one of this year’s 6 finalists.  The prize for being a finalist is $25,000.

Finally, here’s the team’s other 2009/2010 entry, “Underdog.”  This commercial ALSO made it to the finals and so they recived an additional $25,000 finalist prize.  On top of that of course, they also recived a $600,000 bonus for scoring so well on the ad meter.  “Underdog” was the only Doritos commercial to crack the Top 10 on the ad meter on Superbowl sunday.

Now that you’re caught up, let’s get on with the interview!

————————————-

VCN: So who and what is 5 Point Productions?

KYLE:  That’s kind of a tough one. 5 Point was started in 2007 when they made the first Doritos ad. Josh Svoboda and I weren’t part of the team at that time, but we were good friends with most of them from middle school. Its only been about a year that he and I have really been an active part of the 5 Point team. As for 5 Point’s future: “Underdog” and “Kids These Days” might be the last you see of 5 Point, we’re gonna try and take a few jobs if we need them, but right now the main focus is on a short film.

VCN:  What kind of gear did you use to shoot “Underdog” and “Kids These Days?” Do you own your gear?

KYLE:  We used the Canon 5D Mark II to shoot both commercials. It’s a pretty inexpensive camera that shoots incredible HD footage, so we had to get one.

VCN:  I was amazed when I found out that one team of filmmakers had gotten two entries in the finals this year and I was totally blown away when I found out that you guys were the winners of the 2007 contest. Did Doritos know “Underdog” and “Kids These Days” were by you guys? If not, how did they react when they found out?

KYLE:  No, they didn’t know at first. We put different names and addresses on the commercials just in case they liked them both. We couldn’t believe for the longest time that both were finalist, we thought some sorry son of a bitch was playing a joke on us.

VCN:  Did anyone ever worry that it might look kind of suspicious that the 2007 winners did so well again this year? Do you think Doritos would have picked both your videos if they knew who made them?

KYLE:  I think so. Josh’s name was on Underdog and he had no connection with the competition in 2007 whatsoever. However, “Kids These Days” had the name of one the people involved in the 2007 commercial, but I like to think they just picked it because they thought it was a great spot.

VCN:  A few days before the Superbowl, CBS aired a TV special about Superbowl commercials and they aired “Kids these Days” and said it was one of the ads that were going to play on Sunday. It of course didn’t air though. Did you guys get a ton of calls from people telling you your ad was going to air? Do you know how or why that happened?

KYLE:  I don’t know what that was about, but our phones were ringing off the hook. I tried not to pay much attention to it, but I figured if CBS was airing the Super Bowl they knew what commercials that were going to play… It kind of killed my buzz. I always had a lot more faith in Underdog, truth be told.

VCN:  “Underdog” was the first CTSB winner of the night to air. Was there a special reason for that?

KYLE:  Probably because I was being a little weirdo during the Super Bowl. I think they just called CBS and told them to play it first so I would calm the hell down. It’s torture not knowing if your commercial is gonna air or not, and I had no idea I’d handle pressure so terribly. My heart was about to pound out of my chest during every commercial break. If it weren’t for the 2 Xanax I took before the game I most likely would have had a heart attack.

VCN:  Do you guys know how your videos did in the online voting? Do you know if you made the top three or do you think that “Underdog” might have been Dortio’s choice as the bonus ad?

KYLE:  I’m not going to say how I know, but I know for a fact we had enough votes to make top 3.

VCN:  How did you guys find out you won 2nd place on the ad meter? How’d you celebrate?

KYLE:  It was actually Dave Herbert who told us at first, he had his cell phone on him and was surfing the web. It wasn’t really set in stone until Rudy Wilson (CEO Doritos) got up in front of everyone on the bus ride back to the hotel and said “I’m out $600 grand, because Underdog got 2nd place.”

I remember the feeling that came over me, the first thing that popped in my head was “I can finally make a movie.” I can’t think of a happier moment in my life. That night we didn’t really celebrate that much. We had a few beers and got to say goodbye to everyone… It was really sad leaving those guys, all the other finalists are amazing people. Believe it or not I was hoping to see Snack Attack or Smackout play in the 4th spot over “Kids These Days.”

VCN:  You obviously spent a lot of time with the Crash the Superbowl folks. Did you get the impression that they will bring the contest back this fall?

KYLE:  I think they will. It looked like they got just as big a rush out of it as we did.

VCN:  What do you guys plan to do now?

KYLE:  We got some attention from the commercials, so we’re gonna try and make some extra dough. Within the next month or so I’d also like to get rolling on a short film.

VCN:  If the CTSB contest comes back, would you guys be up for replacing the Herbert Brothers as the “Kings of the Crash” and being the contest’s spokesmen? (I think that’d be great and I hope that’s what happens)

KYLE:  Certainly not me personally. I’m way to ugly to be in front of the camera.

VCN:  You guys certainly seem to have figured out the recipe for success in this particular contest. Have any advise for aspiring Crash the Superbowl contestants?

KYLE:  I guess just don’t be too hard on yourself. Before I knew we were finalists I was convinced that “Underdog” and “Kids These Days” were the two biggest piles of shit on the planet. I couldn’t believe Doritos picked them. Sorry, I know “believe in yourself” sounds lame.

VCN:  Thanks a ton to Kyle for taking the time to answer our questions and congratulations to all of his teammates!

]]> http://videocontestnews.com/2010/03/15/vcn-interview-with-crash-the-superbowl-co-winner-kyle-gerardi/feed/ 2 http://videocontestnews.com/2010/02/07/crash-the-super-bowl-winners/ http://videocontestnews.com/2010/02/07/crash-the-super-bowl-winners/#comments Mon, 08 Feb 2010 02:57:07 +0000 Beardy http://videocontestnews.com/?p=1492 Super Bowl XLIV just ended and that means that the 2010 installment of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest is finally over too. All three winning commercials aired in the first quarter but SURPRISE!…Doritos snuck one more Crash the Superbowl finalist in during the 4th quarter. And holy crap, the USA Today Ad Meter results have just come in and SURPRISE again! One of the Crash the Superbowl ads cracked the top 3! I’ll post all the numbers below but first here are the official winners in the order they ran. From what I’ve read, the order that the commercials aired reflect which entries got the most, second most and third most votes last month.

1. Underdog. Created by Nick Dimondi/Joshua Svoboda

2. House Rules. Created by Joelle de Jesus

3. Casket. Created by Kevin T. Willson

SURPRISE BONUS AD. Snack Attack Samurai. Created by Ben Krueger

A few days ago I explained here and here that it looked like Doritos had already revealed the names of the Crash the Super Bowl entries that were going to air tonight. The finalist entries that were publicly identified as destined for air last week were Snack Attack Samurai, Kids These Days and Casket. Looks like those predictions were off by one. But hey, way back in December, before the finalists were even announced, we predicted in this post that “Underdog” would go all the way this year. So hurray for us!

UPDATE: Oh snap!!!! The Ad Meter results are in and UNDERDOG was rated the second best commercial of the entire game right after the Betty White/Snickers spot! That means the makers of Underdog, 5 Points Productions will be receiving a $600,000 bonus from Doritos. As for the other three Crash the Super Bowl entries that aired tonight….well, they didn’t fare so well. None of them even cracked the top 10. Here are the numbers.

1. Underdog. Ad Meter Score: 8.27. Ad Meter Rank: #2

2. House Rules. Ad Meter Score: 7.12. Ad Meter Rank: #11

3. Casket. Ad Meter Score: 7.00. Ad Meter Rank: #14

4. Snack Attack Samurai. Ad Meter Score: 6.79. Rank: #17

Now even though none of the other ads made the top 3, the scores are still quite impressive. After all, there were 60 commercials ranked by the ad meter. Plus since Snack Attack Samurai aired so late in the game I bet its score suffered because the focus groups in the Ad Meter polling were probably a little burnt out by then. You can see the full list of ad meter results here: USA Today Ad Meter.

So what did we learn tonight? Well, we learned that Beardy is a genius! We totally called this one. Over the last few weeks we’ve repeatedly claimed that “Underdog” was going to make it to the top three and not only that, we predicted that it was the only one of the six finalists that had a chance of doing so.

Seriously though, now that the dust is settling it’s clear that the big winner of the 2010 installment of the CTSB contest is 5 Points Productions. Though the Crash the Super Bowl contest has only been run three times, that plucky team of filmmakers from North Carolina have now won the competition TWICE! The 5 Points entry “Live the Flavor” won the first installment of the CTSB contest and aired during the 2007 Super Bowl. Now their entry “Underdog” has also came out on top. Plus they were the first filmmakers ever to get TWO entries in the finals in one year!!  (The other was Kids These Days)  That’s three unbelievable achievements so it looks like Doritos should get ready to crown them as the new, “Kings of the Crash.”  They’ve earned it.

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

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.

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.

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.