The phrase "Most Notable" wouldn't fit on the banner so I went with "Best"
Back in December I was planning on doing an article about the “Best Video Contest Entries of 2011.” I did one in both 2010 and 2009 but I never got around to doing the 2011 list. The thing is, 2011 wasn’t really a kick ass year for “consumer generated content.” There just weren’t many big stand outs. So I figured that before we get any deeper into 2012 I’d just do a quick run down of the best video contest entries of the past year. But here’s the thing; these entries aren’t really “the best.” Anyone who has entered even a single video contest knows that the “best” entries don’t always win. So let’s say that these are the most notable contest entries of 2011. Basically this will be a list of the biggest winners of the past year.
In February, the Crash the Super Bowl finalist Pug Attack aired during the Super Bowl and scored the Million Dollar ad meter bonus. But you know, I never really liked Pug Attack since it was just kind of a re-do of the CTSB winning ad, Underdog. One CTSB spot I did like though was the Pepsi Max commercial, Love Hurts. That ad also aired during the game and won a $400,000 ad meter bonus.
The spring of 2011 was a very good time for a Lexington, KY man named Walt Arnett. In March his “Cash America rap” won first place and $10,000 on Cash America’s Cash Rap video contest. In May this video won him 1 of the 6 Mini Coopers that Dairy Queen gave away in their Mini Blizzard Treatment video contest. And then just a week or so later his entry won the $150,000 grand prize in Excedrin’s What’s Your Headache video contest. Interesting note: All three of these contests used facebook votes to determine the winners.
During the summer, Gain detergent awarded a million dollars to this video in their Smell Like a Million Bucks video contest. The winner of that contest was determined by a public vote so of course the winning entry wasn’t that great.
And….that’s it. Those were all the big contests on 2011. It used to be that there were several big video contests a year where the grand prize would be at least $25,000. And as far as I can remember, there weren’t any “make our TV commercial” contests last year either. I guess that sites like Poptent, Tongal and Mofilm have made those kind of big contests unnecessary. But a few contest entries did make it onto TV in 2011. In November, Triaminc started airing a Poptent-made ad entitled 102. And this cool Mofilm-made ad, “Chevy Runs Deep” actually aired during the MLB AllStar game.
Now that I mention it, Mofilm ran a ton of huge video contests in 2011. Each contest was based around a different film festival or arts event and each competition had an over all winner. You can see all of the top Mofilm winners of 2011 in this convenient youtube playlist: http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL42175AE837CCDF68
Finally, I think I’ll close out this list by naming VCN’s pick for The Best Video Contest Entry of 2011. This was an easy call. Top honors go to “Duct Tron” which won first place and $4,750 (?) in Tongal’s Stuck on Duct Tape competition. Not only is it an amazing on a technical level, it actually has a hilarious surprise ending. This ad wound up going viral and recived a crazy amount of love from the Internet. Watch it and you will understand why.
If I missed any big 2011 contest entries leave a comment and let me know!
It’s been about a week now since the submission period for the 2012 Crash the Super Bowl contest closed and in total it looks like Doritos recived 4,829 entries. That’s an all time record. Sure, some of those submissions are duplicates but not many. This year the Doritos team did a great job of keeping the repeat submissions out of the contest gallery. In fact, I’d estimate that only 1% of this year’s ads are duplicates. If we ignore the fact that a few of the entries are repeats, a little math tells us that your odds of making the Top Five are 1 in 965. That makes this year’s Crash the Super Bowl the most difficult video contest to win, EVER. So if you entered this year and if you have friends that are really psyched about your chances, you might want to mention the “1 in 965″ odds to them so they won’t be too crushed if you don’t make the finals.
As I explained in my previous post, this year I’m trying to watch (at least a few seconds of) every, single CTSB entry. My goal is to compile a list of all the best submissions. (If you made an awesome entry and want to be considered for the list, leave your link in a comment to my last post.) While scrolling through the contest gallery, every once in a while I’ll come across a commercial that has a recognizable face or two in it. Over the years, a few “celebrities” have appeared in Crash the Super Bowl entries but using known actors seems to be a big trend this year.
But personally, I think using celebrities in a CTSB entry is a really awful idea for everyone involved. Before I get into “why” it’s a bad idea, take a minute and check out this Crash the SuperBowl entry featuring Jenny McCarthy. I can’t embed CTSB videos so you’ll have to click on the image to view it on the contest site:
click to view.
That was seriously a pretty good entry. The production values where top notch, the premise was funny, the women all looked very nice and it ended with a strong punchline. I actually think it would be a major contender if it did NOT feature a celebrity. As it is, there’s just something off-putting about this submission. It causes the viewer to wonder, “Why the hell is Jenny McCarthy in a Crash the Super Bowl entry?” And that question leads to more questions like “Is she broke?” “Does she really need the $25,000 finalist prize that badly? “Or does she just want the attention of being in a Super Bowl ad?” But here’s the most relevant question; if Jenny McCarthy wants to do commercials, why doesn’t she just do some? Is she un-castable or something these days? (NOTE: The answers to all these questions have been answered by one of the directors of this spot! Scroll down for the full story.)
So you see, if you’re a recognizable actor, doing a Crash the Super Bowl entry is is a huge gamble. Like I said, there’s only a 1 in 965 chance of making the finals. But there’s a 100% chance that people will wonder why the heck you would stoop to entering a video contest. Ok…maybe some celebrities enter the contest just for the fun of it. But if a famous person wanted to make a goofy video for fun, they could just do a FunnyorDie sketch for free. So most of them enter for the obvious reason; the prizes for winning are money and exposure. But looking desperate for either of those things is not good for an actor’s image.
And I also think it’s a mistake for filmmakers to feature major or minor celebrities in their Doritos ads. In a way, it goes against the entire point and premise of the Crash the Super Bowl contest. Doritos runs The Crash every year because they want to find something they can’t get from Hollywood or from a big, Madison Avenue ad firm. They want quirky, crazy, outside-of-the-box ideas. In short, they want “User Generated Content.”
The description for Jenny McCarthy’s ad lists two directors. I googled them and it turns out one of them is her ex-husband. And he’s also an known actor. He’s done a lot of TV directing too. So this entry is the exact OPPOSITE of user-generated content. Actually, it’s hollywood’s take on user-generated content. And that is the thing that bothers me most about these “celebrity” entries. They have an air of hubris to them. It’s like an NBA player walking onto a basketball court in a big city, public park thinking he’s going to blow everyone’s minds just because he’s a pro. But no one likes it when a pro chooses to compete against amateurs simply because they’ll be easier to beat. Before I make another weird analogy, check out this other CTSB entry that features boy-banders Lance Bass and AJ Mclean:
Again, click to view.
Now that ad wasn’t so great. The only thing it has going for it is that it has two famous people in it. But right now, the people that produced this ad are probably patting themselves on the back for being smart enough/rich enough/well connected enough to cast Lance Bass and AJ Mclean. They didn’t have to waste time writing a stronger script because two celebrities trump great writing any day…right?
Let’s be honest; the vast majority of Crash the Super Bowl entries are awful. It’s very hard for an “average joe” to make a tight, professional looking 30 second commercial for no money. And that’s why I think celebrities agree to be in CTSB ads. Some friend or nephew or ex-husband finds the contest and thinks, “wow, these commercials all suck! If I spent a few grand and hired a real crew and got my pal,insert-celebrity’s name here to be in my video I would win easy!” But these folks don’t “get” the contest. Presumably they think that their celebrity entry will be much more desirable than the thousands of entries that just feature regular jerk-offs from Nowheresville, USA. If Doritos has to choose between a commercial that features Jenny McCarthy and a commercial that features a bunch of nobodies, Doritos will obviously pick the Jenny McCarthy ad…right?
Wrong. Because if Doritos wanted to air a commercial featuring Jenny McCarthy in a bikini, they would just hire Jenny McCarthy and stick he in a bikini. They wouldn’t bother to run a 10 million dollar “consumer generated” commercial contest if they wanted a typical, “hollywood” ad. So I don’t think we’ll ever see a “celebrity” entry make the CTSB finals. If we did, it would probably mark the end of the entire contest. Because if Doritos tells us that to win, an entry should have a celebrity in it, why would us regular jerk-offs from Nowheresville even bother to compete?
The entries that have recognizable actors in them are pretty interesting though. Some of them are pretty good and some of them are a little lame. Some where clearly made by pros with deep pockets who were able to hire known actors, while other entries seem like maybe they were made by the celebrity’s nephew and the actor is appearing as a favor. Here are the 2011 celebrity ads I’ve been able to find so far. If you see any other ones, leave a link in the comments.
The Eric Roberts Show: Featuring Eric Roberts:
I always liked Eric Roberts. And he's actually pretty funny in this.
Tasty as Charged: Featuring Jerry Adler:
You might not recognize the name but this guy has been in a billion TV shows and movies
Eyes Teeth: Featuring Sam Lloyd:
It's Ted from Scrubs! And he's in a weirdly hilarious CTSB entry!
Party Time: Featuring Blake Clark and Peter Dante:
Wait a second...both of these guys have been in a ton of Adam Sandler movies. I wonder who made this spot.
Despite my bitching, some of those were pretty good. But nothing can top the epicness of this celebrity Pepsi Max entry from Last year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest:
Pretty damn crazy, right? But that spot did not make the finals last year. So If an entry that features a rampaging Ernest Borgnine couldn’t win this contest, I don’t think this year’s crop of celebrity entries stand much chance either.
11/29/2011 UPDATE: The mystery of the Jenny McCarthy ad has been solved! One of the directors actually found this article and he was good enough to explain how the ad came to be. Here’s his full comment:
Hey Beardy
Jenny McCarthy is doing this in the hopes to help http://www.generationrescue.org/. When we got the news from your site ( “The Lonely Island guys are kind of IN the Crash the Super Bowl contest. By that I mean that they will be competing for the 1st place spot on the ad meter and if they get it, they will win the million dollar bonus!” ) We thought we would give it a shot too. Fair is fair..
Thanks for checking out the spot!
John A.
p.s. your site rocks!
Well now, do I feel like an asshole or what?? Not only did Jenny McCarthy and her team shoot an entry as a way to raise money to combat autism, they found out about the details of the Doritos contest from this website! Though to be fair, the lonely Island guys were hired by doritos to shoot a super bowl ad this year. They’re not actually competing against the little guys for a slot in the finals. Their commercial is guaranteed to air. But still, it’s nice to hear that this was for a not for profit endeavor. So, good for them!
Never use the Crash the Super Bowl contest as a chance to see your buddy's girlfriend topless
Man, time really files when you’re trying to come up with a great idea for a Doritos commercial! There’s now less than two weeks left until the deadline for the Crash the Super Bowl contest. So it’s Crunch Time, folks! (pun intended). But before you rush out and start filming, the first step in making a great Doritos commercial is research. Obviously, you should watch all the entries that won the previous installments of the Crash. But you should also try and figure out which concepts have already been done to death. While running this site, I’ve had the opportunity to watch literally thousands of Crash the SuperBowl entries. And there are a few common, played-out gimmicks that I see used over and over and over again. So I am going to do you a gigantic favor and list the Top 5 most over-used Crash the Super Bowl ideas! Every year, Dortios gets tons of videos that have almost identical plots and gags. The ideas might be new to the person who wrote the script but to the judges they are tired and totally unoriginal. So if you want to stand out from the crowd, here are the five concepts that you need to avoid. For each concept I’ll include an example and I’ll try to only post high-quality entries so you can see that even good production values won’t make these ideas seem fresh:
1. Doritos as “paper” footballs
Hey, have you ever noticed that a Dorito kind of looks like a paper football? If so, you’re not alone because apparently a lot of people have noticed that! Over the last five years, I bet fritolay has received hundreds of CTSB entries that featured Doritos being used as “paper footballs.” I’m guessing this idea is so popular because a paper football is about the only small, triangular object most people can think of. What’s crazy about this particular idea is that pretty much every Paper Football entry has the same plot. There is a tense and dramatic stand off between two competitors. The chip is “kicked” in slow motion but at the last second, there’s a twist! Someone jumps into frame and blocks the kick by catching the chip in their mouth.
I’ve been watching the new batch of submissions and already I have seen more than one version of this idea. But this concept is just too obvious. If a Paper Football-themed ad did make the finals, you’d have a hundred people coming forward claiming that the winners stole their idea!
2. Dressing up in a giant Doritos costume
This weekend, dozens of filmmakers across the country will go into their garages and apply the finishing touches to their homemade, giant Doritos costumes. Some of them will just be a single, orange sheet of poster board. Others will be meticulous, high quality suits that are made of foam and finished with an air-brushing of realistic orange and brown paint. But if Frito-lay hasn’t picked a CTSB finalist that featured a guy dressed as a Dorito by now, they are never going to. That’s because no matter how much work a person puts into their Dorito costume, the gag is just too easy. Think of it like this; if Bud Light made a Super Bowl commercial where the joke was that the characters were in homemade Bud Light suits, how do you think that commercial would do on the USA Today ad meter?
3. Zombies!
This idea has been totally done to death. (Pun intended again!) If you head to the Crash the Super Bowl gallery and watch 50 videos in a row, I bet you’d see at least one zombie-themed entry. In fact, I just searched the gallery for the word “zombie” and there are already five submissions with the word zombie in the title!
It’s easy to understand why Dortios gets so many zombie videos though. Zombies are super popular and the costumes are really easy to make. But it’s fascinating how similar all these zombie ads are. I’ll break down a typical story for you; a group of friends are running from hungry zombies. The friends get trapped and the zombies attack. But they don’t eat the people. It turns out one of them has Doritos and that’s what the zombies were after the whole time! Oh but once the Doritos run out, the zombies then turn on the people. The whole plot is so popular among video contest filmmakers that I did an entire blog post about the “Zombie Fake Out” trope. So even though zombie make up is probably 90% off right now at Walmart, resist the temptation to shoot a chip commercial about the undead.
4. Doritos as Mousetrap bait
Doritos are cheesy. So what do people do with cheese? Pretty much just two things; they either eat it or they catch mice with it. (seriously, try and think of something else you can do with cheese) A lot of CTSB filmmakers have made this connection over the years. In fact, one of them even made it to the super bowl thanks to this concept. Way back in 2006, Fritolay picked an ad named “MouseTrap” as one of the finalists in the very first installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest. I’m sure you remember the commercial because it was so good that five years later, Doritos is still airing the spot on TV! In the ad, a man in a suit puts a piece of a dorito on a mousetrap. He then gets pummeled by a very angry guy in a mouse suit. The ad is so ubiquitous that it’s hard to believe that CTSB contestants keep doing gags about Doritos as mouse trap bait. Sometimes the mouse traps are small and sometimes the mousetraps are giant. Sometimes the mouse traps are meant for mice but usually they are meant for people. But no matter what kind of spin a filmmaker puts on this idea, it simply has already been done perfectly by a previous Crash the Super Bowl winner. For example, the moustrap video I posted above is actually pretty awesome. It even won a prize in Poptent’s video contest “Second Chance” assignment. The way the giant robots lumber slowly in the distance is just perfect. If it hadn’t been for the previous “Mousetrap” ad I think this robot entry could have made the finals last year. But the Crash is all about getting new, off the wall ideas so Doritos isn’t going to pick a finalist that features a “device” that’s already been used.
5. A “Sexy” Doritos Seduction
Let’s end on an over-done idea that I don’t mind so much; the Sexy Doritos seduction. These entries always play out the same way. A husband gets home after a hard day at work to find a trail of Doritos on the floor. He follows the trail and it leads to the bedroom. He opens the door to find his wife laying naked in bed…with only Doritos covering up her girly bits! Of course, sometimes the concept is flipped around and it’s a goofy looking dude laying in a bed full of Doritos. Either way, this gag is extremely common. Shoot an entry like this and all you’ll get for your troubles is a set of orange sheets.
If you’ve ever shot a Crash the Super Bowl entry about any of the ideas I just listed, I’m sorry if I offended you! I understand what it’s like to work hard on a video contest entry only to later realize that it was kind of unoriginal. But hopefully this post will help a few filmmakers avoid common, over-done ideas that simply don’t have much chance of winning.
Today is October 3rd, which means that the 2011/2012 Installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest is officially underway! You have until Monday, November 21st to get your commercials submitted but you might as well get to work sooner rather than later. But before you pick up a camera or even open up your screenwriting software the first thing you should do is a little bit of RESEARCH. Doritos has now run four installments of The Crash; 2006/2007, 2008/2009, 2009/2010 and 2010/2011. Technically there was a 2007/2008 installment but it wasn’t a commercial contest. That one was to find a singer who would have their song played during the Super Bowl. Fortunately, it was kind of a flop so Doritos wisely brought back the commercial contest in 2008 and they’ve run it every year since.
So four previous installments mean that there are four year’s worth of winning videos that you can study. So below, I am going to post every, single commercial that has ever made the finals in the Crash the Super Bowl contest. If you watch them all you’ll notice that Doritos definitely has a certain look, style and attitude that they seem to prefer. The judges clearly like:
1. Violent Slapstick comedy, e.g. nut shots, tazers and electric shocks, hard falls.
2. Jerks who abuse animals getting their comeuppance.
3. Surprise, twist endings
You’ll also notice that the judges unquestionably prefer High Quality productions. If the commercial isn’t TV quality, Doritos isn’t going to run it on TV. Even during the first year of the contest, all the selected ads were either shot in HD (pretty hard to come by in 2006!) or on film. Now last year, the Pepsi Max judges did pick a few finalists that were NOT tv quality. But that was essentially a different contest with a different set of judges. That’s why there was such a huge difference in the style of the finalists. I am going to post the Pepsi Max winners but just be aware that they are probably not a good indicator of what this year’s judges will be looking for. Enjoy!
UPDATE: It turns out that embedding two dozen youtube videos in one post is a great way to slow down the load time of a website! So instead of posting all the videos below, I created a new page where you can watch all the ads. So use this link to see the 2007, 2009, 2010 and 2011 Crash the Super Bowl finalist ads.
Video contests can get pretty ugly. If you're having a problem with a contest let us know! Maybe we can kick a little ass on your behalf. E-mail us at Videocontestnews@gmail.com.
