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Sling Baby “Wins” Facebook ad meter poll and a million bucks thanks to unsportsmanlike conduct

Posted by Beardy on February 8th, 2012

I call Shenanigans! Sling Baby's "head of social media" calls on fans to attack their competition.

On Tuesday night, filmmaker and three-time Crash the Super Bowl finalist Kevin T. Willson became the fourth person ever to win the million dollar ad meter bonus in Doritos’ annual commercial contest.  But unlike the other three times directors have won that honor, Willson’s victory isn’t anything worth celebrating.  In fact, the way he “won” his bonus money is so shameful I think his win might wind up being a black mark on the reputation of the entire field of “crowdsourced” advertising.

As I explained in my last post, this year USA Today ran TWO versions of their annual Super Bowl ad meter poll.  The traditional poll got its scores from viewers in private focus groups and the results were released on Sunday night.  This year, USA Today’s focus groups declared the Crash the Super Bowl entry “Man’s Best Friend” to be the best commercial of the game.  (A great call, BTW)  As is tradition, Doritos will award a bonus of one million dollars to the creator of Man’s Best Friend for pulling off such an amazing feat.

But USA Today’s second ad meter poll was touted as a chance for “the public” to rank the commercials of Super Bowl 46.  The poll was run online and voting was open to anyone with a facebook page.  Voters were able to score a video on a scale of one to five stars.  Way back when the 2011/2012 installment of the CTSB contest was launched, Doritos said that they would be giving out bonus prizes to any CTSB ad that landed in the top three of either USA Today ad meter poll.  (one million dollars for first, $600K for second, $400K for third)  Voting in the online ad meter ended last night and when all was said and done, Kevin Willson’s Crash the Super Bowl ad, “Sling Baby,” managed to come out on top.
 

 
So this year, Fritolay gets to boast that Doritos commercials took the #1 spot in both of USA Today’s ad meter polls.  But the new facebook ad meter poll is set up and run in such a way that virtually guarantees that a Crash the Super Bowl ad will land “in the money.”  The other 55 ads in the poll have nothing to gain financially by doing well so only the Sling Baby team seriously FOUGHT for first place.  So I think fritolay knew a Doritos ad would probably win the facebook poll all along.  However, I don’t think they ever could have guessed that the final score would be so lopsided that the results would make the entire facebook ad meter look like an unfair, illegitimate joke.  Check this out; here’s a shot of the Facebook ad meter scores as they were just a few hours after the Super Bowl ended:

Online ad meter standings: Sunday Night

On Sunday night, the CTSB commercial that won the traditional ad meter was also winning the online poll.  Actually, the top 5 ads on this poll are just a jumbled version of the results of the traditional ad meter.  So before the Sling Baby crew started voting, the facebook poll was actually a pretty fair indicator of how “the public” felt about the ads that aired during the big game.  But here’s what the scores looked like by Monday afternoon.

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Sing Baby had shot into first place but that was no surprise. However, the plummeting scores of the other videos in the top five were a little suspicious. As for the Kia commercial, it featured Motley Crue and it turns out the band kept telling their fans on Twitter and on facebook to vote for their ad. So that’s why that spot jumped into the Top 5. I guess the Sling Baby team didn’t appreciate that someone else was trying to win the ad meter poll. Here’s how the rankings looked at 1:15 on Tuesday afternoon:

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The Kia ad had been slapped down hard. Just 20 minutes after I took that screen shot I checked the rankings again. The Kia ad’s score was down to 4.22 and it had fallen out of the top 5.  So the only commercial that seemed to actually be trying to beat Sling Baby was mysteriously crushed in the voting over night.

Here now are the final scores of USA Today’s Facebook Ad Meter Poll:

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When voting started, Sling Baby was in a three way tie for first place with Man’s Best Friend and Bud Light’s Weego.  But after two days of voting, Sling Baby wound up absolutely slaughtering the competition.  Though I use the word “competition” lightly.  I did see a few casual requests for votes from some of the other competitors, but I think most companies realized that an online ad meter was sort of meaningless.  For the Sling Baby team, winning a 56-way contest that almost no one else was really trying to win should have been a piece of cake.  And Doritos even helped their cause.  After Man’s Best Friend won the big ad meter contest on sunday, Doritos started encouraging their fans to head to the online poll and vote for Kevin Willson’s Sling Baby.  I think it’s insanely, amazingly awesome that the folks at Fritolay want to give one of their CTSB winners a million dollars.  Sure, it’s good publicity for them but still, it was a really gracious move.  With Doritos’ support, Kevin Willson and his teammates could have scored a spot in the Top 3 without breaking a sweat.  But unfortunately, winning $600,000 or $400,000 fair and square apparently wasn’t good enough for these folks.  I kept track of the ad meter for the last three days and it seems that Sling Baby won because a small army of supporters sabotaged the scores of the other ads in the poll by maliciously rating them 1 star out of a possible 5.

If you look at Sling Baby’s official facebook page, you’ll only see a few subtle hints that the team wanted people to down-vote the other ads in the poll.  Here’s one example I saw:

Screenshot of the "Vote For Sling Baby" facebook page

Just for the record, Willson’s “User Generated ad” was created by a team of more than 40 pro and semi-pro filmmakers and cost almost $3,000 to produce. But anyway, as you can see, whoever was running that facebook page was really pushing the idea that their team had to beat Budweiser, M&Ms, Kia, etc.  And one fan even flat out said he was rating the other videos one-star.  And yet, no one spoke up and said “Hey man, we don’t want to win that way.  Please only give honest scores.”

But that was how thing’s went down on Sling Baby’s official page.  Behind the scenes, the Sling Baby team felt free to get ruthless.  Based on what I have seen, it seems that some team members decided they could only win if they played dirty.  The creators of Sling Baby were incredibly organized and they even had someone managing their online campaigns.  That person’s name is Nate Daniels and the “About Us” section of Vote4SlingBaby.com lists him as being in charge of “Social Media.”  But apparently he also helped come up with the idea for the entry.  Daniels did an interview with something called the Lansing City Pulse in which he talked about his role on the team:

Daniels, who moved to Los Angeles, teamed up with the director of the ad, Kevin Wilson, to create the commercial. “I helped create the idea for ‘Sling Baby,’ and am in charge of the online campaign and the website,” Daniels said.

And here he is doing a TV interview with a Lansing, MI news station about Sling Baby’s quest to win the facebook ad meter.  So Daniels was a key member of the Sling Baby team.  He was literally the guy in charge of spreading the word about the ad and I assume that he was the head of the “online campaign” to get votes for the commercial.  At first Daniels simply asked people to vote for his team’s ad.  But as the Sling Baby slipped in the polls, he started to hint that people should give bad scores to the competition:

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But soon enough, Daniels dropped the innuendo and just started instructing people to rate the competing ads “1 star.”  In an absolutely despicable move, he even told told people to give a bad score to the other Doritos commercial, Man’s Best Friend:

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Daniels was by no means the only person using Facebook or Twitter to get Sling Baby fans to give bad scores to the other commercials in the ad meter. I found a bunch of other examples that I could post. But the people who made those requests weren’t in charge of Sling Baby’s social media campaigns so I’m not going to repost their comments.  I’m only sharing what Nate Daniels did because it was his job to promote Sling Baby online.

Now, if you’re thinking that perhaps this one team member went rogue and did all this without the OK of his teammates….well, take a look at this:

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Jeff Edwards was the Executive Producer of Sling Baby.  Not only that, Edwards was Kevin Willson’s “plus one” for the trip to the Super Bowl.  So Edwards was practically a co-finalist.  He got a free trip to beautiful Indianapolis, he got to watch the Super Bowl from Fritolay’s private box and I’m going to guess that he stands to receive a huge slice of the million dollar ad meter prize.  So this guy should have known better than to publicly call on people to give bad scores to the Bud Light, Kia and Chrysler ads. As Captain Hook would say, that’s just bad form. Even Motley Crue didn’t tell people to down-vote the other videos and they are literally a motley crew!

Over the years I have been in a lot of video contests where votes determine the winners.  And I always make it a point to tell my family and friends NOT to down-vote the competition.  That just seems like a skeezy and unfair way to win a contest.  So it simply blows my mind that (as far as I saw) not one Sling Baby team member responded to Daniels or Edwards by saying, “Dude, chill out…we want to win fair and square.“  Though I didn’t see any evidence that Kevin Willson was asking people to sabotage the scores of the other videos in the contest, I think it’s incredibly unlikely that he didn’t know what his friends and teammates were up to.  And yet, it looks like he did nothing to stop these sad, unsportsmanlike tactics.

And that might be because he knew those tactics would work. Just look at how the scores for the other top videos tumbled during the voting.  Even Man’s Best Friend, the REAL best commercial of Super Bowl 46 went from first place to sixth place in just 48 hours.  That just shows you how effective “down-voting” can be.  Every high school graduate knows that you can get an A+ on every test but just one F per semester will wreck your final grade.  My point is that negative scores have a much bigger impact than positive scores do.  Let’s do some quick math:  Imagine a commercial on the ad meter had 10 votes of 4 stars each.  That would make their score 4.00.  If a person casts an 11th vote of 5 stars, the video’s score goes up to 4.09.  But if that person casts an 11th vote of 1 star, that video’s score plummets to 3.72.  Winning by down-voting the competition was probably easy but it was also certainly wrong.  But I guess the promise of a million god damn dollars can make people do some pretty crooked things.  To me it looks like some members of the Sling Baby team decided that it was their mission to make sure Willson’s commercial came in first by any means necessary.  And those folks straight up accomplished the hell out of that mission.
 

 
Right about now you might be wondering, “What’s the big deal?  So these guys did what it took to win a million bucks…what do you care?  It’s not your money.”  Well the reason this is a big deal because the Sling Baby crew completely violated the spirit of this competition.  I could win a hundred yard dash if my friends ran onto the track and tackled all the other runners, but that wouldn’t prove that I was the fastest guy in the race.  And I sure as hell wouldn’t be proud if someone gave me a gold medal for my phony baloney victory.  The point of the ad meter poll is to be ranked the best because your commercial IS the best….not because you got a whole bunch of people to give bad scores to the other ads.  Not only is that unsportsmanlike, I think it borders on fraud.  If the Sling Baby team launched a coordinated effort to get hundreds of people to LIE so that they could win this contest then they could be facing some serious legal repercussions.  And yes, when those voters gave bad scores to all the other videos in the contest they were LYING….they were not scoring the other commercials honestly.  I think this whole debacle could and should be investigated by the legal departments of Fritolay, USA Today, Kia, Budweiser, M&Ms, etc, etc, etc.  But at the very least, the down-voting could result in Sling Baby being completely disqualified from the Crash the Super Bowl contest.  Here’s what the official rules of the contest say about unsportsmanlike conduct:

Sponsor reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to disqualify any individual deemed to be (a) tampering or attempting to tamper with the entry process or the operation of the Contest or any Sponsor or Contest-related Web Site; (b) violating the Official Rules; (c) violating the Web Site terms of service, conditions of use and/or applicable general rules or guidelines; or (d) acting in an unsportsmanlike or disruptive manner, or with intent to annoy, abuse, threaten or harass any other person. This Contest is offered only in the United States and is governed by the laws of the state of Texas. All claims relating in any manner to this Contest or to any Submission must be resolved in the federal or state courts located in Collin County, Texas.

Now that I think about it, if key members of the Sling Baby team were willing to resort to such unscrupulous measures to win the million dollar ad meter prize, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to suspect that maybe they did some unscrupulous things to get enough votes to ensure their ad would air during the Super Bowl.  Again, I think that’s something the big wigs at Fritolay can and should look into.

Finally, there is one more reason why all this matters:  Crowdsourcing, video contests and consumer generated ads already don’t get a lot of respect from the pros in the advertising world.  Every time a twenty dollar, homemade commercial like “Man’s Best Friend” beats Madison Avenue’s multi-million dollar commercials, the entire ad industry looks bad.  But Sling Baby’s “win” on the facebook ad meter gives the pros a reason to dismiss the accomplishments of crowdsourcers everywhere.  Sling Baby makes it look like we can only win when we’re playing with a stacked deck.  And even worse, the ridiculous results of the facebook ad meter make all of us look like greedy, vindictive cheaters.  Oh, but just for the record, down-voting the other ads technically wasn’t cheating since their were no rules and the ad meter wasn’t even an actual “contest.”  But if people were giving bad scores to the other commercials on the ad meter just to help Sling Baby win, that would be unethical.  And winning a million dollars unethically is nothing to be proud of.

Two final notes:  First, all the facebook screenshots that appear in this post come from public facebook pages that anyone can access. However, I didn’t think it would be necessary or appropriate to actually link to those pages. Second, the website AdBowl.com also ran an online poll where the public could rate the commercials of Super Bowl 46.  There were no prizes or bragging rights at stake in that poll so no one tried to sway the outcome of that contest.  According to people of the Internet, the two best commercials of the game were Volkswagen’s Dog Strikes Back and Doritos’ Man’s Best Friend.  As for Sling Baby, it came in 6th.

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A quick recap of the best video contest entries of 2011

Posted by Beardy on January 14th, 2012

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!

 
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2012 Celebrity Crash the Super Bowl entries

Posted by Beardy on November 28th, 2011

Doritos: Larger Than Life

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!

 
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The five most over-done Crash the Super Bowl ideas

Posted by Beardy on November 9th, 2011

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.

 
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Every Crash the Super Bowl finalst entry, EVER

Posted by Beardy on October 3rd, 2011

It begins!

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.

 
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When will the 2012 Crash the Super Bowl contest be announced?

Posted by Beardy on August 9th, 2011

It might still be early August but it’s already starting to feel a little bit like Fall.  Every year, as the summer starts to wind down I see a steady climb in traffic to this website and it can always be attributed to one thing; filmmakers looking for news about Doritos’ upcoming Crash the Super Bowl contest.  I can even tell what search terms readers put into google to get here and already I’m seeing lots of “keyword phrases” like:  will doritos do crash the superbowl 2012, doritos superbowl contest, super bowl commercial contest 2012 and crash the superbowl XLVI. And those are just from the last 12 hours!

So video contest filmmakers are certainly ready to “Crash” the Super Bowl.  But is Fritolay?  Will the contest even be brought back for 2012?  The answer is YES.  I have confirmation that the CTSB contest will be run again for the 2011/2012 season.  In fact, Fritolay and Pepsico have been planning for this installment since before the last Crash was even finished.  Here’s a little blurb about the 2012 contest from an article that ran in USA Today right after Super Bowl 35 in February.  The story was about how some companies were trying to get extra mileage out of their Super Bowl ads by releasing them online before the big game:

The brands are “rethinking” the Crash the Super Bowl promo for the 2012 game in a way that will involve more social media, says Rudy Wilson, marketing vice president at Frito-Lay.

Really it’s no surprise that Doritos would bring the contest back for 2012 since the last installment was such a big hit.  But the “social media” stuff worries me a bit.  I hope to God it doesn’t mean people will be voting for entries on facebook!

So now that you know the Crash is on for sure, the new question is, when can you start filming?  Well, not for a few more weeks.  The full details of the contest should be announced in mid-September and the submission period will probably begin about 2 weeks later and run until early November  Oh but there is one detail I can mention.  From what I have read, it looks like once again the Crash will have two categories and you can shoot an ad for Doritos And/or an ad for a Pepsi product. (I suspect it will be Pepsi Max again.)

If you’ve stumbled across this website while looking for details about this year’s CTSB contest, be sure to bookmark us and check back often for updates.  VideoContestNews.com is the ONLY site on the web that actively covers the Crash as it unfolds.  Also, if you’re too anxious to wait to get to work, maybe you should check out the details of Chevy’s new consumer-generated Super Bowl commercial contest:  http://www.chevroletroute66.com

9/7/2011 UPDATE: Yesterday the NFL announced the details of some of the long term deals they had struck with advertisers. And they confirmed that Fritolay will once again be running the crash the Super Bowl contest this year. So you can expect the contest to be officially announced very soon! Here’s the full (but brief) story: http://goo.gl/Jt3WM

 
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2011 Crash the Super Bowl Ad Meter results!

Posted by Beardy on February 7th, 2011

Million Dollar Winner: Pug Attack

In the last six weeks I don’t think I’ve talked to a single filmmaker that entered the 2010/2011 Crash the Super Bowl contest that thought Doritos and Pepsi Max did a good job of picking their Top 10 finalists.  But the Super Bowl is over, the six winning commercials have aired and the Ad Meter results are in.  And it looks like the last laugh goes to Fritolay.  I totally did not see this coming but this was the most successful Crash the Super Bowl contest ever!  It was so successful that two filmmakers won bonus prizes and Fritolay came closer than ever before to taking all three top spots on the USA Today Ad Meter.  The two big winning commercials were Pug Attack which tied for first place on the Ad Meter with the Bud Light Dog Party ad and House Sitting which (sort of) came in third.  House Sitting was technically the 4th most-liked ad of the night but because of the first place tie you could argue that House Sitting scored the #3 spot on the ad meter.  And I guess someone did argue that because Doritos has decided to pay the director of House sitting the #3 spot’s bonus.  So Pug Attack wins an extra Million Dollars and House Sitting wins $400,000 making this year’s Crash the biggest video contest ever! Oh and let’s not forget that the director of Pug Attack also wins the chance to film a big budget commercial for Pepsi Max and Doritos later this year.

$400K winner: House Sitting

In total, Fritolay aired 3 Doritos commercials and 3 Pepsi Max commercials as promised.  But I was really surprised to see that 5 of the 6 CTSB winners aired during the first quarter.  The earlier an ad airs, the better chance it has of scoring well on the ad meter.  I’ve heard a lot of conspiracy theories this year from non-winning contestants and one was that Fritolay didn’t really want to have to pay out all that bonus money.  Well, I think we can put that theory to rest.  By placing the 5 strongest ads in the first quarter, Fritolay proved that they REALLY wanted to take all three spots on the Ad Meter.  And if they didn’t want to pay out too much in bonuses there’s no way they would have given the director of House Sitting the third place prize.  It’s awesome that they did but to be fair, House Sitting was not actually the the 3rd highest rated commercial of the game.  But like I said, good for doritos for being generous when they didn’t have to.  To recap, here’s a list of all of the ads that aired last night.  They are in the order they ran in and their “rank” is where they landed on the ad meter.  To see the winning and non-winning ads, head here.

2011 CRASH THE SUPER BOWL WINNERS and AD METER SCORES

1.  Pug Attack.  SCORE: 8.35.  RANK:  Tie for #1

2.  The Best Part.  SCORE:  7.27. RANK:  #14

3.  Love Hurts.  SCORE:  7.56. RANK:  #5

4.  House Sitting. SCORE:  7.68.  RANK:  #4

5. Torpedo Cooler. SCORE:  6.68. RANK:  #24

6. First Date.  SCORE:  7.52. RANK:  #7

You can see all the Ad Meter results here.  Last week I posted my predictions for which 6 ads would air during the big game and I managed to get 5 out of 6 right. ( The only one I missed was “First Date.”)  I gotta admit though, I was way off on most of my other predictions.  I never in a million years expected 4 CTSB finalist ads to air in the To 10.  And I really thought a few ads were totally going to tank on the ad meter.  I mean, First Date took 7th place!  Who could have seen that coming!?  I’m totally amazed at how well that spot did.  I always thought it was amusing and well written but I assumed its low production values would hurt it’s score.

So why did this year’s crop of CTSB winners do SO WELL in the Ad Meter polling?  There are a couple reasons I think:

1.  Timing. Focus groups are excited during the 1st quarter and jaded and tired by the 3rd.  So Fritolay was able to “buy” some success by cramming the first quarter full of ads. That forced other companies to air their big ads later on and that hurt their scores.  For example, if an ad like the Rosanne/Snickers commercial had aired in the first quarter instead of late in the 2nd, I bet it would have made the Top 5.

2.  Crappy Bud Light Ads. Prior to the Crash the Super Bowl contest, Bud Light scored the #1 spot on the ad meter for like 10 years in a row.  They tied for first this year but most of their 2011 commercials were pretty lame.  (that one with the cowboys singing “Tiny Dancer” was the suckiest of the bunch)  So one reason Pepsi Max and Doritos ads scored well is because Bud Light really tanked it this year.

3.  Few “funny” commercials. When you think of Super Bowl commercials, you think comedy.  But there were very few simple, funny 30 second ads this year.  There were tons of cool car commercials and movie trailers and two-minute long documentaries about the re-birth of Detroit but only funny commercials do well on the ad meter.

4.  Most companies don’t seem to care about the ad meter anymore. Doritos, Pepsi, Budweiser, careerbuilder and Snickers are some of the only companies that seem to actually try to make “the #1 Super Bowl commercial.”  I think other ad firms may have ceded ad meter victory to fritolay and focused on making ads with “viral” appeal.  In a way, viral views the week after the Super Bowl is the new “contest” for advertisers.

5.  The best CTSB ads wound up airing. Luckily for Fritolay, none of the ads that wouldn’t have done well on the ad meter made it to air.  Plus, the spots that did run held up really well on TV.  I really didn’t like some of the finalist choices but I gotta admit, when you see them play of TV it’s a totally different experience.  For example, I thought “The Best Part” might be too gross for the Super Bowl.  But when the ad actually aired yesterday it came off as being pretty awesome.  So ahem…maybe fritolay did a better job than a lot of us thought.

6.  The Snowglobe Effect. There’s not really an appropriate name for this theory so let’s call it “The SnowGlobe Effect” in honor of The Herbert Brother’s SnowGlobe-themed 2008 CTSB entry that wound up being the first consumer-created commercial to take the #1 spot on the ad meter.  I think one of the primary reasons this year’s crop of Crash the Super Bowl spots scored so well is BECAUSE they were part of the Crash the Super Bowl Contest.  The USA Today Ad Meter has become a huge part of the Crash.  Any person who actually gets into one of the USA Today’s focus groups has got to know what is at stake for the “average Joes” who made Doritos and Pepsi Max ads.  So, I think the focus groups were kinder to the CTSB entries because they wanted to see the “little guys” do well and maybe win a million bucks.

So…Fritolay came super close to nailing the Top 3 spots in the Ad Meter and if the contest happens again next year, they might actually be able to pull it off.  I’ve been thinking that this might be the last year the company ran the Crash.  But after last night’s amazing results I can’t see how they wouldn’t bring it back.  In fact, I think they’ll probably go balls to the wall next year and REALLY try to “take the top 3.”  You’ve only got 9 months until the traditional early November deadline so you better start planning for 2012.

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