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Will press coverage help your chances in the Crash the Super Bowl contest?

Posted by Dan L. on November 30th, 2013

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I have a Google News alert set for the phase “Crash the Super Bowl” and those alerts have been blowing up my inbox all month. A few news sites covered FritoLay’s final call for entries but most of the stories I’ve seen came from local news outlets and were about people who entered the contest. And if you read these articles or watch these segments, it’s pretty obvious that the featured actors or filmmakers are the ones who contacted the media and pitched their story. Here are a few samples of what I’m talking about:

Hanford Sentinel: Local filmmaker competing in commercial contest for Doritos

Salt Lake City Tribune: Utah commercial shows what really goes on during sexy time

The Sheboygan Press: North High student is All In on commercial

Vicksburg Exponent Telegram: Bridgeport native submitting video for Doritos contest

FOX-Kansas City: Area filmmaker attempts to have his commercial air during super bowl

NBC-Lexington KY: Doritos smoothie could put grad student in National Spotlight

NBC-Atlanta: Doritos ad with Atlanta ties among most viewed in Super Bowl contest

Those stories are just the tip of the iceberg. Every year I see a few articles about local Crash the Super Bowl contestants but I’ve never seen 3 or 4 articles a day before. These stories are weirdly fascinating because most of the featured filmmakers clearly have no idea how the Crash the Super Bowl contest actually works. Most of them are trying to get some press coverage because they think that extra views and votes will help them make the finals. (Just for the record: Views and votes have ZERO impact in the first stage of the Crash the Super Bowl contest) Here’s are a few paragraphs from the Hanford Sentinel story. I’ll highlight important passages in orange.

HANFORD — A local filmmaker is competing for a chance to have his video be the next Doritos spot that will air live during the most watched sporting event in the United States.

Joshua C——-, owner and founder of R——–, a local film production company, has submitted his 30-second video “Bad Dog” in the annual Doritos “Crash The Super Bowl” commercial contest.

For the competition, contestants submit short video spots, judges select semi-finalists and then the world is allowed to vote for their favorite from the pool of finalists. The winner gets to have his video air live during the football game, wins $1 million cash, a trip to watch the Super Bowl and a trip to New York for a behind-the-scenes tour of the next “Avengers” movie, “Age of Ultron.”

But, for now, Cordero has to make it through the first phase of the contest.

“I’m still waiting to hear if I’m even a semi-finalist,” he said. “They will let me know on Dec. 11.”

He said that in order to move on, the judges will pick the semi-finalists based on certain criteria. One of those criteria is video views and ratings.

“I need my supporters to go to Doritos.com, watch and rate the video,” he said. “The more views and ratings it gets the more likely I might become a semi-finalist.”

Cordero then explained that on Jan. 4, voting will open to the public and his fans can vote for his video once every day until the contest ends, and if his video gets the most votes, he will win.

It’s clear this filmmaker never bothered to look at the official rules. It’s also clear that this guy thinks he’s a lock for the Top 5. He’s already planing his strategy for when he makes the finals! I could be a dick and post his entry but I won’t. His video did make me chuckle but as you can probably guess, there’s pretty much zero chance the judges will pick his entry.

As I said, most of the stories that wind up in my in-box are pretty similar to that article. The featured director asks people to help him win by watching his (not very good) commercial and rating it five-stars. In many cases, the filmmakers have high hopes and are confident that they’re going to make the finals because their ad is already one of the Top-Rated or Most-Viewed submissions.

This type of self-promotion might sound harmless but these articles could actually lead to some unforeseen, negative consequences. For one thing, some a-hole blogger could post a link to your story and say snarky things about it. But worse than that, press coverage might cause your cast and crew and family and friends to really get their hopes up. Your teammates may think “Hey, if NBC Atlanta bothered to send a TV crew to cover our efforts, we must really have a shot at winning!“ But NBC Atlanta (and really any news outlet in the world) is always on the look out for fun, easy stories. So the TV crew isn’t showing up because your entry is amazing; the TV crew shows up because you’re a local and your story comes with some amusing, pre-shot visuals.

So if you keep telling people that views and votes will help you win, and if your local paper backs up that idea (few reporters are going to bother checking the rules to see if you know what you’re talking about) then your friends are going to be in for a huge let down. After everyone finds out that your incredibly “popular” entry didn’t even make the semi-finals, you’re going to be receiving a lot of messages from people asking the same thing: “Dude, what happened? We were on TV! We were the #2 most viewed entry out of like 5,000 videos! How could we not win!??!”

Now having said all that, as long as you have your facts straight, a story in the Salt Lake City Tribune or the Vicksburg Telegram won’t really have any impact on your chances of making the finals. A story won’t help, but it also won’t hurt. So if you want to use the Crash the Super Bowl contest as an excuse to bulk up your production company’s press packet, I say go ahead and contact a local reporter.

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The Crash the Super Bowl deadline is here. Time to tweet me your entries!

Posted by Dan L. on November 24th, 2013

It’s 5:30PM (CST) on Sunday, November 24th. For weeks and weeks I’ve been trying to come up with a funny (and cheap) idea for the Crash the Super Bowl contest. About 5 minutes ago I finally had a flash of inspiration. A funny, weird and affordable idea for a Doritos commercial just popped in to my head and it’s so simple and goofy it might actually have a shot at winning this contest.

Too bad the Crash the Super Bowl deadline is 6 1/2 hours away. If I had just 3 extra days I could have shot my new, super hilarious idea. Oh well….I guess maybe I can be the first person to submit an entry next year!

Based on the gigantic spike in traffic VCN has seen in the last few days it looks like a lot of you guys did manage to shoot and submit Doritos commercials this year. If you did enter the CTSB contest, I want to see your work! Every year I invite VCN fans to share their links in the comment section of my end-of-the-crash post. I even offer to write mini-reviews of every ad that is posted.

But this year I’m going to do things a little differently. If you’d like to get some extra views or votes, you’re welcome to post your link in the comment section below. BUT…this year I’ll only be doing reviews on Twitter. Last year I wrote reviews for more than 100 fan-made ads. I crafted some pretty beefy reviews and it took up a crazy amount of time. So the Twitter reviews will force me to keep my thoughts to 140 characters or less. (though if I have something crucial to say I might cheat and reply twice.) So if you’d like a review this year, here’s what you do:

Step 1: If you don’t already, follow me on Twitter:

Step 2: Tweet me your link. Your tweet has got to be public though. I can’t do any reviews via DM.

Step 3: Be patient! It might take me a day or two to check out your video.

Step 4: Don’t get pissed at me if I don’t like your video! I only have 140 characters so I’m not going to sugarcoat my thoughts. I’m not going to act like a jerk or anything but if your actors weren’t good or if your story made no sense or if your ad just isn’t good enough to air on TV, I’m going to say so. Please don’t take my comments personally. I’m just giving you my objective opinion.

Having said that, I hope I see a lot of awesome videos this year. In a few weeks I will go though my tweets again and I’ll post my Top 5 favorite submitted Crash the Super Bowl ads. So start sending those entries everybody! Don’t forget to follow me before you tweet at me. I promise I’ll follow you back-sies. And like I said, if you want to post a link to your video in the comment section below, go for it. If you do post your link here, I’ll reply with a link to my twitter review. Oh wait….now that I think about it, I suppose not everyone in the world has a twitter account. So you non-twitterers can just leave a comment and ask for a review on the blog. Good luck everybody!

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The Crash the Super Bowl contest is back and this year it’s going global!

Posted by Dan L. on September 12th, 2013

crashthesuperbowl2014

Later this afternoon, Frito-Lay will officially announce the return of the Crash the Super Bowl contest! This morning’s edition of the USA Today teased some of the details but a few other news outlets got lazy and just straight-up posted Frito-Lay’s full press release early. It sounds like the people in charge of this contest actually listened to their fans (and maybe this blog) because they’ve made some phenomenal changes this year. You can read the official press release here but I’ll list the most important details:

The contest will begin accepting fan-made Doritos commercials on October 8th, 2013. The deadline for submissions is November 24th, 2013.

FACEBOOK IS NOT A PART OF THE CONTEST THIS YEAR: Last year Frito-Lay ran the entire Crash the Super Bowl contest through an annoying and poorly-designed Facebook app. This year the Crash is back where it belongs on it’s own, dedicated website.

A panel of judges that includes “executives from the Doritos brand, advertising professionals and the legendary Stan Lee of Pow! Entertainment” will select a slate of 5 finalists.

Two of these finalists will air during the Super Bowl XLVIII. One will be selected by a panel of judges from Doritos and the other will be chosen through an online, public vote.

THE AD METER CONTEST HAS BEEN RETIRED: For the first time ever, the winner of the Crash the Super Bowl contest is guaranteed to win a cash prize of One Million Dollars! If you win the online vote, you “win” the Crash the Super Bowl contest and you get the million bucks. There will be no bonuses for scoring well on the USA Today Ad Meter. Also for the first time ever, the second place winner is guaranteed a prize of $50,000.

The two filmmakers that win 1st and 2nd place will also get the chance to “become part of the Marvel family” and work on the set of Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron.

All five finalists will win a trip to fabulous Rutherford, New Jersey in February so they can watch the Super Bowl from Doritos’ private skybox. The three finalists who do not win one of the big prizes will receive $25,000 just for making the top 5.

THE CRASH ISN’T JUST FOR AMERICANS ANYMORE: This might be the biggest change of all. For the first time in the history of the Crash the Super Bowl contest, Doritos will be accepting entries from filmmakers outside of the United States. If you live in one of the 46 countries around the world where Doritos are sold, you are eligible to enter the 2013-2014 installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest.

Some fans are probably going to be annoyed by the “global” angle of this year’s contest simply because it means there will be more competition. But the Crash was getting stale and I think an international infusion of styles and talent is just want this competition needs right now. It will be sort of cool to see what kind of ads people in Romania and Peru and South Africa create. No word yet on whether or not submissions will need to be in English.

All in all, I think this is going to maybe be the best Crash Super Bowl contest ever. Last year’s installment was sort of a disaster for two big reasons; #1: The CTSB Facebook app was an ugly, spammy, hassle. #2: The winners of the contest got robbed because of changes USA Today made to their ad meter. You can read about these problems in detail in these two VCN articles; Did a poorly-designed facebook app almost ruin this year’s crash the super bowl contest? and Why didn’t Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl ads do better on this year’s USA Today Ad meter? But basically, the facebook app tracked user’s data and clogged their friend’s feeds with updates every time they voted for an entry. And USA Today turned their highly-respected, long running Ad Meter poll into a bogus, online-only poll that anyone could access. One of the 2013 CTSB winners, Goat 4 Sale actually won 1st place on Nielson’s ad meter but the commercial didn’t crack USA Today’s top five. The ads that did score high on the USA Today poll mostly sucked and it seemed like maybe certain companies took some steps (cheated) to make sure their commercials would do well in the poll. If the USA Today ad meter had been run the way it had been run for decades, the director of Goat 4 Sale probably would have won one of Frito-Lay’s big bonus prizes.

But apparently those problems are in the past. I’m genuinely impressed that the folks in charge of this contest recognized that certain aspects were unfair to contestants and then to action to fix those issues. Doritos got a massive amount of free, social media exposure when they ran the contest on facebook last year. So it must have been tough for them to move the contest back to a dedicated website. I also think it was a stroke of genius to involve Stan Lee in this year’s Crash. Last year’s celebrity judge was Michael Bay. Let’s be honest, Michael Bay f*cking sucks. Nobody likes Michael Bay and his movies are total garbage. One of the 2013 winners actually won a job working on the set of Transformers 4. It was a great opportunity but I sort of feel sorry for that guy because he’s probably spent the last 5 months sucking up to Michael Bay and pretending like he’s proud to bring another Transformers movie into the world. But Stan Lee is different. Stan Lee is an icon. People freaking love Stan Lee and the Marvel movies have all been pretty great. So a chance to “join the Marvel family” is a seriously awesome prize.

Frito-Lay’s official announcement will probably happen around noon EST today. I’ll update this post with a link to coverage of the announcement when it’s available. In the mean time, here’s a link to the new Crash the Super Bowl website: The rules aren’t live yet but a teaser video is already up:

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Why didn’t Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl ads do better on this year’s USA Today Ad meter?

Posted by Dan L. on February 4th, 2013

Late last night, USA Today released the full results of the 2013 Super Bowl ad meter poll and there was great news for Doritos fans; The Crash the Super Bowl winners and were ranked the #1 and #2 :30 second commercials of the game! Unfortunately, the ad meter poll included every commercial that aired during the Super Bowl, even the 2 minute long short film/ad things. So Fashionista Daddy actually came in 4th and Goat 4 Sale came in 7th. Here is the official Top 10 from USA Today:

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Because neither Doritos commercial made the Top 3, the winning filmmakers won’t receive any bonus money from FritoLay. And that is a goddamn shame. The two guys who won the Crash the Super Bowl contest this year were completely and totally robbed. If USA Today hadn’t changed their methods and wrecked their ad meter this year I am positive that at least one Doritos finalist would have won a six or seven figure bonus.

For 24 Super Bowls in a row, USA Today conducted their ad meter poll in exact same way. Here’s how USA Today described the process:

It was pretty simple: We’d bring in 300 or so pre-screened viewers to watch the game at several locations. The panelists were enticed with a small payment, a giant theater-sized screen, a knob-turning device and thick sandwiches to record their impressions of the commercials from start to finish.

“They were into both the game and the ads,” recalls editor Fred Meier, who helped honcho the project from the start. “We could tell from the crowd reaction how high an ad was going to score. And we never wanted to hear them guffawing late in the third or in the fourth quarter, which would mean a potential late new leader in the ad contest.”

So the old Ad Meter poll was a highly organized live event. The USA Today team had people turn little dials to indicate how much they liked or disliked a commercial as it aired. People watched the ads in real time and they only got to see them once. They didn’t give each commercial an individual score. Instead, a computer averaged out their dial activty. So commercials that were exciting or funny from beginning to end always did very well. FritoLay noticed that Crash the Super Bowl ads were actually scoring very high on the ad meter so in the fall of 2008 they offered some bonus prizes to any filmmaker who could crack the top 3. 1st place on the ad meter would get you a million dollar bonus, 2nd was good for $600K and 3rd got you $400K. Filmmakers studied the mechanics of the USA Today ad meter and they started crafting ads that would theoretically score very well in a dial-measured style focus group test. And that plan actually paid off for a few lucky filmmakers. At least one Crash the Super Bowl ad managed to make the Top 3 every year since 2009. And Doritos commercials actually won the ad meter poll in 2009, 2011 and 2012.

But for the first time in 5 years, Doritos didn’t even crack the Top 3. Actually, 2013 was a bad year for ALL the funny 30 second Super Bowl ads. The top 10 was dominated by 60 and even 120 second(!) long sentimental or lighthearted “cute” commercials about farmers and families that were narrated by Oprah and the ghost of Paul Harvey.

So what the heck happened? Well it turns out that this year USA Today decided to throw their 25 year old ad meter experiment into the garbage and then they replaced the whole thing with a B.S. online poll. Again, here’s a quote from the folks at USA Today:

In an attempt to make the Ad Meter more social, we partnered with Facebook last year, which worked out fine except it was a bit confusing to mix the panel reactions with the later Facebook results.

So this year (the 25th Annual Ad Meter!), we’ve gone totally digital, dropping the live panels and Facebook, and instead offering everyone in America the chance to sign up online and vote from their computers.

So basically the paper kept the name of the project and got rid of everything that cost them any money….and anything that gave the poll any credibility. Here are three big changes that wound up skewing the ad meter results in unexpected ways:

1. Anybody could vote. Instead of a few hundred participants watching each ad in a closed and controlled screening room, any random person with a web connection could vote and affect the outcome of the poll. In total, about 7,000 people across the US voted for some or all of the ads in the poll.

2. Viewers did not have to rate every commercial. This was an enormous and very important change. Voting in the online poll was actually launched BEFORE the game even started. But the Doritos ads didn’t appear until after they aired because Doritos wanted to keep the winners a secret. So if you voted early, you didn’t even see the Crash the Super Bowl ads.

3. The ad meter voters were not pre-screened. When a company wins the ad meter they get millions of dollars worth of free publicity since their commercial is shown over and over and over online and on the news. So is it really so far-fetched to suspect that maybe some companies just hired people (or asked their employees) to give their Super Bowl commercial a high score? As I said, only about 7,000 people voted in the online poll this year. What if a giant billion-dollar, multinational corporation like Proctor and Gamble had sent a mass e-mail to all of their 129,000 employees asking them to sign up and vote for Tide’s Super Bowl commercial? Even if only 500 people out of that 129,000 voted they would still have a massive impact on that commercial’s score.

4. No more dials. People at home don’t have dials hooked up to their computers. So instead of rating an ad second-by-second, viewers gave each commercial an over all score on a scale of 1 to 10. The old poll measured a participant’s instant and immediate reaction to an ad. But the new poll gave people time to think about how much they liked each commercial. I suspect this had an odd psychological affect on some people. If I saw a commercial were a guy got hit in the balls I might chuckle…but then I’d feel kind of like a moron for laughing at something so low-brow. So I suspect a lot of ad meter participants took a moment to decide how they should react to each ad rather than give an honest assessment of their actual reaction. If Tide’s 60-second long “Miracle Stain” spot had run last year, I don’t think it would have come in 2nd on the ad meter. That’s because it started off slowly and I think a lot of people would have been bored after 40 seconds. But this year people watched the ad from start to finish before they made any judgments. I think viewers decided it was cute and funny and that it was the “right kind” of ad. I think this is the reason all these sentimental ads did so well last night. It just felt good to give them high scores. The commercials maybe weren’t entertaining but viewers subconsciously wanted to demonstrate that they had good taste. So a wacky chip ad staring a guy in a dress gets a 7 but an inspiring (but sort of confusing) Oprah-narrated ad about families deserved to get a 10 because that was a serious and maybe even an important commercial.

So the USA Today ad meter is dead and it’s never coming back. Sure, the folks at USA Today are going to continue to parade around its corpse like it’s still real and relevant but it’s not. In fact, USA Today apparently wants to bastardize their brand even further by running ad meter polls during other events like the Oscars. (The fact that companies don’t make special commercials for the Oscars or the All-Star game apparently doesn’t mater.) So in the end, this just comes down to an issue of money and free publicity. USA Today realized that the Ad Meter name was worth something so they’ve decided to make a couple bucks by running shitty online polls under the once respected Ad Meter banner.

I’m not really sure what all this means for the Crash the Super Bowl contest but I’ll be frank, I’m a little worried. It will now be much, much harder for Dortios commercials to score a #1, #2 or #3 spot in the poll. That means FritoLay will be getting a lot less exposure and free press out of The Crash. I suspect that FritoLay will run the contest again next year but I also suspect they might change the terms a bit. I really think it’s time for Doritos to start paying bonus prizes to the finalists if their ad makes it to air regardless of how they do on the ad meter. They could still do the bonus ad meter prizes but if they guaranteed an extra $25,000 just for airing that’d be really nice. I know that might sound like a lot of money but it’s chump change when you consider the fact that FritoLay has to pay at least $3,000,000 to air one 30 second Super Bowl commercial.

Did a poorly-designed Facebook app almost ruin this year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest?

Posted by Dan L. on January 29th, 2013

Facebook: Ruining every nice thing on the Internet since 2004

Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest might just be the biggest and most successful promotion in the history of advertising. There have been seven different installments of The Crash and until now, each one has been bigger and better than the last. But this year something strange happened; for the first time ever the Crash saw a drop in the number of ads that were submitted. Doritos received about 2,800 entries last fall and although that’s an amazing figure, in 2011 the company received more than 6,000 entries. The terms of the contest changed very little and there is still a million dollars at stake…so what could have caused a 50% drop in the number of videos that were submitted? What the heck happened to this year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest!?

Facebook. Facebook is what happened.

The first six installments of The Crash were all hosted on the dedicated website, Crashthesuperbowl.com. The site was brilliantly designed and it was the perfect home for the contest. It was fun, user-friendly and it always worked just the way it was supposed to. Crashthesuperbowl.com became an important part of the contest and I think it really helped generate a lot of excitement among the fans. There was a huge and pretty active forum that filmmakers could use to ask questions so it felt very live and interactive. The site also had some nice privacy protections. If you wanted to upload an entry or rate or comment on other people’s submissions you had to create a username and register an account. Your profile and contact info were hidden from the public so no one knew who the heck ChipMonster23 or OrangeDustAddict were in he real world. This did lead to a little trolling but a few rotten apples posting dumb comments on popular videos didn’t do much harm.

By far the the greatest feature of the old Crashthesuperbowl.com was the site’s video gallery. IT WAS PHENOMENAL. When you went to the gallery you would see thumbnails for about 200 entries. If you scrolled left or right, more thumbnails would automatically load. So even if there were 6,000 submissions, you could scan through all of them by just pushing your cursor to the right. Here’s what the old gallery looked like:

RIP: Crashthesuperbowl.com

I think this video gallery was one of the biggest reasons the contest got so huge. FritoLay made it incredibly easy for users to watch lots and lots of entries. You could skim though the gallery and click on any random video that caught your eye. So people who were thinking about entering the contest could sit down and check out the competition with ease. And here’s the thing about the Crash the Super Bowl contest; maybe 90% of the entries are pretty terrible! I know that might sound harsh but it’s true. The vast majority of submissions are made by amateur filmmakers who don’t really understand how to craft a tight, funny, clever, 30 second commercial. So if you were thinking of entering and if you watched a few dozen (or a few hundred) entries you would catch on to this fact pretty quickly. And this would lead to a crucial realization: I CAN DO BETTER THAN THAT! The video gallery made it look like any half-decent ad that didn’t have any glaring technical problems would be a serious contender. And that perception probably inspired thousands of filmmakers to go out and shoot their own submissions.

So Crashthesuperbowl.com was awesome. But it did lack one key feature; it wasn’t very SOCIAL. All of those ratings and comments and shares were TRAPPED inside the Crash the Super Bowl website. So I’m guessing that some very clever person at FritoLay or Goodby, Silverstein & partners (that ad agency that helps run the Crash) realized that if the contest was moved to Facebook, literally MILLIONS of people would be exposed to activty related to the contest.

And that’s how everything got all f#&%ed up. Last fall FritoLay decided that it was time to cash in on all those ratings and uploads and comments so they mothballed their amazing website and turned their entire multimillion dollar ad contest into a lousy facebook app. Suddenly the contest went from being a fun, user-friendly experience to a big ass annoying, privacy killing social media monstrosity. I want you to scroll up and look at that screen grab of the old CTSB video gallery. Then scroll down and look at the new FACEBOOK video gallery:

The CTSB Facebook app

See that WATCH MORE ADS button? I think that little button nearly ruined the 2013 Crash the Super Bowl contest. On the old site you could skim through hundreds of ads in a matter of seconds. But the new facebook app would only show you 12 ENTRIES AT A TIME. If you wanted to see more thumbnails you had to click the button and wait a few seconds(!) for 12 more to load. It was incredibly annoying. Every year I try and watch as many Crash the Super Bowl entries as possible. I used to go though the gallery and click on any ad that happened to catch my eye. But not this year. This year I tried to watch some entries but I quickly got frustrated and gave up. And you know what? Not being able to watch tons of other entries totally killed my enthusiasm for this contest. I tried shooting a submission of my own but when I ran into a problem I just said “screw it” and gave up. I just didn’t care this year and I know it’s because I wasn’t able to get psyched up and inspired by other people’s entries.

But the crappy video gallery wasn’t the app’s only problem. The Crash the Super Bowl app was also a vicious privacy killer. In fact, it might be the most invasive and dangerous contest app I’ve ever seen. Contestants had to submit their entries under their real names and their names would automatically appear next to their videos. Those names were clickable and they linked to the director’s facebook page. So if you had a popular video, a million strangers could easily see anything you had ever publicly posted on facebook. Oh and guess what, if you listed the names of your crew members their names would also appear next to your video and their names were clickable too. Here, check out this shot of one the 5 finalist ads:

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Every one of the names under the comment box is clickable. Out of the 925,970 people that have watched this video, I wonder how many of them clicked on those links just for the hell of it. I looked at one of the producer’s profiles and in 60 seconds I knew where she lives, what she looks like, where she works, where she went to school, who her boyfriend is, and how old she is. It’s absurd that contestants and their crew members have to be exposed like this. But the contestants aren’t the only one’s who need to worry. You can also check out the facebook page of anyone who comments on any entry. Most of the finalists and their crew probably realized that they should set their facebook pages to ultra-private mode but do all these people who have been leaving comments know that hundreds of thousands of strangers can see their personal info in just one click?

But wait, there’s more! I haven’t even gotten to the WORST thing about this app; it is just a gigantic, spam-spewing monster! Every single time a facebook user votes for an entry or leaves a comment, a message like this pops up in their friends’ news feeds:

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I took this screenshot after I voted for a friend’s entry in the Nacho Average Awards phase of the contest. (If you’re not familiar with “The Nachos” they were kind of an honorable mention prize and the filmmakers that got the most vote won a year’s supply of Doritos.) I voted for that entry every day and every freaking day my friends would have to see that alert. The same thing happens when you vote for a finalist commercial. I’ve been voting for the finalist “Goat 4 Sale” all month. Here’s what would appear on my timeline every time I voted:

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I’ve used a lot of contest apps before and normally I would just delete that piece of activity and the post would disappear. But deleting that post doesn’t actually remove it from your news feed. So for days I thought I was removing the post but my friends were still seeing it. When I accepted the app it actually asked “Who can see posts this app makes on your facebook timeline?“ I thought I selected the “ONLY ME” option but when I checked later it was set to “FRIENDS.” I don’t know if I just screwed up or if something was wrong with the app but I’ll tell you this, whenever I accept an app I ALWAYS set it to “ONLY ME.” But really, isn’t it dumb that I even have to care about this kind of stuff? Can’t I just cast a vote and be on my way? Isn’t enough that I’m voluntarily watching a commercial? Does FritoLay really need to commercialize my commercial-watching?

I know that PR teams and ad agencies are being told that they need to “make things more social” by big wigs who have no idea what that actually means. But how does any of this junk actually help sell Doritos? Does anyone at FritoLay really believe that my Uncle Tony is going to go out and buy a bag of Cool Ranch chips because he saw a brief mention of Doritos in his facebook news feed? I mean seriously…..the Crash the Super Bowl ads that win this contest are going to be broadcast during the Super Bowl which means they’ll be seen by 100 million people. Isn’t that enough exposure?? Does FritoLay really need to shove their content into the eyeballs of my 262 facebook friends?

That daily dose of spam was really annoying and if I wasn’t a giant video contest nerd I wouldn’t have wasted my time changing the app’s settings. I just would have stopped voting after a day or two. So I think the contest’s crappy facebook app hurt the number of entries that were received this year and it also probably reduced the number of votes that were cast. I really hope that the Crash the Super Bowl contest comes back next year but I also hope that the folks at FritoLay realize that a bunch of meaningless “likes” and “shares” aren’t worth the damage they’re doing to their brand. Moving The Crash the Facebook made the biggest user-generated ad contest in history feel small….and that’s a damn shame.

VCN reviews the 2013 Crash the Super Bowl finalists

Posted by Dan L. on January 4th, 2013

Well the wait is finally over! At 8PM EST last night Doritos revealed their 5 finalists for the 2012-2013 installment of the Crash the Super Bowl contest. The announcement came in the form of hosted by the “Doritos Girl” Ali Landry (who somehow looks hotter now than she did in her Dorito ad 15 years ago.) FritoLay saw a MASSIVE drop in the number of entries they received this year and to me it seemed like the pickings were pretty slim. But the Crash the Super Bowl judges managed to put together a decent list of finalists. Each of the 2013 winners will receive $25,000 and a trip for two to the Super Bowl next month. And the finalists are….

1. by Ben Callner of Atlanta, Georgia

2. by Tyler Dixon of Los Angeles, California

3. by Mark Freiburger of Los Angeles, California

4. by Sasha Shemirani of San Diego, California

5. by Joe Taranto of Los Angeles, California

Overall this is a very interesting top 5. All the selected ads feel like Crash the Super Bowl commercials but I suspect that maybe Friotlay brought in some fresh judges this year. These picks are just sorta different than the stuff that normally makes the finals (and that’s a good thing.) Ok, time for my reviews!

GOAT 4 SALE: This might just be my new, all-time favorite Crash the Super Bowl entry. I freaking love this ad. It’s a perfect little 30 second short film. The actors are great, the cinematography is fantastic, the pacing is perfect and the goat is destined to become a super star. One of the best things about this commercial is that it actually does a good job of selling the featured product. Watching Goat 4 Sale makes me want to fill my cabinets with Doritos and scarf down a whole bagful. This year a public vote will choose one Doritos ad to air during the Super Bowl and then Fritolay will pick a second ad that will also air. The team that made Goat 4 Sale shouldn’t even waste their time asking for votes because there is no way in heck that FritoLay won’t chose to run this spot during the big game. This commercial is awesomely hilarious from beginning to end which means it will get a huge score in USA Today’s Ad Meter poll. So if Goat 4 Sale airs during the Super Bowl it will be ranked one of the Top 3 ads of the game and honestly, I think it will actually take the #1 spot in a walk. Plus after the game millions of people would go online so they can re-watch this ad. That shot of the goat screaming will probably wind up being one of the most memorable moments of Super Bowl XLVII.

ROAD CHIP: This one isn’t laugh-out-loud funny but it’s well made and I like it. It’s pretty obvious that this ad was created by a director who really understands what it takes to win the Crash the Super Bowl contest. (He’s made the finals 3 times now!) Obviously super adorable dogs are good and obviously clever babies are good but if you feature a baby and a dog in your ad you’re probably going to score some major points with the focus groups that review the shortlist of potential CTSB finalists. So sometimes it pays to pander! And I’m not trying to sound like a jerk, I’m being serious…this contest is about making a commercial that will be as popular as possible with as many viewers as possible and people just happen to like commercials that feature dogs and babies so filmmakers might as well give the people what they want. I don’t think this ad would make the top 3 on the Ad Meter but I do think it has a better shot than any of the other non-goat-themed finalists.

FASHIONISTA DADDY: This pick really surprised me. I think it’s cute and funny and very slick but it’s not very…oh I don’t know…epic. This seems like the kind of video that might win $7,500 in a Poptent assignment. Usually Crash the Super Bowl ads feel more original than this. The “tough guys dress in drag” premise has been totally done to death, hasn’t it? Why would Doritos pick an ad with such a played out concept? I also don’t see this spot doing very well on the Ad Meter. I think viewers will enjoy it and the wedding dress joke at the end is funny but the Super Bowl is when advertisers bring out their big guns. This ad just won’t be able to beat whatever crazy commercials Bud Light or E-Trade or Volkswagon air. Again, I do sorta kinda like Fashionista Daddy but no one is going to jump on the Internet after the game to re-watch this one.

EXPRESS CHECKOUT: I like this one and I think it’s neat that Doritos actually picked a subtle video that isn’t filled with cute dogs and wacky toddlers. This might sound weird but my favorite part of the ad is when the Kristen Schaal-esque checkout girl whispers “no” to the jerk in line. The director of this ad clearly has a strong talent for directing actors. All the characters play their roles just right. If the jerk in line had been a little jerkier it would have ruined this spot. And if the Kristen Schaal girl hadn’t gotten mad at the jerk it would have made her seem mean. The bad news is that like “Fashionista Daddy” this ad probably wouldn’t score very well on the USA Today ad meter. It’s a nice little short film but it would get lost in the shuffle on Super Bowl sunday.

FETCH: I have mixed feelings about this ad. It’s fun and well made and very amusing but it’s very similar to the 2012 CTSB finalist ad “.” In Hot Wild Girls, two guys gets wishes from a Siri-like smartphone app. They ask for Doritos and they magically appear. Then they ask for some “Hot Wild Girls” and the phone thinks the guy asked for “Three Rottweilers.” So three Rottweilers show up and chase the guys away. It’s pretty obvious that the writer of Fetch was ahem….inspired by Hot Wild Girls. The plots are basically identical; the stars of both ads discover a magical thing that can bring them whatever they ask for. They ask for Doritos and then they ask for hot women. But the magical thing misunderstands and conjures up a scary animal that chases the guys away. I’m really disappointed that Doritos chose to reward such a blatant act of copy-cattery. It’s a funny and well done copy but that doesn’t change the fact that the writer lifted the concept from a previous winner. Ok, just for the heck of it I’ll post Hot Wild Girls. Watch it and decide for yourself whether or not it “inspired” Fetch.

And now, here are a few random observations I have about this set of finalists:

-ONLY 1 REPEAT FINALIST MADE IT THIS YEAR: This is a real surprise. Last year 3 of the 5 selected ads were shot by filmmakers who had already seen their work make the top 5. That’s pretty strange when you consider that last year the odds of making the finals were about 1 in 1,200. I did an interview with some of the top CTSB judges and posted an article that outlined the reasons why I thought the Crash kept getting so many repeat winners. (For example, past winners had become friends with many of the judges during their trip to the Super Bowl.) I don’t know if Doritos changed the way that they pick their finalists but I have a feeling that something was done about the problem since a lot of former finalists entered again but only one made the top 5. UPDATE: Several sharp-eyed readers have messaged me to let me know that Fasionista Daddy was actually created by several guys that are affiliated with a team from Mosaic Church in LA who have written and produced 3 or 4(!) previous Crash the Super Bowl finalists including “Sling Baby” which won a million dollars last year. So….these dudes won a million bucks last year and even that didn’t get them to retire.

-THE DIRECTOR OF “ROAD CHIP” HAS MADE THE FINALS 3 YEARS IN A ROW: The one former finalist who did manage to make the top 5 again this year is Tyler Dixon. Dixon has now managed to make the finals in 2013, 2012 and 2011. (That might sound shocking but last year a director named Kevin Willson made the finals for a 3rd time.) Dixon’s entries are always pretty good but it’s impossible to deny that being a former finalist has given him a tremendous advantage over the rest of the filmmakers in this competition. Another former finalist (that Dixon met at the Super Bowl in 2011) helped him make “Road Chip” and he was able to use his track record and the cash that he’s won to produce a professional-quality commercial. According to the announcement video, Dixon looked at 100 different dogs and auditioned more than 40 toddlers before casting the adorable duo featured in Road Chip. Most CTSB hopefuls have to use their own goofy dog and cast their buddy’s kid. Even the most professional entrants would be lucky to find a few real child actors interested in auditioning. But if you’ve already won this contest twice and if your previous Doritos commercials have already aired on TV the whole process of making an entry becomes much, much easier. Who wouldn’t want to work with someone who has proved that they can get really, really close to winning a million dollars in this contest? Don’t get me wrong, I think Mr. Dixon is a talented guy and Road Chip is a pretty good commercial but just because you can spend a bunch of money and cast the best actors and get the best crew and make the finals every year doesn’t mean you should. If you’ve already created 2 commercials that have aired on TV and if one of those ads actually aired during the SuperBowl then maybe it’s time to relinquish your amateur status, get a manager and become a professional commercial director. You don’t need to keep trying to win a million dollars, just go get a job with an agency and earn a million dollars.

-ONLY 2 OF THE 5 WINNING ADS FEATURED DOGS: Commercials that feature dogs tend to do pretty well on the USA Today Ad Meter so for the last few years Doritos has gone dog-crazy. But this year they only picked 2 dog-themed ads which is a nice change of pace.

-LITTLE GIRLS ARE THE NEW DOGS!: I guess Fritolay must have gotten some focus group data that revealed that people love commercials that feature precocious little girls. Doritos almost never picks ads that feature kids so it is kind of surprising that they’d pick two little girl-themed ads in one year.

-ALL 5 WINNING FILMMAKERS ARE DUDES: Women might make up 51% if the population but they make up 0% of the winners of this year’s Crash the Super Bowl Contest. There’s not really a lot FritoLay can do about this I guess but in the 6 years Doritos has been running this contest I think that only like 3 women have ever made the top 5 and that’s sort of a shame.

-NONE OF THE ADS STAR NON-WHITE ACTORS. Again, I guess there’s nothing much Doritos could do about this but filmmakers….seriously, a little diversity will HELP your entry, not hurt it. Hmm, I wonder if any of the 40 little girls that auditioned for Road Chip where black, Hispanic or Asian. At least the director of Fashionista Daddy took a page out of Bud Light’s playbook and cast a multi-racial group of buddies.

-NONE OF THE FINALISTS ARE VERY “EXPLOSIVE.” When Doritos launched this year’s Crash they implied that contestants might want to make their entries exciting, explosive or action packed since Michael Bay was going to help pick this year’s winners. Well, I guess Michael Bay’s tastes have changed and he now prefers frilly tea parties and giggling toddlers over giant robots and graphic shoot outs.

-ALL 5 FINALISTS WERE UP FOR “NACHO AVERAGE AD AWARDS: Ok, I did not see this coming. All of the entries that made the finals had already been singled out by Doritos and nominated for Nacho Average Ad awards. I really thought that Doritos would keep a few of the finalists in their pocket but I guess if you didn’t make the “Nacho Ad” shortlist you didn’t have a shot of making the final 5.

-I PREDICTED 2 OF THE 5 FINALISTS CORRECTLY!: About 3,000 commercials were submitted to the Crash this year but by golly I was able to spot 2 finalists ahead of time; Goat 4 Sale and Road Chip. I also listed 4 other possible contenders and that list included Fetch. So I did pretty good this year but I’m seriously bummed that didn’t make it. That one was awesome.

Voting is now open and you can vote once a day for your favorite ad from now until January 29th. I’ll be voting for Goat 4 Sale even though I’m sure it’s a lock for the Super Bowl. to watch the finalists and cast your vote. But be warned, Doritos’ facebook app freaking sucks and every time you vote an ad for Doritos will basically pop up in your timeline. After a month your friends are really going to be annoyed with all the “So-and-so cast a vote in the Crash the Super Bowl contest!” messages in their news feed. I’m actually working on an article that explains how Doritos’ Facebook app almost ruined this year’s competition so check back here next week for that story.

One final note; VCN always gets a lot of new readers this time of year. If you’re new to the blog, thanks for visiting! Be sure to bookmark us and/or follow us on Twitter if you’re into that sort of thing:

Dortios and Michael Bay reveal the details of the 2013 Crash the Super Bowl contest!

Posted by Dan L. on September 18th, 2012

DORITOS: They’re exploding with flavor!

Dortios is scheduled to announce the details of the 2012-2013 Crash the Superbowl contest during a webcast on Crashthesuperbowl.com at 8PM EST on Wednesday, September 19th. But a few hours ago, USA Today spoiled the surprise and blabbed about all the stuff that Doritos was going to reveal tomorrow night. So…SPOILER ALERT: If you want to wait another 20 hours to hear some specifics about this year’s contest, look away now!

Ok, nobody really wants to wait until the webcast, right? Good. Here are the basic facts about the 2013 Crash the Super Bowl contest:

1. Doritos is the only brand involved in the contest this year.

2. FIVE finalists will be selected in January.

3. The public will vote and TWO winning ads will air during the Super Bowl.

4. If your ad scores the #1 spot on the USA Today ad meter you win a million dollar bonus.

None of those facts are especially shocking. All those things pretty much happen every year. But there are two NEW pieces of big news to report:

1. If you make the finals and if your ad is the highest ranked Doritos commercial of the game you’ll will win a chance to work with Michael Bay on the next Transformers movie. What kind of job you would have isn’t clear yet. I doubt you’ll be a producer or anything but hopefully this will be an actual, meaty job where you can get real on-set experience. It would really suck if the winner was just a glorified PA. I think the dream position would be as a second unit director. If the winner got to direct a few action shots they could get into the DGA and they’d have an instant career in the film industry. That would be a hell of a good prize.

2. This year Doritos is going to try and involve non-filmmakers in the contest. They will be encouraging people to offer up their homes, pets etc. to producers who are shooting entries for the contest. This will happen via a special section on Doritos’ facebook page.

That’s all the news I’ve got to report right as of 11:00PM on the 18th. I will update this post after the webcast tomorrow night!

———–

POST-WEBCAST UPDATE: It’s Wednesday night and I just watched the big CTSB webcast announcement. Basically it was just a pre-recorded video that featured the guy in charge of the Crash, Jeff Klein and Michael Bay. Bay took Klein on a little tour of his production offices and they talked a tiny bit about strategy. I only learned one bit of new info from the video; Michael Bay will be one of the official Crash the Super Bowl judges this year. Personally, I think that’s fantastic news. I know that a lot of CTSB fans (myself included) are unhappy that the same people and ideas wind up winning this contest every year. So maybe Bay will help Doritos make some bolder and more unique choices this time. The full webcast is now online and you can watch it .

After the webcast ended, CrashtheSuperbowl.com disappeared! It now looks like the entire contest WILL take place on facebook! Yes, Crashthesuperbowl.com is dead and gone. Just a few minutes ago, Doritos changed their facebook page. It now looks like this:

BOOM.

When you click on that Crash the Super Bowl tab it takes you to a “Get Started” page. I’m sort of amazed that the contest is really going to be just a gigantic facebook app this year but I did totally call it! It’s really a brilliant move on fritolay’s part. For the next 4 months, millions of facebook feeds will be clogged with links to Crash the Super Bowl entries. When you upload your submission I bet all of your facebook friends will automatically see a link. If an average of 5 people are involved with every CTSB submission and if they each have an average of 150 facebook friends and if 6,000 people enter the contest this year (same as last year) that means Crash the Superbowl entries will probably show up in the newsfeeds of about 4.5 million people!!! The amount of free advertising Doritos will get out of this move boggles the mind!

The official rules are now live and on facebook. Here are the key details you need to know:

1. The contest opens on OCTOBER 8th. The deadline for entries is NOVEMBER 16th.

2. There will be a star-rating system “for entertainment purposes only.”

3. A public vote will choose 1 of the 5 commercials that will air during the big game.

4. A panel of judges will choose a second commercial to air too.

5. The finalist prizes are the same as last year; $25,000 and a trip for 2 to the Super Bowl.

6. The USA Today ad meter prizes are back too. If your ad lands in the #1, #2 or #3 spot on the ad meter you’ll win a bonus of $1,000,000, $600,000, or $400,000.

7. There is NO million dollar bonus for an ad that is ranked #1 on the FACEBOOK ad meter poll. Doritos did this last year and the makers of the ad “Sling Baby” managed to win the online vote. But they won because they had a small army of fans give bad scores to the other ads in the competition. It was really uncool and I’m guessing that’s why the facebook vote got scrapped this year. It was just too easy to manipulate the results.

8. If you win and take the Transformers 4 gig you’ll get an extra $50,000.

You can read all the fine print for yourself here:

This year I’m going to attempt to watch as many CTSB entries as possible and then I’ll post my favorite entries. If you shoot an ad, be sure to send me a link. GOOD LUCK, EVERYBODY!!

When will Doritos announce the 2013 Crash the Super Bowl contest?

Posted by Dan L. on June 16th, 2012

Man, I haven't bought a bag of these in a while.

The start of the 2012-2013 NFL season is now just three months away so I think it’s finally time to start thinking about the new installment of Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest. Actually, I know that a lot of you guys have been thinking about the contest for months. According to my traffic stats, during April and May, dozens of people a week visited VCN for the first time after googling phrases like “doritos commercial contest 2013” and “when does the Crash the Super Bowl contest start?”

So when will we know the details of the 2013 Crash? Well, Fritolay keeps the details of the contest top secret until early fall. Frankly, we don’t even know for sure if there will be a 2012-2013 installment of the CTSB contest. But last year’s contest was a massively gigantic success; one fan-made Doritos commercial ( was ranked the best commercial of the year on USA Today’s ad meter and another CTSB ad () was ranked the best spot of the game in a (sort of bogus) facebook poll. So two teams of filmmakers won million dollar bonuses and Doritos got a mountain of free publicity. So I don’t think Doritos will be walking away from this incredibly successful franchise. And why should they? It’s been working great for them and each installment of the contest is bigger than the last. Last year Doritos received about 6,000 submissions! Can you imagine the backlash from their fans if they tried to skip the contest this year?

If the Crash is coming back for 2013, the planning has got to be well under way at Fritolay HQ. But we probably won’t hear any details until the end of September. Last year, Doritos launched the contest on September 27th, they started accepting entries on October 3rd and the deadline was November 21st. So if they stick to the same timeline you’ve only got 5 1/2 months to work on your entries!!! Better get crackin’, buddy! Ok but seriously, you really should wait until the contest is actually announced before you start working on your ads. Like I said, the 2013 installment isn’t a sure thing yet. Plus you never know what kind of new twists Doritos could add to this year’s contest. You don’t want to spend half the summer working on an epic commercial about Nacho Cheese Doritos only to find out in September that this year, Fritolay only wants ads about Cool Ranch Doritos.

VCN will let you know as soon as we hear any new details about the 2013 Crash the Super Bowl contest. If this is your first time visiting the site, be sure to bookmark us or subscribe to our blog feed!