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A brief history of the Crash the Super Bowl contest

Posted by Dan L. on January 7th, 2012

Flashback: Logo from the first installment of the CTSB contest

Did you know that there’s no wikipedia entry for Doritos’ Crash the Super Bowl contest? Is that weird or what? Everything has a Wikipedia entry. For God’s Sake, the Nickelodeon show “Hey Dude” which ran from 1989 to 1991 has a massive Wikipedia page complete with episode guides. (I clicked the “Random Article” button on Wikipedia and the Hey Dude entry was the first one to pop up) Over the last two and half year’s I’ve written dozens of articles about “The Crash” and I’ve had to spend a lot of time searching the web for information. It would be really helpful if some nerd out there would just compile a bunch of facts about the contest and post them online.

Oh wait….I guess if anyone is nerdy enough to do something like that it’s me. It took me a lot of googling but I’ve found a ton of data about The Crash and I will list it all in this single post. This is going to be just basic stuff like who made the finals, who won, how many entries where received, etc. Please be aware that if you are actually interested in this type of data that pretty much means you are as big of a nerd as I am.

Let’s start with the number of entries the contest has received over the years. Most of these numbers come from old articles or press releases that were put out by Fritolay:

NUMBER OF TOTAL CTSB ENTRIES BY YEAR:

2006/2007 Installment: 1,065 Doritos entries.

2007/2008: No commercial contest that season.

2008/2009 Installment: 1961 Doritos Entries.

2009/2010 Installment: 4023 Doritos Entries

2010/2011 Installment: 4,260 Doritos Entries.

2011/2012 Installment: 6,100 Doritos Entries.

Note: In 2010, Pepsi Max was also part of the Crash the Super Bowl contest. Pepsi Max received 1,460 submissions. But the Pepsi Max “Crash” was pretty much a totally different contest run by a different company and a different set of judges. So for the rest of this article I’m just going to focus on the Doritos contest. And now, time for a graph:

Hey, those points look like doritos!

Pretty amazing, huh? This contest has just grown like crazy over the years. Bet you’re kicking yourself right now for not entering back in 2006. So it looks like the number of submissions doubled after the 2008/2009 Crash the Super Bowl contest. But why? Probably because the winner of the 2009 contest, scored the #1 spot on the USA Today ad meter poll and the guys who made the ad, Joe and Dave Herbert won a million bucks. After people saw that it was possible for an “average joe” to win the million dollar bonus the contest just blew up.

But this raw data doesn’t tell the whole story. If you’ve entered past installments of the CTSB contest you know that every year, Doritos gets HUNDREDS of duplicate entries. I think the rules say that you can submit up to 10 versions of your commercial. And some people just uploaded their video 10 times. Some probably did it because they were unsure if the initial upload worked. But I think others used to do it just because they thought maybe it would improve their chances.

The repeat entries used to be really annoying. It seemed like for every 100 submissions I watched, at least 20 would be repeats. But fortunately, this year Doritos finally took measures to keep the duplicates out of the video gallery. I’d estimate that only 5% of this season’s submissions were repeats. So just for the fun of it let’s adjust the numbers to account for all the duplicates. I’ll deduct 20% from each total except for 2011. For this year’s total I’ll only deduct 5%.

ESTIMATED NUMBER OF ORIGINAL CTSB ENTRIES:

2006/2007 Installment: 852 Unique Doritos entries.

2008/2009 Installment: 1569 Unique Doritos Entries.

2009/2010 Installment: 3,220 Unique Doritos Entries.

2010/2011 Installment: 3,408 Unique Doritos Entries.

2011/2012 Installment: 5,795 Unique Doritos Entries.

Now let’s do a little light math. Each year, Doritos picks 5 finalists. (Except in the 09-10 contest when they picked 6 finalists) So it’s easy to calculate a contestant’s chance of making the finals.

ESTIMATED CHANCES OF A VIDEO MAKING THE CTSB FINALS, BY YEAR:

2006/2007 Installment: 1 in 170.

2008/2009 Installment: 1 in 313.

2009/2010 Installment: 1 in 536.

2010/2011 Installment: 1 in 681.

2011/2012 Installment: 1 in 1,159.

Anyone who has watched a few random CTSB entries knows that most of the submissions Doritos receives every year just aren’t that great. But there’s no possible way to estimate what a filmmaker’s odds are if he makes a GOOD submission. So I won’t even try. Let’s move on to a list of who has won the contest over the years. I’ll include the Pepsi Max Crash the Super Bowl finalists just for the heck of it. You can find all of these commercials on the official .

2007, 2009, 2010, 2011 AND 2012 CRASH THE SUPER BOWL FINALISTS:

2006-2007 Finalists:

1. Live the Flavor by Five Points Productions of Cary, NC.
-WINNER: Aired during the Super Bowl.

2. Check Out Girl by Kristin C. Dehnert of Los Angeles, CA.
-Also aired during the 2007 Super Bowl.

3. Mouse Trap by Billy Federighi of Beverly Hills, CA.
-Aired during the 2008 Super Bowl.

4. Chip Lover’s Dream by Jared Cicon of Claremont, CA.

3. Duct Tape by Joe Herbert of Batesville, IN.

2007-2008: No Commercial contest

2008-2009 Finalists:

1. Free Doritos by Joe Herbert of Batesville, IN.
-Aired during the Super Bowl. WINNER: Million dollar bonus.

2. New Flavor Pitch by Oren Brimer of New York, NY.

3. Power of the Crunch by Eric Heimbold of Venice, CA.
-Also aired During the Super bowl.

4. The Chase by Chris Roberts of Burbank, CA.

5. Too Delicious by Michael Goubeaux of Los Angeles, CA.

2009-2010 Finalists:

1. Snack Attack Samurai by Ben Krueger of Minneapolis, MN.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

2. The Smackout by Brendan Hayward of Santa Monica, CA.

3. Casket by Kevin Wilson of Whittier, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

4. House Rules by Joelle De Jesus of Los Angeles, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

5. Underdog by Five Points Productions of Cary, NC.
-Aired during the Super Bowl. WINNER: $600,000 Bonus.

6. Kids These Days by Nick Dimondi of Cary, NC

2010-2011 Doritos Finalists:

1. Adam and Eve by Stephen Schuster of Topanga, CA.

2. Best Part by Tyler Dixon of Lehi, Utah.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

3. Birthday Wish by Heather Kasprzak of Los Angeles, CA.

4. House Sitting by Tynesha Williams of Santa Monica, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

5. Pug Attack by JR Burningham of Burbank, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl. WINNER: Million dollar Bonus.

2010-11 Pepsi Max Finalists:

1. Elevator Girl by Michael Doneger of Los Angeles, CA

2. First Date by Nick Simotas of Anaheim, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

3. Love Hurts by Brad Bosley of Los Angeles, CA.
-Aired during the Super Bowl. WINNER: $400,000 Bonus.

4. Torpedo Cooler by Brendan Hayward of Santa Monica, CA
-Aired during the Super Bowl.

5. Zero Calories? Psshh by Brandy Gill of Orlando, FL

2011-12 Doritos Finalists:

1. Bird of Prey by Joby Harris of Los Angeles, CA.

2. Dog Park by Tyler Dixon of Liegh, UT.

3. Hot Wild Girls by Brad Scott of Denver, CO.

4. Man’s Best Friend by Jonathan Friedman of Virginia Beach, VA.

5. Sling Baby by Kevin T. Willson of Los Angeles, CA.
And finally, since all the news articles and press releases I read always said where the finalists came from, let’s do a breakdown of the states that gave us Crash the Super Bowl finalists:

The 31 Crash the Superbowl commercials came from directors in the following states:

California: 19 commercials

North Carolina: 3 commercials

Utah: 2 commercial

Indiana: 2 commercials

Florida: 1 commercial

New York: 1 commercial

Minnesota: 1 commercial

Colorado: 1 commercial

Virginia: 1 commercial

It should be no surprise that a lot of the winning commercials came from California since so many filmmakers live in the LA area. But what is surprising is that a number of people have made the finals more than once. The 3 North Carolina ads all came from a team known as Five-Points Productions, the 2 commercials from Indiana were both made by the famous Herbert Brothers, the 2 ads from Utah were directed by a filmmaker named Tyler Dixon and 4 of the California commercials (plus 1 of the Utah commercials) were made by a group of friends that all attended the same Church in Los Angeles.

I know that a lot of Crash the Super Bowl finalists (past and present) read this site. So if anyone sees any errors in this post, please let me know!

How to get unlimited, real youtube views

Posted by Dan L. on October 27th, 2011

Youtube: Where all your viral dreams come true

Every once and a while I will come across a “viral” video contest where the winner is determined by youtube views. And when I do see a contest like that it takes a lot of will power for me NOT to enter. You see, in my time running this website I have learned a lot of shady tricks; and “how to get to get tons of fake youtube views” is one of those tricks. Basically if you go to the right website you can order all the views you want. But those “views” are just fake, junk views. They’re just generated by some guy in India using a computer that is constantly changing its IP address. (or something like that) They don’t come from real people. So in most “viral” contests, buying fake views would be considered cheating. If you buy fake views, there is a chance you could get caught because fake views leave evidence behind. And not only could you get disqualified from the contest you’re in, you could be kicked off of youtube for violating the site’s Terms of Service.

So like I said, I try not to enter “viral” video contests. But about two months ago I came across a contest that was being run by a new micro-jobs website that I just had to enter. The competition was being run in two stages. In the first stage, people were supposed to create funny videos about giraffes (The website’s mascot is a giraffe) and then try to get as many youtube views as they could in four weeks. The people who created the Top 5, most viewed submissions got to go on to round two where they would compete for $15,000. I decided to enter but I promised myself I would NOT buy fake youtube views. () I figured that with the resources I have at my disposal I could get into the Top 5, fair and square. This website just keeps getting more and more traffic so I stuck a banner ad for my own video at the top of this page. And man, did that get me a lot of views! Plus, I have a kind of popular youtube channel with a few thousand subscribers. So I was able to get a good chunk of views from there too.

But inevitably, as the view count deadline approached, the cheating began. Several other contestants started buying fake views and I was pushed out of the Top 5. I contacted the contest organizers and I explained how you could tell when someone’s view count was phony. But they said they really couldn’t do anything about it because the practice wasn’t actually against the rules. (So technically, it wasn’t even cheating!) So basically I recived the OK from the contest organizers to do whatever I could to get in the Top 5. But I still didn’t want to take the easy way out. So I started looking for a legitimate solution to my problem.

And I found that solution in like five minutes. It turns out that any youtube user can now sign up for the site’s “” program. Basically you can now buy views from youtube! Except unlike the other views you can buy, these are REAL views that come from REAL people. If you use youtube’s promotions program to get 10,000 views, it means that 10,000 different people actually watched your video. So while some might consider this bending the rules of a viral video contest, no one could claim that you’re breaking the rules since your views are coming from real people and since you’re not violating youtube’s terms of service.

Here’s how the program works: After you sign up you pick which video you want to promote. Then you tell youtube how much you are willing to pay per view. I think I went with 12 cents but you can go even lower. And remember, that is the most you are willing to pay per view. You then get to select the keywords you want associated with your video. So if your video has a giraffe in it (like mine did) you can select “giraffe” as a keyword. Then when someone searches for giraffe videos on youtube, your video will appear in the “Promoted Videos” sidebar. The more specialized a keyword is, the more you will pay per-click. Here’s a a screengrab of my Promoted Videos Dashboard that shows the keywords I used for my giraffe video:

Note: I cut out the irrelevant parts of this chart in photoshop

So even though I “bid” 12 cents per view, most of my views only cost me 2 or 3 cents. And as you can see, the keyword “funny” was the most popular keyword by a long shot.

After you set your keywords, you tell youtube how much you want to spend every day promoting your videos. If you say “$5.00″ youtube will run your video as an ad all day until you have spent $5.00. I think the best thing about this program is how fast the process is. If you want a huge number of views right away, you can tell youtube you want to spend $200 a day. Youtube will pimp your video like crazy and by end of the day, you’ll have thousands of real views. Here’s what your “dashboard” will look like once your “campaign” is up and running:

Again, this was photo-shopped to save space

The final view count for my giraffe entry was about 16,000. And that was enough to get me into the finals. As you can see, I recived 10,659 views thanks to youtube’s promoted video program. And that means I was able to get 6,000 views on my own. And that’s pretty damn good! If the other contestants hadn’t bought fake views, I would have been able to get in the Top 5 without any help from youtube.

So youtube’s Promoted Videos program is pretty much just a giant, view-creating machine. However many views you want, you can get. And you only get charged when someone actually clicks on your video. But there is one major drawback to this program; this s&%# ain’t cheap. I spent about $300 to get those 10,000 views. So was it a wise purchase? Well, the results of the contest I was will be officially announced on November 1st so check back here on Monday to see how I did.

UPDATE: The sponsored decided to split the prize 3-ways so I won $5,000. That means my investment paid off big time. But one of the other winners just happened to be the biggest cheater in the view-count round. So it was awesome to win $5,000 but I’m annoyed that a cheater got a slice of the grand prize.

Tips for using GetOnlineVotes.com

Posted by Dan L. on September 12th, 2011

Banner for getonlinevotes.com

I know that a lot of video contest filmmakers hate it when contests let online voting help determine the winners. So do I. I can’t even imagine how many contests I would have won if quality was the only thing that mattered to the judges. But contest organizers LOVE online voting. Every time a contestant asks for votes on facebook or twitter or on their blog, that’s free advertising for the sponsor. And you can’t really blame contest organizers for wanting to get as much exposure for their company as possible. After all, if it wasn’t for the publicity, most companies wouldn’t even bother running a contest in the first place. So if you want to make money in video contests, you have just got to accept the fact that getting votes is just part of the game. And once you do, you can start developing strategies to win vote-based competitions.

If you’re really serious about winning a contest, you’ll need to try and get votes from people outside of your social circle. How do you do that? Well I suggest you try the site GetOnlineVotes.com. GOV is what contest junkies refer to as a “vote exchange.” When a person needs votes in a contest they can post their link on GOV and ask for votes. Then other people who need votes in other contests vote for that entry. Then they post a comment that includes their own link and ask the original contestant to vote for them. So basically, the whole thing is based on the premise, “you vote for me and I’ll vote for you.”

And it works. It works great, actually. I just learned abut the site recently but I’ve tried it 2 or 3 times now. And if you really work the website, you can get dozens or even hundreds of votes from GOV. But I’ve noticed a lot of people who use the exchange sabotage their chances by making some simple but key mistakes. So I thought I’d make a quick list of tips to help you get more votes on GetOnlineVotes.com.

Before you post your vote request, make sure that swapping votes does not violate your contest’s rules. Most contests don’t care where votes come from. As long as they are getting web traffic or new sign ups or facebook fans, they’re happy. But some contests prohibit offering “inducements” to get people to vote for an entry. For example, I was recently in a contest sponsored by Excedrin and they had a “no inducements rule.” Several contestants used GetOnlineVotes.com and all of them were disqualified! So for sure, check before you post.
Keep it brief. GOV gives you the option to say something about you or the contest you’re entering before you post your voting instructions. You are required to fill in the space so keep it as brief as possible. One sentence is all you need. A huge explanation just makes it look like voting for you will be complicated.
Make your instructions as easy as possible. A wordy or confusing explanation will just scare voters away. This seems like a no-brainer but a lot of people over-explain the voting process. Just post the link, and present STEP 1, STEP 2, STEP 3, etc. But be aware, if you really do have more than 2 or 3 steps, not many people are going to want to spend so much time on one vote. The more votes people make, the more they get in return. Just keep that in mind.
Promise that you will return all votes and ask people to leave their link. This make other users feel like a vote for you will result in a guaranteed return vote.
Vote for everyone that leaves a comment on your post! Some jerks will post their request, let people vote for them and then not return the favor. So let people know that you are voting by replying to all comments. If other users see that you are replying “I voted!” to every comment, they’ll know you’re good about returning votes.
Work the site. Vote for other people and leave comments asking for return votes. But try and focus on only voting for people who will actually vote for you in return.
Consider Re-Listing your Post after a few days. GOV doesn’t allow you to post the same vote request over and over. But for just $3.95 you can have your post put back at the top of the list of requests.

I was actually inspired to write this article because I just submitted a vote request to GetOnlineVotes. So here’s what a nice, simple request looks like:

Click to view the actual listing

Granted, this isn’t exactly a typical GOV request because the “voting’ is done on youtube. Most of the contests listed on the site are run through facebook. Still, other GOV users are actually voting for my video. All I need to do to win the $1,000 “Crowd Favorite” prize in this particular contest is get the most youtube likes. And I think I can pull it off, fair and square. I can get a lot of likes through youtube since I have more than 3,500 subscribers. But GetOnlineVotes.com will probably be the thing that puts me over the top. Of course, I’d certainly love to get some likes from you VCN readers. So if you want to help me out, head here and give me a like. Thanks!

October 24th Update: I won the “Crowd Favorite” prize! Thanks for the votes everybody. I told you GOV works!