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When will the Crash the Super Bowl finalists be notified?

It’s been just over a month since the deadline for the Crash the Super Bowl contest passed so if you’re one of the 6,000 or so people who entered this year, right about now you’re probably wondering when the 5 Pepsi Max and 5 Doritos finalists will be told they made the top 10. The finalists will officially be revealed on Monday, January 3rd (sounds like this might happen right at midnight) and voting for the ads that will air during the super bowl will start immediately.  But since finalists will need to submit a ton of paperwork before their ads can be cleared for use, the producers of those ads will need time to get all that stuff together.  And this year, finalists will be allowed to make some small tweaks to their entries so that will take some time too.

According the the moderator on the Crash the Super Bowl website, this year’s finalists have NOT yet been notified (as of December 14th) but Fritolay won’t say exactly when the notifications will take place.  But I’ve talked to a number of past CTSB finalists and it sounds like every year Doritos contacts the finalists just before Christmas. So if you haven’t heard anything yet you can continue to hold out hope for about another week.  But if you don’t get an e-mail or phone call by the end of business on the 23rd you might want to start making other plans for the Super Bowl.

DECEMBER 20th UPDATE: A few people on the crash the super bowl site noticed that someone left this comment on a doritos video called “Picking Teams:”

“Heard the word that you guys were contacted in a blog! Thats awesome! COngrats guys.. This spot def deserved it!”  (link)

But the CTSB forum moderator was asked about this and said that the finalists have NOT YET been notified.

DECEMBER 20th UPDATE #2: Some knucklehead using the screen name “TheTop10″ is posting a bunch of comments on different, popular entries on the Crash the Super Bowl site saying that “according to Video Contest News” the finalists have already been notified.  For the record, we have NOT claimed that the finalists have been notified.  In fact, I believe the forum moderator when he said that the finalists have not been contacted yet.  I do suspect that “Picking Teams” is a finalist video though and that word did slip out about that one.  But I think they were contacted early for some special reason and the rest of the finalists will probably be contacted in the next few days.

DECEMBER 21st UPDATE: A finalist from last year’s Crash the Super Bowl contest posted a comment today and he explained how and when he got the good news last year.  I’ll let him remain anonymous but I can confirm that he definitely was a finalist last year.  So check out the comments to get the inside story!

Help us find the best Pepsi Max CTSB entries!

Stare as long as you'd like, the number ain't gonna change

The real countdown clock on Crashthesuperbowl.com actually like...counts down.

Today is Monday, November 8th which means there’s just one week left to submit to Doritos’/Pepsi Max’s Crash the Superbowl contest.  If you haven’t shot your entry by now you should really get your ass in gear already.  As for me, I’m starting to realize I’ll probably have to skip the contest this year.  I did have one idea I was working on but the whole thing kind of fell apart.  Maybe I’ll get my act together and shoot this weekend but yeah…probably not.  Oh well.  At least I can enjoy the contest from the sidelines.

Last year was the first time ever that I actually paid attention to The Crash the Super Bowl contest. To make up for lost time I decided to try and watch as many entries as I could, list my favorites and then try and predict a winner. But surprise! Doritos wound up getting more than 4,000 entries in 2009! (Twice as many as 2008) That means it would have taken me more than 33 hours to watch them all! I gave it my best but I only managed to watch about two or three thousand of them…and when I say “watch” I mean I watched at least 3 seconds before hitting the next button. 90% of the time you can tell if an ad has any shot as soon as it starts playing.

To help me pick up the slack I asked our readers to submit their favorite ads. And you guys sent me a ton of them. Thanks to your contributions I got a pretty in-depth view of the best work that had been submitted. After sorting through all those videos, this is the one I predicted as the winner on December 18th:

And here’s what I said about it: “If it were up to me, this spot right here would get the first spot in the top 6. It’s funny, new, unique, subversive and it even manages to look and sound like a professional ad… So here’s Beardy’s big prediction; Animal Cruelty will make the top 6, it will make it to the Superbowl and it will place in the Top 3 of the USA Today Ad meter poll. It has just what it takes to rank well during polling. It’s funny early and gets funnier as it goes on. As soon as viewers see that shot of that dog lifting up his collar, every dial in the ad meter poll will go all the way to “This is great” and it will stay there for the rest of the spot.”

And guess what? I totally nailed it!! “Animal Cruelty” was renamed “Underdog” and not only did Doritos pick it for the Top 6, they chose to air it first during the 2010 Super Bowl. It was the highest rated Doritos ad of the night and was the second highest ad of the entire game which means its creators won a whopping $600,000 bonus from Frito-Lay.

So I’m feeling kinda cocky this time around and I want to see if I can call the winner again. But this is the forth year that Doritos has let fans create their Super Bowl ads for them and to be honest, I think the concept has kind of run its course. I tried watching some of this year’s entries and it’s just the same gags over and over and over. If I have to see one more commercial where a fat guy lays in a bed with his nakedness covered by chips in an attempt to seduce his suspiciously hot wife I’m going to lose my appetite for Doritos forever. So this year, Video Contest News will be focusing most of it’s Crash the Super Bowl attention on what’s new; Pepsi Max. As you probably know, this year consumers can create Crash the Superbowl ads for either Doritos or Pepsi Max. Pepsi/Fritolay will select 5 ads for each product and then 3 commercials for each will wind up airing during the big game in February.

So forget Dortios…been there, watched that. This time we are looking for the BEST Pepsi Max ads. After the deadline passes (and after I have a chance to watch as many entries as I can) we will announce VCN’s official picks. I think this time, instead of trying to predict an ultimate winner we will pick 5 entries that we think will take the Top 5 finalists spots.

As of right now, only 196 Pepsi Max ads have been submitted compared to 497 Doritos ads. So I’m guessing there will be about…um, like 3,500 Doritos entries and 1700 Pepsi Max entries. (seriously it’s really hard to come up with a good idea for a diet soda commercial…but if you’re reading this I bet you’ve already realized that.) 1700 entries is a whole lot less than 4000 but it’s still a lot of viewing time. So once again, I need your help! If you see a Pepsi Max entry that is totally, mind-blowingly amazing, let me know! And yes, self-promotion is allowed. If you happened to make an entry that you honestly believe has a shot at winning, send it to me.

You can leave a link to your favorite ads as a comment to this post or you can e-mail them to be at .

UPDATE:  Just for the heck  of it, I’m going to come back to this post every day or so and update the number of entries in the CTSB contest.  The number is still managable but the totals should probably start to skyrocket on Friday.

2010 Crash the Super Bowl entries:

November 8:     Pepsi Max: 196   Doritos: 497

November 10:    Pepsi Max: 211   Doritos: 580

November 11:    Pepsi Max: 302 Doritos: 684

November 12:    Pepsi Max: 360 Doritos: 849

November 13:    Pepsi Max: 461 Doritos: 1150

November 15:    Pepsi Max: 714 Doritos: 1926

November 16:  Pepsi Max: 1056 Doritos: 3013

Doritos and Pepsi Max (?!) announce the 2011 Crash the Super Bowl contest

If you had asked me last week whether or not I would enter this year’s installment of Doritos’ annual Crash the Super Bowl contest I would have said, no…probably not. The contest had just gotten too big and to me it felt like the whole concept had kind of run its course. Plus statistically, it’s the worst video contest you could ever enter. Last year, more than 4,000 videos were submitted. Of those 4,000 ads, Doritos picked 6 finalists and gave them $25,000 each. That means that every contestant had a mere .0015% chance of winning $25,000. And while a total of $5 Million was at stake, none of that money was guaranteed. The only way you could win one of the big cash prizes was to get enough votes to air during the game and then get ranked as one of the Top 3 ads of the entire game.

So I kind of had my mind set on skipping this year’s Crash. But yesterday afternoon, the details of the 2010/2011 contest were announced and I am very, very impressed by some of the major changes that have been made this time around. Here’s how the contest is going to be different from years past.

  1. Essentially there will be two Crash the Superbowl commercial contests; one for Doritos and one for Pepsi Max. (Pepsi owns Frito-lay)
  2. Judges will pick 5 Doritos finalists and 5 Pepsi Max finalists. That means 10 people will win at least $25,000 each.
  3. A total of 6 of these finalists will air during the superbowl; 3 for each product.
  4. Four of the ads that air during the game will be picked by voters but judges will also pick one Pepsi Max ad and one Doritos ad to air.

That last point sealed the deal for me. The fact that voters pick all the commercials that air during the super bowl was an even bigger turn off for me than the odds of making it to the finals. Good for them for finally making that change. And letting contestants pick between Doritos or Pepsi Max is also an awesome idea. People who enter this contest every year are probably tapped out of ideas for Doritos ads. I’ll probably be entering the Pepsi Max category just because it’s uncharted territory.

In addition to the new rules, Doritos/Pepsi Max are again paying out big cash prizes to any videos that land in the top 3 on the Super Bowl ad meter. First place gets you One Million bucks, second gets you $600K and third gets $400K. And if Crash ads take all three top spots each winning filmmaker gets a million dollar bonus. Last year that seemed nearly impossible but now that 6 CTSB ads are going to air, it seems a little more-do-able.

Doritos and Pepsi Max announced all the details of this year’s contest at a big event that was broadcast live on Ustream. The announcement was recorded and I’ll post the video below.  If you plan on entering the Crash this year WATCH THIS VIDEO! It features discussions with reps from Pepsi Max and Doritos plus the two big-time ad execs who help pick the winners. Plus there’s a second discussion with the Herbert Brothers who are the guys who scored a million dollars and first place on the ad meter with their CTSB entry “Free Doritos” in 2009.

10/2 UPDATE.  The video has been removed from the Ustream but you can see the entire thing here:

/#/tips-and-tricks

I recommend you skip right to the 20:27 mark for the second question asked during the Q&A. Doritos must have invited past CTSB contestants to the event because the people who get up to ask questions seem to be filmmakers familiar with the contest. The 2nd question asked was excellent and the response is something everyone entering this year’s Crash the Superbowl contest should hear. To paraphrase, the guy in the audience asked:

“One of things we low-budget filmmakers struggle with is budget and camera quality…I know that in theory, low-budget is ok but I’ve noticed that a lot of the winners have a very polished, professional look and they use the RED camera or they shoot on film…do you think getting a RED or shooting on film (both very expensive things to do) could create a better image and help a video be a winner?”

The response from Rudy Wilson, the head of the contest was almost shocking. In fact, what he said was so major that I’m going to transcribe his answer word for word:

“I can tell you from a judging standpoint…obviously we have the agency come in (an ad firm helps narrow down the list of finalists) and the brand people evaluate it as well (but) we’ve never even had that conversation…around whether or not something looks…what do you call it, the RED camera? I couldn’t even tell you what that is. You could walk up here with 5 cameras and I couldn’t (tell you which one was a RED.) But what I can tell you is if it makes us laugh, you’ve got a chance. We’re really, truly opening this up for people that don’t have the opportunity, and we understand that when we say you don’t have the opportunity you might not have all the tools. So we’re very open to looking at the gamut of quality. So do your thing…we’ll support it.”

If you’re a fan of the Crash the Super Bowl contest you might be having a hard time believing what you just read. It just doesn’t line up with Doritos’ previous choices for finalists. All but one of the 2008/2009 finalist ads were shot with RED cameras (they cost about 18 grand) And several of the 2006/2007 finalists were shot on actual film. And last year, some of the finalist videos were shot with RED cameras but all of them looked very, very slick. (I’ll admit, some of them had minor technical issues though)  No Crash the Super Bowl finalist video has ever looked rough or homemade.

This is what a RED camera looks like, by they way.

This is what a RED camera looks like, by the way

The guy who said that the judges have never “had that conversation” is a very important guy at Doritos and he actually created the idea for the whole CTSB contest.  And I believe him when he says that if your video can make the judges laugh, you have a shot and production values aren’t discussed. But last year, Doritos received more than 4,000 submissions for the contest. I don’t think it’s likely that the top-ranking decision-makers are viewing all of those videos. They probably have an entire team of people that work to create a large list of potential finalists and then those videos are show to the primary judges. So I suspect the folks at the top don’t have to talk about quality because few amateur-level submissions actually get to them. It can’t just be a coincidence that the all of the finalist videos Doritos have ever picked were tv-quality. If Doritos really will consider ads of all quality levels I think by now, one of the 16 or so videos that made the finals in previous years would have been shot with a Flip camera or an Iphone (one of the marketing guys in the video even mentions shooting ideas with Iphones at his company.)

So while the official word is that the doritos/pepsi will consider videos of all quality levels, the reality is that with maybe , of all previous Crash the Super Bowl finalists have been shot with HD or better cameras. Even the 2007 winning ad that the filmmakers stated cost $12 to make was shot using a $6,000 camera and a 35mm lens adapter. History tells us that to make it to the finals your entry needs to be tv-quality. But if Doritos/Pepsi actually came out and said that, a whole lot fewer people would enter. So if you’re planning on entering this contests, I recommend you try and make your production as professional as possible. I’m not saying to make your video super-slick….just try and make it as technically perfect as you can if you want a shot at making it to the top 10.

There’s a ton of other interesting stuff in that video and it will really help you understand what the judges will be looking for. So like I said, watch it.

The Crash the Superbowl site is now live and the 2011 rules can be found here: /official_rules.html

You can start submitting entries on September 27th and the deadline is November 15th. Oh…another nice change to the contest this year? Doritos got rid of that annoying rock music that would play in a loop whenever you visited CrashtheSuperbowl.com. It will not be missed.


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