Overview

Doritos Super Bowl Commercial Contests are crowd sourced advertisements for the Dorito tortilla chip company's "Crash the Super Bowl"^[2] marketing campaign. (See also: Isaiah Mustafa Old Spice)

Background

The first Crash the Super Bowl contest was launched in 2007 for Super Bowl XLI on February 4th. The contest allowed consumers to submit their own Doritos commercials that could then be voted upon by the general public to select five finalists. According to an article in the New York Times^[3] on February 6th, 2007, the company couldn't decide which of the top two finalists to run and ended up using both.

The vote was so close, said a spokesman for Frito-Lay, Jared Dougherty, that just before the game began the company decided to run two spots rather than one. The runner-up’s commercial, called “Check Out Girl,” was added to the lineup along with the winner’s spot, called “Live the Flavor.”

Developments

Super Bowl XLIII

Doritos did not launch another crowd sourced commercial contest until 2009 for Super Bowl XLIII. The "Free Doritos" submission won the contest and starred Comedian Steve Booth as an office worker that believed his snow globe was a crystal ball. The commercial ranked as the best ad of the year according to the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Meter.

Super Bowl XLIV

For the 2010 Super Bowl, Doritos ran the top 4 submissions during the game and granted the top performing 3 a total of US $5 million. The winning video was called "Underdog" and featured a yellow Labrador Retriever that robs a man of his Doritos by assaulting him with his shock collar.

Super Bowl XLVI

On January 4th, 2012, the davidwardfilm YouTube channel uploaded a their submission for the Super Bowl XLVI Crash the Super Bowl contest. The ad was produced by Joh Ramsey and Jack Dressen, and starred Comedian Byron Brown as a cooking show host explaining how to make your own Doritos. The video subsequently reached the front page of Reddit^[1] in a thread claiming it had been rejected by Doritos, and accumulated over 39,000 up votes within 24 hours. On January 5th, the video was posted to BuzzFeed^[4] along with the videos that had been approved by Doritos.

Search Interest

Search queries for "crash the super bowl" and "doritos super bowl commercial" picked up in February 2007, the same time the first ads were aired.

External References

^[1] Reddit – My friend made this spot that was rejected by Doritos. I think it's hilarious, what do you think reddit?

^[2] Crash the Super Bowl – Doritos Presents

^[3] New York Times – Thanks to the Web, the Scorekeeping on the Super Bowl Has Just Begun

^[4] BuzzFeed – Rejected Doritos Commercial Wins At Life