Here’s fresh competition for our Creative Directors: the consumer. Continuing with the annual Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest (in it’s 3rd year now) consumes created ads for the brand, which were then voted for by consumers. A consumer-created, ranked No. 1 in USA TODAY’s annual Super Bowl Ad Meter. And it won the creator Joe Herbert, US$ 1 million. Envious? Eat your vada-paav out.
Nationwide consumer votes placed this as the No.1 spot amongst nearly 2,000 entries and five finalist ads. Doritos also aired Eric Heimbold’s commercial “Power of Crunch,” which was placed No. 5 in the USA TODAY ad meter.
In India, Indica Xeta was one of the first to experiment with user-generated content with their The Xeta Shootout contest, which got in over a 1000 entries. Such contests typically provide a tool box (logos, snippets etc.) that make the production easy. The growth of broadband and mobile phones with video camera & editing facility may facilitate easier participation in India. But the bottle neck would be the speed of connectivity and how seamless the uploading facility is on the mobile phone. Apart from the lure of money, if the product category lends itself to high involvement and buzz value, it attracts the would-be creative directors, specially among the youth. Investing behind such a property, a la Doritos, helps too.
With due credit to the consumer (and with no jealousy pangs), was the Free Doritos commercial really worth the prize money? Janta ne kaha, haan. Toh haan.
3 Comments
This is amazing! you wouldn’t expect consumer-generated content to appear on the biggest ad buying day of the year. What’s more, the ad seems to be one of the most appealing of the night. I wonder if we will see more of this in upcoming years.
This spot was my favorite of all the superbowl commercials!
Rosa, Katy, thanks for the comments. My favourites were Hulu and Career Builder.