Ultimate Consumer Contest
Frito-Lay, the world’s largest snack food producer, is revamping last year’s ultimate consumer contest titled Crash the Super Bowl. For the past four years Doritos has asked the consumer to take control and create the brand’s Super Bowl commercials and as consumers answered the call the contest grew in popularity. Last year the contest was extremely successful for the brand and for the two unemployed brothers who created the winning spot. Not only were these brothers successful in winning the grand prize of $1 million; they also created a spot that beat out all of the Madison Avenue executives and won the USA Today Ad Meter poll.
It was the success of those two brothers’ commercial that helped to restructure this year’s Crash the Bowl Sweepstakes. The potential prize money up for grabs is $5 million this year; but Doritos is not just going to give the money away. In order to win the cash, consumers have to not only beat out the thousands of entrants Doritos receives, their ad also has to place within the top three of the USA Ad Meter. Here is how Doritos plans on breaking out the winning money; $1 million for placing first in Ad Meter; $600,000 for second and $400,000 for third and if the spots finish 1-2-3, each will get a $1 million bonus, for a total of $5 million in prizes. The last time an advertiser was able to sweep the top three spots in the USA Today Ad Meter poll was in 2007 by Anheuser-Busch.
Doritos is not just hoping to win the Ad meter with their spots they are hoping to continue to grow their online social following. When you’re a brand as big as Doritos and your product is one of the most loved snack foods ever created there is not much image advertising you can do. Instead Doritos understands that their brand is based on their consumers love for their product and it is their passion that has sparked the development of these promotions.
This year social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter will play a bigger role than ever before. Entrants into the contest will be able to post their video to the Doritos Facebook page to encourage more votes and constant updates and Doritos news will be deliverable by the brand via the newly created Twitter page. If you check out the social network space the brand is already starting to build up buzz for the contest that runs from September 21, 2009 till November 16, 2009.
Finally, when Doritos looked to announce their contest they contacted the mayor of New York and asked for a favor. Yesterday, Thursday September 10, 2009 Mayor Bloomberg renamed Madison Avenue for one day, Doritos Drive. The brand handed out free samples up and down the street and encouraged people to check out the contest at http://www.crashthesuperbowl.com/. Doritos is investing a lot of money around this Super Bowl promotion; it is going to cost the brand over $6 million just to place the ads during the game, but I don’t think they are worried about it. The Super Bowl is largest junk food eating day in the nation and if you are the king of junk foods then you might as well try to become the king of advertisers on junk food’s biggest day.
Tags: Consumer Contest, Crash The Super Bowl, Doritos, Facebook
