Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” was an ad campaign designed for fans to create their own ad to be featured in a Super Bowl commercial and also to promote Doritos brand. In 2006, Andrew Robinson pitched an idea to the Doritos marketing team stating that the brand should hold a contest to give consumers a chance at making their very own Super Bowl ad. At first they thought the idea felt too risky because Doritos, being a major brand, had always taken content creation very seriously. Because of this, the idea was denied. However, Mr. Robinson and other associates inside Frito-Lay did not give up on this unusual pitch. They stayed persistent and presented the idea again shortly after. PepsiCo-owned by Frito-Lay bought the idea and launched, “Crash the Super Bowl”. Fans created 30 second films, to which it was then submitted through Doritos website. The brand would then take the top five submissions and premiere them during the Super Bowl. The winner, voted on by fans, would receive one million dollars and are given a contractor’s job at Universal Pictures for a whole year. The second and third place winners receive $600,000 and $400,000. Doritos chose to promote their brand during the Super Bowl because it attracts about 111.3 million people around the United State. Therefore, a lot of people will be seeing their commercial. Companies want their commercial to be memorable and make the viewers want to buy their product.
The idea of trusting the consumer is portrayed throughout the contest. Doritos gives almost free-range and few guidelines as to what the ad should contain, however, other than that, the fans are in full control of their content (Burstein). This appeals to fans because it opens them up with an opportunity to explore their creativity. When this contest was first created in 2006, the consumer target was millennials. So, the main idea was to have people use their creativity and make their own platform for it to be displayed in front of millions. Fast-forwarding to 2016, Ram Krishnan, Frito- Lay’s chief marketing officer, states, “The landscape has changed. Consumers are grown up. Millennial consumers are now having kids. The Gen Z consumers are now our core target— most consumers are already digitally native and they’re content creators. They have their own social networks” (Heilpern).
The overall cost for the “Crash The Super Bowl” campaign has been relatively cheap for Doritos. Doritos opened up an entirely new website titled crashthesuperbowl.com where people could submit their videos for the contest. Therefore, Doritos does not have to spend a lot of money heavily advertising the contest. In total, the overall cost of the campaign was around $6 million. Although it seems like a lot of money, in the grand scheme of things it is not a ton for Doritos. Compared to Doritos spending a total of $118 million through the month of July on other ads, the $6 million was cheap.
In order to track the effectiveness of this contest, Doritos measured passalong value, online contest currency, media value and brand equity. In an article called, “5 Lessons In Participatory Marketing From Doritos’ ‘Crash The Super Bowl’ And CMO Ann Mukherjee”, by David B. Burstein, it states, “According to Frito-Lay Chief Marketing Officer, Ann Mukherjee, since the launch of “Crash the Super Bowl” all of those measures have consistently gone up, as have sales. Submissions also doubled this year reaching an all-time high of 6,100” (Burstein). Ann Mukherjee, says that these campaigns have been the most successful marketing initiatives in Doritos history. Ram Krishnan, Frito-Lay North America Chief Marketing officer, praises this contest for helping Doritos expand and grow from $1.54 billion in 2006 to $2.2 billion today (Schultz).
The Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” ad campaign was overall very successful. Without spending an obscene amount of money, Doritos was able to successfully get their name out and allowed ordinary people to become their own producer. Doritos was able to glance into the lives of their consumers in a new and unique way. The millions of submissions by fans proves that the campaign got their point across—for fans to create their own ad to be featured in a Super Bowl commercial and also to promote the Doritos brand. We feel that Doritos was taking commercials to a whole new level by incorporating their fans and allowing them to have free-range of ideas and play an active role in their company. Even though, this campaign has recently come to an end, it was very beneficial to Doritos and their consumers while it lasted.
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Works Cited
Burstein, David. “5 Lessons In Participatory Marketing From Doritos’ “Crash The Super Bowl” And CMO Ann Mukherjee.” Fast Company, 3 Feb. 2012, www.fastcompany.com/1679605/5-lessons-in-participatory-marketing-from-doritos-crash-the-super-bowl-and-cmo-ann-mukherjee. Accessed 17 July 2018.
Heilpern, Will. “Doritos Tells Us Why It Has Had Enough of Its ‘Crash the Super Bowl’ Contest.” Business Insider, 29 Jan. 2016, www.businessinsider.com/doritos-explains-last-ever-crash-the-super-bowl-2016-1. Accessed 17 July 2018.
Penna, Michael Della. “Participatory Marketing – Pull Marketing’s New Push.” Target Marketing, 1 Oct. 2009, www.targetmarketingmag.com/article/participatory-marketing-pull-marketings-new-push/. Accessed 17 July 2018.
Schultz, E.J. “How Crash the Super Bowl Changed Advertising.” Ad Age, 4 Jan. 2016, adage.com/article/special-report-super-bowl/crash-super-bowl-changed-advertising/301966/. Accessed 17 July 2018.