The archive · Advertising · Marketing decision · 2006–2016
Doritos 'Crash the Super Bowl': fans make the $1M ad, the contest is the campaign
Frito-Lay asks anyone with a camera to make the Doritos Super Bowl ad; public voting picks what airs, the winner takes $1M (6,100+ entries in 2012).
Doritos (Frito-Lay, PepsiCo)
What it had to solve
Doritos wanted to stand out in the Super Bowl without outspending rivals: Frito-Lay, with agency Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and promotion firm The Marketing Arm, launched the Crash the Super Bowl contest ahead of the 2007 game, promising that a fan-made ad would air in the biggest TV event of the year.
How it works
In 2006–07 Frito-Lay did something no Super Bowl advertiser had done: it gave the national slot away. Crash the Super Bowl invited anyone with a camera to make a 30-second Doritos commercial; judges shortlisted five, the public voted, and the winning fan-made spot aired during the Super Bowl — the first consumer-generated ad ever to run in the game.
The mechanics made the wager work. Entry was free and the prize was enormous — $1M awaited any winner whose ad topped USA Today's Ad Meter, and airtime itself was guaranteed. Every entrant, finalist and voter had weigh-in: they promoted their own film to friends, so distribution grew from the audience, not the budget, and the crowd vote pre-tested each ad before a dollar of airtime was spent.
Scale followed: the 2012 contest drew more than 6,100 submissions (a record at the time), and 2015 drew nearly 4,900. Home-made spots beat polished agency productions on the national stage — 'Middle Seat', made for $2,000, aired to a 100m+ audience and won its maker $1M and a year-long Universal Pictures job; a year earlier 'Time Machine' won on a $300 budget, plus a walk-on experience at Marvel's Avengers set.
Repeating every autumn turned the contest into a franchise the press covered for free, from the finalists' announcement through the Ad Meter results — a ten-year run that ended only when Frito-Lay rested the format.
Why it lands
- Every entrant had skin in the game and promoted their own spot — distribution grew from the audience instead of the budget.
- Public voting pre-tested the ads before any airtime was bought; only crowd-approved films reached the Super Bowl.
- A $1M prize and a guaranteed national slot pulled in near-professional talent for free — winning films cost $300–$2,000.
- Yearly repetition turned the contest into a franchise the press covered for free, from the finalists' announcement through the Ad Meter results.
What it did
Entries scaled each year — 6,100+ in 2012 and nearly 4,900 in 2015. Winning spots cost their makers as little as $300–2,000, aired to a 100m+ Super Bowl audience and paid $1M, with runners-up at $50,000 and finalists at $25,000; winners walked from their bedrooms into jobs on Marvel and Universal film sets.
What you can take
Spend the media budget on the audience instead: when entrants recruit viewers, free creators outlast any spot, and the winner gets television's biggest stage.
Since then
Frito-Lay ran the contest for a decade; the official site was still live in early 2016. By handing its national airtime to consumers, Doritos turned advertising into a talent show, and 'fan-made ad' contests became a fixture of Super Bowl marketing and FMCG promotional practice. The format's descendants — vote-to-win promos, crowd-made spots, creator studios — all descend from the simple wager that a consumer with a camera can out-earn a produced commercial; the 2015 winner's $2,000 budget against a $1M prize became the campaign's signature statistic.
Sources
- Doritos reveals five 'Crash the Super Bowl' finalists competing for $1 million and the opportunity to work with The Lonely Island
- Super Bowl ads: Doritos winner gets $1 million from $2,000 budget
- Ariz. man wins $1M Doritos Super Bowl ad prize
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