I did not get a chance to watch the Super Bowl, for one Beyonce wasn't performing, and two, as a poor college kid, who can afford cable?
Besides the half time show, I always look forward to the commercials. Now just because I didn't get to watch the Super Bowl doesn't mean that I didn't make some time to catch a few of the advertisements. After checking out the commercials posted on YouTube, my favorite of the ones I saw was definitely the Doritos commercial. As Doritos has done for the past six year, they hosted a 'crash the super bowl' contest. What started as a singing contest in 2008, where the winner got a chance to have their music video aired during the Super Bowl, has now morphed into an amateur film competition where creators and writers brainstorm and film their own versions of Doritos advertisements.
There is a lot of intelligence behind this campaign. Most Super Bowl commercials are not only expensive to make, as most companies hire top of the line talent, i.e. Kim Kardashian, Kate Upton, Beyonce, etc. But they are also expensive to air. With Doritos hosting a contest like this, the millions of dollars spent on talent can turn into just a $100,000 as a contest prize (not the exact number), and then the costs for airing it. When you do a contest like this you can really offer any prize, and with massive exposure like the Super Bowl, you are sure to get thousands of submissions from desperate film students looking for a big break.
The commercial wasn't anything innovative, or particularly funny, but it had a cute kid, an animal, and a dumb protagonist. Like I said, nothing spectacular, but it certainly got a laugh out of me, and that is all Doritos wants. It didn't necessarily make me want to get a bag of Doritos either, but let's be honest, it's a Super Bowl commercial, they serve more as entertainment and critique rather than an actual advertisement.
Overall, Doritos did a great job, as a nice and somewhat memorable commercial was produced for basically nothing. And it was kind of heartwarming with a little boy and a dog, so it is sure to get a large group of moms to share the commercial on their Facebooks.
