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Donna has over 25 years of experience in assisting brands, agencies and not-for profit organizations develop and implement a wide variety of their marketing communications needs. In 2005 she founded DDC Marketing Group which has specialized in bringing interactive promotional marketing solutions to life for many clients. Today the firm is also dedicated to helping clients integrate blogs and social media into their marketing mix. Her own blog,Donna’s Promo Talk, helps to keep marketing professionals current on today's hottest interactive promotions and trends.

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Will Dorito’s Super Bowl XLII Contest Produce Another Winner?

Written on
January 24th 2008
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by Donna DeClemente  |
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We now are quickly approaching the big game, Super Bowl XLII that is, which is taking place this year on Feb. 3rd in Phoenix. So if you’re a football fan or not, just being an American means that you get a chance to partake in this national event in one way or another. Whether it’s being at the game, at a party, watching it on TV or just participating in one of the many promotions that exist, no one can escape the opportunity to get involved if they wish. This then begs the question from any marketer and advertiser, what other venue enables us to engage with such a huge, diverse audience?

So I asked myself, what better topic is there in the marketing industry to write about right now then the Super Bowl? I decided I might as well join the hype that has already begun building (and will most likely continue till at least the day after the game) and chime in.

With that decision made, Doritos of course is my obvious choice of a brand’s promotional campaign to write about. Doritos has now already gone down in history with their Super Bowl campaign from last year as the one that really got the user-generated content craze going on a mass scale. Most of us in marketing and advertising have been following this trend throughout 2007 and have seen this particular promotion featured in just about every presentation and/or article done on this subject.

To back track one more time, at the end of 2006 more than 1,000 videos were submitted to the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” online contest. From these entries two :30 spots actually ran during commercial breaks of the Super Bowl broadcast and the spot “Live the Flavor” was awarded the grand prize. Recent news announced that the guys that created this winning ad actually entered the competition to help get their company, Five Point Productions, off the ground. As of today the company is reported doing extremely well and they apparently no longer have to solicit work. So, if you’d like more background on them as well as the events that transpired a year ago you can visit their contest blog as well as their website to learn more.

Now Doritos has come back this year with a new “Crash the Super Bowl” user-generated contest. This year they’ve focused on music and asked people to submit video and audio clips of themselves performing an original song for a chance to have it aired during the Super Bowl XLII broadcast. Beginning back on Oct. 25th entries could be submitted through the Snack Strong promotional site or through MySpace. Then on Dec. 10th the judges selected the top 10 entries and visitors were invited to vote on these semi-finalists to determine the three final performers.

Many entered this year and now only three remain which are:

  • Kina Grannis, 22, of Austin, TX, “Message From Your Heart,”
  • Landon Austin, 19, of Dallas, “Waitin”
  • Nivla, 27, featuring P. Oberoi of New York, “Be Easy”

Each will receive $10,000 and a trip to Phoenix to attend the Dorito’s Super Bowl party. Voting is going on now till Jan. 27th on the SnackStrong promotional site which is supported by MySpaceTV.com. They’ve created two different widgets that people can place on their website, blogs or their MySpace, Facebook page that invites people to cast their vote today. The final winner who has the most votes will be revealed when Frito-Lay plays their 60: music video during a commercial break on Super Bowl XLII. Besides the airtime the grand prize winner will also receive a recording contract.

I’m still not sure if the user-generated content promotional trend has reached its peak or not, but it sure continued to grow all throughout 2007. I keep hearing about one new interactive promotional contest after another that involves inviting someone to create something and submit it for a chance to win. The majority of these contests choose a winner based on a degree of individual skill or uniqueness whether it’s writing a song, creating a video, uploading a photograph, composing a themed essay, whipping up a creative, new recipe, or showcasing some degree of talent.

So we’ll just have to watch Super Bowl XLII on February 3rd and see who will receive this year’s fame …and I’m not talking about Tom Brady and company either.



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We just posted our 4th annual study of how well super bowl advertisers integrated online and offline advertising - we’ll be writing more about this on our blog, but the preliminary findings are already up on our site: Super Bowl XLII Scorecard.

Posted by Miguel C. | 11:39 am on February 4, 2008.

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