Free Doritos
Doritos2009
Free Doritos is a 2009 30-second television commercial for Doritos.
Why it works
In an office break room, a worker insists his snow globe is a crystal ball, predicts free Doritos for everyone, then hurls it through the glass front of the vending machine; before the spot ends, the globe has also found a man's crotch. Joe and Dave Herbert, unemployed brothers from Batesville, Indiana, made the 30-second spot for under $2,000 for Frito-Lay's "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, which promised $1 million if a consumer-made ad topped USA Today's Ad Meter; the best previous finish had been fourth. The brothers had first studied what past Ad Meter winners had in common. It aired in the first quarter of Super Bowl XLIII on NBC on February 1, 2009, and won the poll with a score of 8.46, beating more than 50 professionally made spots and ending Anheuser-Busch's ten-year winning run. It is studied as the night user-generated advertising beat Madison Avenue on its own stage: the first Ad Meter champion not made by an ad agency.
Techniques
- Participation Made by two brothers for a contest that invited consumers to create the brand's Super Bowl ad, the spot is the audience completing the campaign.
- Humour Slapstick drives it: a worker's snow-globe 'crystal ball' predicts free Doritos, smashes the vending machine and finds a man's crotch.
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