‘Two nobodies from nowhere’ craft winning Super Bowl ad for Doritos
It wasn’t just the Arizona Cardinals who met their match in the Super Bowl — so did Madison Avenue.
This is the top 5 best second-by-second responses of a USA today panel of viewers to ads during the Super Bowl.
And it could be a game-changer. For the first time, it wasn’t an ad agency that created the best-liked Super Bowl commercial. It was two unemployed brothers from Batesville, Ind., whose ad for Doritos — created for an online contest for amateurs — won them $1 million from Doritos maker Frito-Lay, and leaves ad pros with a lot of ‘splaining to do.
What the duo did was beat 51 big-budget advertisers and won USA TODAY’S 21st annual exclusive Super Bowl Ad Meter real-time consumer testing of how much they liked the ads as they aired.
The off-the-wall commercial, “Free Doritos,” features a guy who shatters a vending machine with his crystal ball after predicting free Doritos for everyone in the office.
Just as impressive, the two and backer Doritos displaced Anheuser-Busch and broke its Ad Meter streak. The brewing giant had won 10 in a row.
Although A-B did well, with two ads ranking among Ad Meter’s top five, it couldn’t match Doritos, which also aired a second ad from the contest — and it finished No. 5 out of the 52 ads in the games.
“Two nobodies from nowhere,” just walked off with one of the ad world’s top honors, says 32-year-old Dave Herbert, who made the winning ad with his 33-year-old brother, Joe.
We “beat the king of commercials,” says Herbert.
The two brothers now have fame, fortune and a decent shot at changing the way Super Bowl commercials — and maybe lots of others — are made in the future.
As if the $280 billion U.S. advertising industry doesn’t have enough problems in the struggling economy, now it’s got an even bigger problem: Amateurs are beating it at its own game.
“Regular people have great ideas. They took something simple and made it funny,” says Charles Boast, a 59-year old engineer from Alexandria, Va., an Ad Meter participant.
“Given the type of times we’re in, funny is in,” he says.
Even in a downtrodden economy, what delights Super Bowl viewers hasn’t changed at all. Folks simply want to laugh.
“People should laugh in times like these,” says George Banks, a Portland, Ore., resident.
The budget-conscious brothers behind the winning ad had just five takes to get the ad right — since they had invested in only five panes of glass for the used vending machine they had bought.
They got the shot they wanted on the first take.
The brothers worked hard for Sunday night’s surprise win.
They met once a week for the last four to five years to talk about filmmaking and how they could make a break “in this tough business,” says Joe Herbert.
Two years ago, an ad they created made it to the top five finalists but didn’t air. “But we wanted to come back again,” says Dave Herbert.
They now plan to focus on filmmaking and on a board game, Triviathon, they invented that is coming out in July.
Even in a hobbled economy, about 28 advertisers bought a record $206 million dollars’ worth of commercial time. Even more astounding, they paid a record $3 million per 30-second slot — or $100,000 a second — for their moment of Super Bowl glory.
Nearly 100 million viewers nationally watched at least some part of the game and its 52 commercials.