• by Jim Nail , November 1, 2007

Now that we are deep into the NFL season, you may be rooting for your team to make the playoffs. But if your company (or client) will be running an ad during the Super Bowl, you are already in training for the championship game. With advertising costs nine times more than a typical 30-second primetime spot, this investment has to make a positive impression and get people talking about your brand. For the 2007 game, Doritos rewrote the rules with a radical and risky strategy that drove tremendous levels of positive traditional media coverage and social media discussions around the brand.

So successful was the chip maker's "Crash the Super Bowl" ad-creation contest, that the Frito-Lay brand is following up this year with an original song contest online. A performance of the winning song will air in a 60-second spot during the 2008 Super Bowl.

Last year, getting a jump on the competition was key. Five months before the Feb. 3 game, Doritos announced the "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, which invited consumers to submit their own home-made Doritos ad. More than 1,000 entries were received and the finalists were posted on a promotional Web site in January so the public could vote for their favorites. The votes were kept secret and the winning ad was revealed during the game broadcast.

Doritos' strategy defied conventional wisdom on two fronts. First, the company let consumers and not a top-tier Madison Avenue creative agency develop this important ad. The risk paid off, as both the "Live the Flavor" and "Checkout Girl" spots were given high marks for their quality and humor and "Live the Flavor" was among the top spots in the consumer rating polls.

Second, Doritos risked cannibalizing post-game discussion by revealing ads online weeks before the game. How well did this bet pan out for them? To measure the media coverage and word-of-mouth impact of this strategy, TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony analyzed traditional media coverage and social media discussions of Super Bowl advertisers during January and February 2007.

Doritos gained a clear advantage by announcing the campaign months before the game and had much of the early Super Bowl ad-related media coverage and social media discussion all to themselves. In fact, even as other advertisers began announcing their ad intentions in early January, Doritos led all companies in volume of coverage during the first two weeks of the month. It was only after the media swarm around Nationwide's Kevin Federline ad and the National Restaurant Association's complaint that it denigrated fast food workers was Doritos nudged out of the top spot.

And these high levels of media coverage and online consumer discussion before the game did not detract from post-game coverage, contrary to some commonly held beliefs. In fact, all the pre-game coverage "primed the pump" for post-game coverage and discussion.

Before the game, Doritos 12 percent share of voice placed the brand as the third highest volume of traditional media coverage and social media discussions among all Super Bowl advertisers before the game. Millions viewed and voted for their favorite ad on the official "Crash the Super Bowl" Web site and on YouTube. After the game, Doritos retained the third highest share of voice and saw the volume of coverage increase 38 percent.

Maintaining the No. 3 position in post-game volume is impressive since Doritos was competing against 38 other advertisers. The only advertisers to gain higher discussion were Budweiser, the king of Super Bowl advertising, which ran nine different ads during the game, and Snickers, which drew significant criticism from the Human Rights Campaign and the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation with their "mechanics kissing" ad.

The innovative consumer-creation aspect of the ad alone doesn't explain Doritos' success. Chevrolet ran a similar ad creation contest. Like Doritos, Chevrolet announced their ad very early in September of 2006. Unlike Doritos, entries were limited to college students and viewers could not vote for the winning ad. The volume of Chevy's traditional and social media coverage was strong, but fell short of Doritos. Chevrolet was the fifth most covered brand before the game and the seventh afterward.

Nor can the likability of the creative alone explain these impressive results. Blockbuster's "Mouse" ad was praised by many and received high scores on polls like USA Today's Ad Meter, SpotBowl and AdBowl. But their participation wasn't announced until the very last week before the game and no hint of their ad creative was released until the game broadcast. The volume of their post-game coverage ranked eighth, behind both Doritos and Chevrolet.

To give perspective to the success of companies that revealed their ads before the game, Cymfony applied an index rating to the total volume of traditional and social media coverage after the game.

By revealing their ads a week or more before the game, Doritos and Nationwide generated an average post-game volume more than five times greater than the 20 companies that only announced their participation before the game. By promoting its contest, Chevy made a strong showing with a 356 volume index, but since the automaker did not release the ad until the day before the game, it fell short of Doritos and Nationwide.

Perhaps Blockbuster missed an opportunity. The strength of this creative drove more than twice the volume compared to other companies that did little to promote their ads beforehand. But without any pre-game media to tease and promote its ad, the volume of coverage was less than half that of Nationwide and Doritos and 32 percent below Chevy.

By combining humorous, appealing creative and the consumer, and revealing the ads before the game, Doritos raised the bar. The Marketing quarterbacks preparing for the 2008 Super Bowl can benefit from studying Doritos winning game plan.

Jim Nail is the chief strategy and marketing officer for TNS Media Intelligence/Cymfony. (jnail@cymfony.com)