The Doritos Crash the Super Bowl promotion from The Marketing Arm gives consumers the opportunity to make and showcase a 30-second spot to be aired unedited during the Super Bowl. In 2011, the sixth year of the promotion, the two winners would not only get their spot seen by millions, they would also get to work with comedy troupe The Lonely Island—Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer—on a future project.

In addition, if either winner got the top spot on the USA Today Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter, they would get $1 million. A second place finish would earn $600,000; third place would net $400,000.

Winners JR Burningham and his fiancé/business partner Tess Ortbals—who created the “Pug Attack” ad, helped kick off 2011’s contest live from New York City. The announcement was broadcast on a 22-story Jumbotron in Times Square.

Consumers uploaded their 30-second Doritos spots to the promotion website. All approved spots were showcased in the website gallery where the public could view them during the submission period. Burningham and Ortbals became special advisors to entrants, making themselves available via the Doritos Twitter handle and Facebook page answering fan questions and providing advice and tips.

Five finalists, announced in December, each won $25,000 and a trip to Indianapolis to attend a weekend of VIP events leading up to Super Bowl XLVI. Doritos gave each finalist $20,000 to promote their ad to increase engagement and votes. Agency partners worked with each finalist to come up with strategies to promote their spots online.

Consumers were encouraged to help Doritos get to 1 million votes and determine which spots should air during the Super Bowl by rewarding a consumer $10,000 every time a new 100,000-vote plateau was reached. Fans were able to vote once a day via Facebook, BuzzFeed, the c contest website, mobile, Xbox and Rich Media.

Finalists attended the Super Bowl in a luxury suite where they tuned in live to learn for the first time which consumer-created ads would compete for the top spot in the USA Today Ad Meter before a worldwide audience. Results were announced in the suite immediately following the game.

Two consumer-created Doritos spots made the top 5: “Man’s Best Friend” ranked first, while “Sling Baby” ranked fourth. The USA Today Facebook Ad Meter results were announced a few days following the game. “Sling Baby” ranked first.

“Crash the Super Bowl 6” generated 3.7 billion impressions and nearly 8,000 entries—a 58.7% increase over the previous year. And Doritos took the No. 1 spots in both the USA Today and USA Today Facebook Ad Meters.

Doritos and Mountain Dew, both PepsiCo brands, decided to create growth through synergies. Knowing that the audience that eats Doritos and drinks Mountain Dew are heavy gamers, The Marketing Arm decided to work with Activision’s “Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3” during its launch.

In games like “Call of Duty”, gamers climb levels by collecting experience points (XPs) or minutes. XPs enable gamers to rank up, or reach skill levels from which they can partner and match up against more experienced players. Ranking up is the single strongest objective/motivator of any gamer.

To create a “must-buy” sense of urgency for all three brands, Doritos and Dew worked with Activision to develop a system where gamers could accrue double XPs by entering codes found on bags of Doritos and cans/bottles of Dew. The more they purchased, or the bigger the ounce-count, the more points they accumulated.

At Walmart, purchase of exclusive family size bags of Doritos and specially-marked 20-packs of Dew provided consumers with Mega XPs, or larger units of time (up to 90 minutes) during which their point accrual would be multiplied two to nine times.

To emphasize their relevancy within the gaming community, Doritos and Dew created thematic flavors and packaging: Doritos Battle Black Pepper Jack, exclusive for Walmart, and Mountain Dew Game Fuel Cherry Citrus and Tropical flavors.

From October to December, consumers logged on to rankupxp.com to register and enter the unique codes. Every code entered automatically received points.

Marketing support included national TV and digital advertising; the Doritos Facebook page, ads on Walmart gamecenter.com; a Walmart in-store TV ad; and a 10/30 TAB feature in a Walmart circular. These included special value offers, in-store displays, retailer exclusives and PR.

Nearly 335,000 users registered to collect double experience points, while top users accumulated up to 90 days of double experience points before the game even launched. There was a 35% redemption rate and an 18% increase in the sale of Doritos’ core Nacho Cheese flavor, which carried the promotional snipe.  

“Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3” had the largest entertainment launch of all time, with over 775 million copies sold in the first five days. The website generated more than 6 million unique visitors with 100+ million page views. Consumers redeemed over 20 million Doritos and Mountain Dew “Rank Up” codes during the program.