Super crunch: Locally made Doritos ad airs during Big Game
Lehi resident Tyler Dixon and his friends didn’t have to wait very long to leave their mark on Super Bowl XLV. Dixon, a finalist in PepsiCo’s annual “Crash the Super Bowl” competition, which challenges fans to create Super Bowl-worthy commercials for Doritos or Pepsi Max, claimed a place in marketing lore on Sunday just minutes after the start of the Big Game.
Dixon’s 30-second ad, “The Best Part,” in which a Doritos-craving office worker pursues the popular snack chip’s telltale cheesy residue by licking one colleague’s finger and snatching another one’s pants, aired during the first quarter, making Dixon a winner long before the Green Bay Packers beat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25 to clinch the Super Bowl’s sports outcome.
Dixon, 35, made his ad with help from friends (including the spot’s three actors) for just $82, but watched the game and commercials in style from a suite at Cowboys Stadium in Dallas, as a guest of PepsiCo. When his ad came on, he said “I just kind of was dumbfounded. I just sat there staring at the screen as everybody kind of jumped on me.
“It still doesn’t feel real.”
Prior to kickoff, the “Crash the Super Bowl” contest had narrowed its field of more than 5,600 submissions to 10 finalists. Six of those ads were revealed as winners by airing during the game. Dixon, a Brigham Young University graduate and satellite TV salesman, said he wants to continue exploring the world of advertising and hopes to eventually work as a writer and director in film and television.
Josh Aker, who plays the hapless finger licking victim in the spot, said that it took him “about a nanosecond” to recognize the ad when it aired, and that he immediately began receiving phone calls and text messages. “I had a ding from a text like every two seconds for several minutes after that,” said Aker, who watched the game at his house with “The Best Part” co-star Aaron Oldham (who plays the transgressive Doritos craver).
According to USA Today’s Ad Meter, which scored the ads based on the in-game reaction of “282 adult volunteers in Bakersfield, Calif., and McLean, Va.,” “The Best Part” was the 13th-highest rated Super Bowl ad, with an average score of 7.27. The Nielsen Co. said Monday that an estimated 111 million people watched the game, making it the most watched TV program ever.
Dixon did not receive any prize money (Super Bowl air time is considered to be the grand prize for “Crash the Super Bowl” finalists), but a PepsiCo spokesman told the Daily Herald last week that Frito-Lay (which manages the Doritos brand, and is owned by PepsiCo) may choose to continue airing his ad.
The biggest triumph of Dixon’s evening was a tweet from producer and filmmaker Judd Apatow (“Knocked Up,” “The 40 Year Old Virgin”), who said via his Twitter feed, @juddapatow, that, “Best commercial was the Dorito’s [sic] finger sucking one.” Dixon said he considers Apatow’s tweet a “bigger compliment” than if his ad had been ranked No. 1 on the Ad Meter.
The Ad Meter’s big winner was actually another “Crash the Super Bowl Ad,” this one titled “Pug Attack,” in which a man uses Doritos to mess with his girlfriend’s dog. “Pug Attack,” with an average score of 8.35, tied with another dog-centric ad, in which a dog-sitter uses his canine charges to serve Bud Light beer at a house party.
Both commercials have a Utah connection. “Pug Attack” was created by Salt Lake City native J.R. Burningham (who now lives in Los Angeles), while the Bud Light commercial features Utah actor and Salt Lake City native K.C. Clyde — best known for his starring role in the Mormon missionary dramedy “The Best Two Years” — as the poochy puppetmaster.
Clyde’s shilling for Bud Light is ironic in light of the righteously indignant hue and cry raised against his “Best Two Years” co-star, Kirby Heyborne, for appearing in a Miller Lite commercial a few years back. Clyde was a busy man on Sunday, when he also popped up at the tail end of a Kim Kardashian ad for Skechers Shape-ups athletic shoes.
Heyborne also got a piece of the Super Bowl XLV action, though the Ad Meter rankers didn’t take too kindly to him. Heyborne made his mark as “Josh,” a flustered game show contestant, in automaker Mini Cooper’s “Cram It in the Boot” ad, which landed in Ad Meter’s bottom five with a score of 5.3.
While Heyborne got a Bronx cheer from the Ad Meter, Burningham is in the money. Because of its top-rated finish, “Pug Attack” earned its creator a cool $1 million bonus prize.