Crotch Ads and Creative Content: Amateurs Rule

By: Kyle Elyse Niederpruem - President, Kyle Communications, Inc.

Category: Marketing and Brand Development

Unusual headlines blared this week over the smash Super Bowl ad crafted by Indiana brothers: “DDB, Crispin, Goodby Can't Compete With Doritos Crotch Joke.” That’s right. The biggest and best in the business were bested by a Batesville creative team of siblings—proving once again that free, or cheap, creative material can rule.

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Frito-Lay now rewards the brothers with $1 million to jumpstart their filmmaking business and reports that its own ad agency watching from the sidelines has been “very supportive” in the pursuit of regular Joe content from the streets. It’s the third year running that Frito-Lay has looked outside its own circle of experts for the online ad competition.

USA Today’s Ad Meter focus group of nearly 300 people in Oregon and Virginia loved the ad by Joe and Dave Herbert, dethroning Anheuser-Busch after a 10-year run of winning spots.

One hundred million viewers watched all or part of the SB spots—as many viewers who hit YouTube in a month.

The spot features office workers messing with a magical snow globe that can predict the future—but only when you throw it at things in the office. When a guy predicts free Doritos, he tosses it into a vending machine and—voila—scores free Doritos by smashing the glass. The next guy asks the snow glove if he’s going to get a promotion then throws his wish smack in the vulnerable area of a senior employee, dropping him to his knees. The closing line: “Promotion? Not in your future.”

That’s bound to have a lot of ad agencies (and their clients) spinning over the financial equation for creative concepting and their mega budgets. The Herberts hit it with an investment of barely more than $2,000. Ad agencies, as you can imagine, go into phenomenal overtime figures when coming up with Super Bowl spots.

In a recent issue of Strategy Magazine, seven marketing, academic and agency gurus—representing national brands such as Marriott and Frito-Lay—got together to talk about “Marketing in a crap economy.”

The “old” ad agency model, many agree, isn’t exactly working anymore—with lead planning time and media buys scheduled as much as a year in advance.

Communications teams have got to be able to turn quickly (PR, marketing and creative), especially with the economy forcing such major national brands to take discount dives—like Starbucks.

Ken Wong, who’s taught at Carleton and Harvard, hit the nail on client-ad agency relationships.

“To me, an ad agency is an outsourcer. What can the agency do for me that I couldn't do for myself? What is there about their specialization, about the breadth of their client base and so on? There has to be that case made, otherwise there's no value add other than coordination,” Wong said.

Wong goes on (almost as if seeing into the future-telling snow globe that the Herbert’s used in their winning ad): “It's like Revenge of the Nerds. The ability to be structured and strategic and think on the fly means you've got to have a model in your head of what's driving your performance. One thing that amazes me is how few companies do.”

And here’s another cautionary note from Ad Age: While the popular Ad Meter selections have been linked to a number of hirings and firings in the advertising world, there is no discernable link between having the winning spot and increased sales.

Seriously.

Regardless, the Batesville boys are no longer “two nobodies from nowhere,” a headline in USA Today that they must now be co-opting as their motivational mantra.

Amateur hour in the ad world was considered politely at first with a nice PR spin of congrats and a stiff Queen-like bow and wave to the media. But in conference rooms around the country, people have got to be sucking it in for a post Super Bowl breakdown.

Besting 1,900 entries for the Doritas ad spot, Frito-Lay is also thrilled with its award to the Hoosier ad men.

“This is going to be the best million dollars we've spent …," said Ann Mukherjee, group vice president at Frito-Lay.

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