New CGA Campaign for 2011 Super Bowl

Pepsi Max will be joining Doritos for a consumer generated advertising competition in which prize money totaling $5 million will be offered to the winning advertisements that score highest in the USA Today Super Bowl Ad Poll. While Doritos has been participating in this venture for several years, Pepsi, which stayed out of last year's Super Bowl, appears ready to take the CGA leap. According to a news report in USA Today, Pepsi Max has suffered from a "somewhat confusing image." The target audience is males who show disdain for products with "diet" emblazoned on them. Pepsi Max competes against Coke Zero in this category. The campaign, according to the news article, isn't so much about boosting sales as increasing awareness and knowledge about the product.

Doritos "Crash the Super Bowl" Consumer Generated Advertising Campaign

This blog is titled Participatory Advertising because it follows a trend in which consumers are, well, generating their own advertising messages and disseminating messages in new ways. Take Doritos, for example, which just announced its newest contest for consumer generated advertising (CGA). The winner will have her or his commercial shown during the February 7, 2010 Super Bowl. Moreover, the winner could earn $5 million, according to an article in today’s USA Today. The contest has its own website Crash the Super Bowl where contestants can upload their commercials and others can view the entries and vote on them. We’ve become familiar with the notion of viral marketing of which this is a great example – the expectation being that through social networking friends and friends of friends will be directed to the website where they can view and vote for what they think is the best commercial. Last year’s prize was $1 million, so the ante has been upped. It will be interesting to see if the amateurish nature of much consumer generated advertising, given this year’s prize, will give way to more professional involvement. At base, I think this is what we’re dealing with regarding consumer generated advertising: the work of amateurs vs. the work of professionals. There’s an interesting book by Andrew Keen, The Cult of the Amateur that speaks to this issue. There is a certain sense of authenticity to amateur production that must be acknowledged, but the nature of these things is that over time they become slicker and slicker, replicating what was there prior to the advent of consumer generated advertising.