There's little doubt who won the Super Bowl, it was user-generated advertising. While the game was exciting and down to the wire, the battle between traditional advertising and the new breed of user-generated marketing was over in the first quarter, we heard from GeniusRocket.
During the first commercial break of the Super Bowl, Doritos fired its first shot over the bow of Madison Avenue. In the ad “Free Doritos”, unemployed brothers Joe and Dave Herbert scored the highest-rated ad of the night with slapstick comedy, over-the-top acting, and a budget of less than $2,000. USA Today commented, “For the first time, it wasn't an ad agency that created the best-liked Super Bowl commercial.” The “Free Doritos” ad, which ends with a crystal ball being thrown into the groin of a co-worker, beat 51 other big-budget agency-created advertisements and took the top seed in USA Today's 21st annual Super Bowl Ad Meter. According to the Los Angeles Times, the ad "was the winner in the Tivo "StopWatch" contest, which tracks how many Tivo customers used their digital video recorders to go back in time to watch commercials and plays” -- the ad even beat out the Steelers 100-yard pass interception.
During the second quarter, Doritos fired one more warning shot over Madison Avenue just to make sure they knew they meant business. An ad entitled “Power of the Crunch” used similar humor, to land the fifth position on the USA Today Ad Meter.
Yet, using the power of crowds to source creative success is not a new concept. For almost two years, Bethesda-based GeniusRocket has been providing large brands and small startups with advertising and marketing content through their community of over 8,000 creative artists. GeniusRocket’s CEO Mark Walsh commented, “we have been watching “unknowns” do the same thing for our clients for the last 18 months… but now, the WORLD knows that something is happening.” Fortune 500 brands like Pepsi and Heinz, and regional names like Mervis Diamonds and Searchles, have all tapped the GeniusRocket community for everything from broadcast-quality advertisements to taglines for newspaper ads.
The stumbling economy has only served to make life more difficult for traditional ad agencies. While large brands are reducing their marketing budgets, highly talented artists are willing to work at fraction of the cost of Madison Avenue. Now companies like GeniusRocket are aggregating the pool of created artists for companies to access more easily. It’s only a matter of time before more user-generated ads will be showing up online and on television.