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Doritos Ads -- The Full Review

I promised I would do a more complete evaluation of the five finalists for the Doritos "Crash the Superbowl" contest. Here you go...

For background, go to my first post where I gave a quick reaction and second post where I graded each spot.

My Overall winner: Live the Flavor

Live_flavor This spot earned an A- for consistent quality in strategy, production, and just being a really charming spot.

To sum it up: Boy meets chips. Boy loses chips. Boy gets girl.

This spot starts with a total guy situation. Our somewhat nerdy hero is driving with one hand, while tearing open a bag of Doritos with his mouth. Oh, yeah. Been there, done that. He then gets distracted by a cute chick (who happens to be eating Doritos also -- could this be love?) and crashes the car (at which point the chips go flying all over -- there's an interesting story the creators tell of how they got the chips to fly out of the bag). She comes running to his rescue -- but also trips, showing that, in addition to a junk food addiction, they have a certain clumsiness in common. As he leans out of the car to see if she is all right, THAT look passes between them and you know this is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.

Great script. A complete story in 30 seconds. Situations that are right on with the target audience. And tons of charm. My only reservation (and maybe someone from Frito-Lay would comment here) is if the romantic angle is too chick-friendly for what I suspect is a guy product category. Maybe that's why this spot has received 223 "Love it" ratings to 347 for "Checkout Girl".

Live_flavor_spicy_5 But I'll let it slide because as the story of budding romance unfolds, the creator, 5pointp, slips in the selling points with equal charm and style. At each key moment, they cut in a well art-directed graphic frame with a Doritos benefit that reflects the action: when the guy sees the girl, it's spicy. When he smiles at her in his goofy way, it's cheesy, etc. We also get  crunchy and bold.

So you know which ad I'm hoping to see on February 4!

Ties for second: Duct Tape and Checkout Girl

While both of these spots got a B+, Duct Tape edges out Checkout Girl on how dead-on the idea is for the target market: bunch of guys getting ready to head out to do some male bonding. One of them rips a big, long strip of duct tape, explaining, "Gotta keep my roommate off my Doritos". His buddies nod in agreement. So far, a little chuckle. Now comes the kicker: As they head out and close the door...no I won't spoil the ending. Suffice it to say I got a big guffaw. Check it out, if you haven't seen it already. I expect to see a display of Doritos next to the duct tape next time I go to Home Depot. Herbertbros also get points for coming up with a concept that works with Doritos' "Snack Strong" tag line.

Checkout Girl has two things going for it:  a good (if somewhat expected) situation which allows creator kristidenhert to work in many varieties of Doritos (including some I didn't know existed) and a terrific performance by Ms. Checkout. No, make that a phenomenal performance -- She walks away with Best Actress award in this competition. I found myself watching it over and over to see her transform from the surly cashier type that inhabits my local grocery into the Allurer of Albertson's...the Siren of Safeway...Vamp of Von's. The casting of the sketchy biker-type as customer undercuts the believability of her getting all hot-and-bothered enough to need a "Clean up on register 6".

Chip Lover's Dream, is the most pedestrian idea of all the spots. The title is also used as the tag line, but it isn't compelling or memorable. At least the couch-potato dreaming of scaling lofty heights fits the target. When his piton pulls out of the cliff, he grabs his Doritos, trying to finish them off before he hits the ground (and wakes up). Some nice art directing in shooting the falling scenes and the climber's face stuffing chips in his mouth add extra humor.

Mousetrap has great potential with a simple but surprising story, but suffered from two weaknesses. The guy doesn't seem to be the target audience; a little too Armani with an opera soundtrack to really have the target audience thinking, "Do I have to turn off the game and watch PBS if I eat these things?" And the ending doesn't wrap up the spot completely, settling for far too much time of the fake mouse beating the crap out of Armani Guy -- or maybe that's the point. Maybe MouseGuy is saying, "Go back to your champagne and canape social circles and leave the junk food to us real men, er, mice." But billyfederighi gets an A- for art direction: great job on building the fake wall and for not disguising the fakeness of the mouse suit.

Like American Idol winners getting their choice of record label contracts, will the winner of this contest get their pick of Madison Avenue creative jobs?

Posted by Jim Nail on January 21, 2007 at 10:15 PM | Email this post Permalink
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Comments

Enjoyed all of your posts regarding the Doritos crash the super bowl finalist commercials. I, Joe Herbert, am part of the team that created the Duct Tape commercial. We wish it would have aired in the second half! Doritos did inform us, however, they will be airing our spot nationally for two months... look for it soon. Thanks for posting. Joe Herbert

Posted by: Joe Herbert | Feb 10, 2007 12:32:17 AM

Joe: Congratulations on your spot. I'm glad it is going to air -- it deserves to be seen!

Posted by: Jim Nail | Feb 10, 2007 8:12:55 AM

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