Crash the Super Bowl is a contest run by the Doritos brand, owned by PepsiCo, for its fans for the best Super Bowl commercial. The contest was held annually for ten years from 2006 to 2016 and returned in 2024 after a long hiatus. Crash the Super Bowl participants get the chance to not only win an impressive cash prize but also present their commercial to a multi-million audience.
Meaning and history
The Super Bowl is considered the premier sporting event of the year in the United States, and its broadcast attracts millions of viewers. The broadcast has also become the main advertising event of the year in the country: advertisers specially prepare new commercials for the Super Bowl, a second of airtime which can cost them more than a hundred thousand dollars.
What’s more, according to studies, many viewers watch the Super Bowl precisely because of the commercials. And the reason is quite simple, because advertising companies especially for this super popular event create real advertising masterpieces. Therefore, marketers know well that to run a commercial during this event means to get the attention of a large number of potential customers, and if the video is memorable, it will be discussed for a long time, and, no less importantly, reposted in social networks.
One of the world’s largest companies, PepsiCo, could not but take advantage of this chance for one of its brands – Doritos. Doritos annually organizes for its fans a tournament for the best Super Bowl commercial called Crash the Super Bowl. This is how the brand gets not only cool and diverse user content, but also the hype around its name.
The essence of the contest is as simple as possible: Crash The Super Bowl participants are invited to create their own commercial for the Doritos brand of chips. The two entries that make it to the finals will be featured during the broadcast of the Super Bowl, the Super Bowl matchup of American soccer. They create 30-second homemade promotional videos showcasing their love of Doritos corn chips. In addition to fame, the winner also receives a cash prize, and in some years, a job at Universal Studios came along with it.
2006 – 2016
The Crash the Super Bowl logo used by the contest in the first chapter of its history was intense and had many details in it. The bright red, blue, and yellow elements were drawn against a plain black background, with the recognizable triangle as the basis of the composition. Three human figures were drawn on it in different poses, standing on three old-style televisions. The name of the contest was written at the very bottom of the badge, in the uppercase of a square sans-serif typeface in silver, blue, and red.
2024 – Today
After the Crash the Super Bowl came back in 2024, and the badge was significantly reworked. It got simpler but at the same time more stylish and progressive. The black background remained, yet the figures were gone. Now it is just a contoured blue and red triangle with the enlarged stylized lettering in a bold geometric sans-serif typeface, written in white with thin lines crossing the bodies of the characters. The recognizable Doritos insignia is placed in the upper left corner of the emblem, and the whole composition is accompanied by the new motto of the contest: “Think You Can Do Better?”
Font and color
The bold uppercase lettering from the Crash the Super Bowl logo is set in a distinctive geometric sans-serif typeface, which looks pretty similar to such commercial fonts as Etrusco Now Condensed, Albireo Semi Condensed or Brodaers Oblique, with some modifications of the contours.
As for the color palette of the Crash the Super Bowl visual identity, it is based on the combination of black and white, with red and blue accents on the main emblem, and flamy yellow tones in the Dorito insignia.