Back in the fall of 2006, Doritos launched its “Crash The Super Bowl” contest, challenging fans to create their own big game Doritos ad. Finalists were voted on by fans, and the winner got $10,000 and a trip to the 2007 Super Bowl. It was such a hit, “Crash The Super Bowl” ran for the next decade.

Doritos recently announced the Super Bowl contest’s return for the first time since 2016. The basics remain the same—create your own Doritos ad—but this time the prize is $1 million, along with that trip to the Super Bowl.

PepsiCo Foods chief creative officer Chris Bellinger says the company started to casually talk about bringing the contest back more than a year ago. One question kept popping up. “Why not? Why not bring this back?,” says Bellinger, who worked on “Crash The Super Bowl” for its entire decade run while at The Marketing Arm agency. “It always revolved around putting control back into the hands of fans. And with the evolution of the creator culture, the advances in technology, it just felt like a great time to bring it back.”

Ahead of its time

For brands, the Super Bowl is much more than the one game on a single day in February. It’s an entire advertising campaign cycle that can range from months to weeks, all built around hyping an advertiser’s Super Bowl participation.

This has evolved to include ad trailers, teasers for the trailers, and more. Given the financial cost in that single game (a single 30-second slot can run up to $7 million), brands want to extend its lifecycle to maximize the impact of that investment.

What “Crash The Super Bowl” did in 2006 was introduce the idea of getting fans actively involved. It landed roughly a year after YouTube started, and a year before the first iPhone—right at the precipice of a revolution in user-generated content. The first year winners made their spot for $40 in chips.

Now, 18 years later, the idea of getting people to participate in Super Bowl campaigns is becoming more common. In 2024 alone there was DoorDash’s award-winning “DoorDash All the Ads” contest, FanDuel’s second year of “Kick of Destiny” where you could bet on the outcome, and Miller Lite’s QR-coded T-shirt giveaway.

A new generation

Bellinger is excited to see how a new generation of fans will take on the challenge. “Before to really film a good spot, you needed equipment,” he says. “Now we have phones that film in 8K, you can shoot insanely high quality content, and everyone knows how to use it. The average person’s ability to shoot, edit, add special effects is just so much higher. That has completely changed the landscape. So we wanted to find out what this generation could do with Doritos now, with all of this at their fingertips?”

This new generation also has built audiences of their own. “They’re putting out content all the time, they’ve built a following, now they can take that audience on a journey to try and get into the Super Bowl,” says Bellinger.

This is the true strength of “Crash The Super Bowl.” Creators won’t just make their own commercial, but chronicle their journeys on social, YouTube, and beyond, essentially creating months of Doritos-related content between now and February.

For Bellinger, it’s also a way to say put up or shut up to the armies of Super Bowl ad critics. “We’re tapping into all those social posts criticizing our past ads, and saying, ‘You think our ads suck? Awesome,’” he says. “Make a better one. Here’s your shot.”

Entries can be submitted at DoritosCrash.com. Later this year, a panel of judges will pick the top 25 ads, with three finalists announced in January to kickoff fan voting.

Top 5 “Crash The Super Bowl” ads

OK, this is a completely subjective list made up of official winners, and the ones that simply won over my heart . . .

“Finger Cleaner” 2014

“Man’s Best Friend” 2012

“Ultrasound” 2016

“Goat 4 Sale” 2013

“Keep Your Hands Off” 2010