Old-school advertising: Madison Avenue makes the rules. New school: Main Street makes the connections.

In the growing trend to reach beyond traditional messaging, corporate America increasingly taps the unlimited pool of user-generated content as advertisements. Doritos is sponsoring the “Crash the Super Bowl” commercial contest in which they’ve received hundreds of 30-second spots from regular Janes and Joes armed with video cameras –- definitely not your traditional Madison Avenue types.

The final group of five videos promoting the super cheesy, crunchy snack is now up for a vote. The winner will be shown during the Super Bowl. It’s a classic use of social media, user-generated content, and a major consumer product tapping the talents of their customers.

Are they savings millions of dollars? You bet. Are they getting tons of free publicity? Yup.

And they have done it all without compromising an inch on creativity. In fact, they’ve expanded the idea of creating a compelling message and will surely have one of the most memorable commercials in Super Bowl history.

In this episode, we interview Brett Snider, one of the creators of “Mouse Trap,” a finalist in the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” contest. Brett and his “Mouse Trap” co-creator Billy Federighi, both 25 years old, are pursuing their dream of breaking into the advertising business. Both have worked in production companies, and they recently won a similar content for Converse. Still, they are certainly outside of the mainstream advertising hierarchy, but that seems to be changing.

We talk about how user-generated content is breaking barriers in advertising and how, despite that fact, there are still traditional power brokers with heavy hands in the game. We also discuss how social media is being used to generate continued buzz for this contest and how other companies could use some of these same ideas.

Their “Mouse Trap” commercial is one of the best Super Bowl commercials I’ve seen – and I’ve seen them all. Watch “Mouse Trap” and other videos – and vote for your favorite – at www.crashthesuperbowl.com.

[tags]advertising, social media, user-generated, Doritos, Crash the Super Bowl[/tags]

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