One of these Doritos commercials will win a million dollars

When Doritos announced it was bringing back its long-running “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, which originally ran from 2007 to 2016, it felt like a no-brainer. The original contest challenged fans to create their own big game Doritos ad, with finalists to be voted on by fans, and the winner got $10,000 and a trip to the Super Bowl. It was a massive hit every year for about a decade. 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 in New Orleans.

Now the brand has announced the three 2025 finalists. First up is “Abduction” by Dylan Bradshaw and Nate Norell. Here we see a guy get into an extraterrestrial tug-of-war over a bag of his favorite chips.

Next is “Charades” by Mark Blitch from Wylie, TX. One man just can’t seem to get the clues his family is throwing at him.

And third is “Barbershop” by Zach Shenouda and Ryan Robinson, senior students at the University of Southern California film school. It’s a not-so subtle nod to a “Crash the Super Bowl” classic from 2014 called “Finger Cleaner.”

Beyond the finalists, Doritos also recruited a few Kansas City Chiefs to hype the campaign. Patrick Mahomes and his teammates Chris Jones, Xavier Worthy, and Creed Humphrey go full focus group on the finalists, without giving anything away.

First to put fans first

“Crash The Super Bowl” was the first Super Bowl campaign to introduce the idea of getting fans actively involved. This is now common practice—last year 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. Launching in 2006, it was right at the dawn of a user-generated content revolution that evolved into a creator economy that could hit $480 billion by 2027.

PepsiCo Foods chief creative officer Chris Bellinger told me back in September that “Crash the Super Bowl” always revolved around putting control into the hands of fans. “With the evolution of the creator culture, the advances in technology, it just felt like a great time to bring it back,” he said. And this new generation of contestants not only has access to better technology and equipment, but many have already built an audience on social. “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,” said Bellinger.

Fans can vote on DoritosCrash.com through January 28, and the winner will be revealed in early February, ahead of Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, February 9.