If Michael Bay called your cell phone, would you believe it was him or hang up the phone?
By now, everyone who watches Super Bowl ads knows about Doritos' crazy-successful "Crash the Super Bowl" contest, which gives consumers the chance to make a commercial that will be seen in front of 111 million plus people.
What people don't know about is how the five "Crash the Super Bowl" finalists, selected from hundreds of submissions, were informed that they would be competing to play in the big game.
Doritos CMO Ann Mukherjee told BI how the company teamed up with Michael Bay for this year's contest — if a winner ad got the number one spot on USA Today's Ad Meter, the creator would get $1 million and the chance to work on the next "Transformers" flick — and how involved the famous director got in the process.
"He came to us and said, 'Hey guys, you know when you pick the five finalists, I want to call them and tell them," Mukherjee said.
Not one to say no to Bay, Doritos gave him the finalists numbers and told him to make the calls.
The only problem?
"He called them, and the finalists were like, 'No you're not MichaelBay,' and they hung up on him," Mukherjee said. "Because why would MichaelBay call them? It was so hard to believe, but [Bay] got a kick out of it."
Doritos recorded the calls in a video you can see below.
"You can imagine, if you've never been in the limelight in your life, and you have one of the most successful movie directors calling you saying, 'You're gonna get a shot of a lifetime,'" Mukherjee said. "It puts your hairs on end, it was amazing."
Although Doritos' "Fashionista Daddy" and "Goat 4 Sale" ads didn't win USA Today's Ad Meter, at least they can hold on to their brush with Bay, who actually sat with the finalists in the "Doritos Suite" during the game.
And the "Fashionista Daddy" team will get a chance to work with Bay on the next "Transformers."
Watch a video of some select calls that Doritos put together. Frito-Lays told BI that calls in which contestants hung up on Bay were edited out to save them from the embarrassment.
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