If you ever wanted your own ad aired during the Super Bowl, that’s probably going to become a lot more difficult.
The reason is because Frito-Lay’s Doritos said its “Crash the Super Bowl” contest will end with Super Bowl 50 after ten years. The contest has given entrants who submit a video the chance to win an ad during the game as well as $1 million.
The brand’s chief marketing officer Ram Krishnan recently told Fortune Live a changing demographic means there needs to be a new approach. “It started in 2006,” he said to Fortune’s Leigh Gallagher. “To give you a perspective, MySpace was the most-visited website, Facebook was only in the dorms, iPhone hadn’t come out until 2007.”
Why stop now? “Brands have to keep evolving with time. If you look at when we started the program, millennial consumers were the target,” he said. “They’ve grown up.”
“Our Doritos target is [now] Gen Z consumers and they’re already content creators,” Krishnan said. “You don’t need a brand to play a role.”
But Doritos will have more fan-made ads proclaiming their love of the chips beyond just the Super Bowl in a new campaign, “Legion of the Bold,” according to Krishnan.
“What we want to evolve to is people can create content throughout the year,” he said. The new campaign allows people to create 30-second ads, or even other types, for use by Doritos.
The news comes as ads for this year’s Super Bowl are most costly then ever before at an estimated $5 million for a 30-second spot.
