As a football fanatic and advertising nerd, I of course watched Super Bowl XLVI. Not only was I ecstatic to watch the game and hopefully see Tom Brady get beat by a Manning (which did happen), but I was also excited because it was in my home town of Indy. I, though, like many other Americans also banked on seeing the best advertisements out there on that Sunday. I was not impressed with this year's Super Bowl commercials, though. You can see all the 2012 ads spliced together in 2 minutes in this video by AdWeek.

The ads this year didn't seem to pop out to me. None of them left me with awe. Very few of them even left me with the remembrance of who the company advertising was and an extremely few number of them had me talking about them the next day.

What struck me as even more intriguing is the fact that my favorite (and the favorite of a great deal of others I talked to) was the Doritos commercial(s) made by consumers. The concept was not created by the creative department or a copyrighter at Y&R or TBWA. The concept wasn't created by Doritos or its owner (Frito-Lay) or even Frito-Lay's owner Pepsi Co. The concept was created a few years back when Doritos got the idea to ask the consumer to create their own advertisement and had people vote and the winner's ad was placed in the super bowl as part of their "Crash The Super Bowl" campaign. Not only was this an amazing marketing and PR campaign, but it gives them many free commercials to use on YouTube and even the Super Bowl. It amazed me, though, how Doritos seems to have noticed that the consumers know what works in advertisements (they have had some of the best Super Bowl commercials in the past years using this campaign), but other companies aren't following suit.

I think if companies are going to keep up in today's market, they have to keep up and stay ahead of the game. If your consumers are making the best commercials, why are you paying the ad firm? It's a call to action in my opinion for us who want to be in marketing to step up our game and do not limit ourselves anymore. Think outside the box. Get creative. Think like your consumers. Doritos is doing it right.