Month: January 2015

I hope everyone enjoyed the holidays. Happy New Year and here’s to a great 2015!

Now that the holidays are behind us it means that we’re in football playoff season and the Super Bowl is quickly approaching. Each January I continue to cover the ads and promotional campaigns associated with this event that seems to gets bigger and bigger each year. This year Super Bowl XLIX will be played in the University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona on February 1. Here’s what the Playoff picture looks like this year:

Now the NFL has had a tough year to say the least. Today the headlines state that the league reportedly told the Lions on Tuesday that the Dallas Cowboys benefited from a second crucial call that went uncalled in their victory over Detroit in the wild-card round this past weekend (and it wasn’t the controversial pick up the flag call). If you’re a lions fan, hearing this doesn’t really matter. The Cowboys are moving on (and Christie is happy!).

This all still doesn’t stop the Super Bowl from being one of the most watched sporting events along with all the marketing that is associated with it. Last year most of the advertisers released their TV spots prior to the actual broadcast of the game. So we expect to see much more of that this year. The game last year was played outside in MetLife Stadium in the New Jersey and New York celebrated with weeklong events leading up to the game.

PepsiCo, the parent company of Doritos, is back again for their Annual Crash the Super Bowl Video Contest. They just announced the 10 finalist videos which were chosen from among nearly 4,900 submissions. This number is up from 3,500 entries last year. Two videos will air during the Super Bowl XLIX broadcast; one will be chosen by accumulating the most worldwide votes from the contest site and the other by a panel of judges chosen by Doritos. The public is invited to vote once per day, per device up till Jan. 28.

This year’s contest Official Rules list legal residents of 31 countries who were eligible to enter, as long as they have a valid YouTube account. Each of the 10 finalists, including the two winning finalists, will receive a Game Trip for themselves and a guest which includes airfare and hotel. Each finalist will receive a ticket to watch the game from the Doritos suite and their guest will watch the Game at a private party hosted by Doritos. The finalist that accumulates the most votes will be the Grand Prize winner who, besides the Game Trip and the airing of their video during the Super Bowl broadcast, will receive $1,000,000 and the opportunity for a “Dream Job” at Universal Pictures! Of the remaining 9 Finalists the Doritos’ judges will choose the First Prize Winner who receives only a mere $50,000. The remaining 8 Finalists also will each receive $25,000. That is one huge prize pool!

So who’s teams will make it to this year’s Super Bowl? Will we see a return of the Seattle Seahawks who heavily defeated the Denver Broncos last year? Most are saying it’s going to be the New England Patriots returning against Seattle. But the Patriots have to win over the Baltimore Ravens this weekend, who are pretty hot right now! I would love to see Green Bay beat Seattle for the spot, even though I was not a fan of Green Bay when Buffalo beat them a few weeks ago. Yes, us Buffalo fans are in the mist of quite a soap opera right now during our 14th constitutive year of not making the playoffs. Looking for a new head coach and couple of quarterbacks to help break the curse!

I’ll be covering more NFL Super Bowl news next week, so please stay tuned.