For years, Dori­tos has stuck with a Super Bowl cam­paign strat­e­gy of ask­ing con­sumers to sub­mit videos to poten­tial­ly air dur­ing the big game. It’s a strat­e­gy that doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly result in the most mem­o­rable or high­est qual­i­ty ads, but nets decent pre-game pub­lic­i­ty, as well as mil­lions of YouTube views. Experts agree it’s also a tac­tic that asks a lot of con­sumers, so it’s not like­ly one that will work for most brands. At the same time, how­ev­er, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent offers advan­tages like authen­tic­i­ty, dis­cov­ery, and illu­mi­nat­ing how con­sumers per­ceive the brand. One more acces­si­ble alter­na­tive to con­sid­er is influ­encer part­ner­ships, which allow brands to har­ness con­sumer-gen­er­at­ed con­tent from pas­sion­ate users in a much more explic­it val­ue exchange.

Ear­li­er this month, Dori­tos announced the final­ists in yet anoth­er round of its Crash the Super Bowl con­test, offer­ing Super Bowl air­time, a $1 mil­lion grand prize and a “dream job” at Uni­ver­sal Pic­tures to the win­ner.

The brand report­ed­ly received near­ly 4,900 sub­mis­sions from 29 coun­tries this year. As in pri­or years, fans are invit­ed to vote for their favorites on the Dori­tos web­site until Jan­u­ary 28. Two of the videos will air dur­ing Super Bowl XLIX one select­ed by fans and the oth­er by the brand itself.

The con­test dates back to 2006. In a pre­pared state­ment, Ram Krish­nan, senior vice pres­i­dent and chief mar­ket­ing offi­cer of Frito-Lay North Amer­i­ca, nods to the contest’s longevi­ty, say­ing, “Dori­tos fans are among the most tal­ent­ed and cre­ative indi­vid­u­als out there — they’ve blown us away each year for near­ly a decade.”

It’s cer­tain­ly become some­thing of an annu­al event and, if noth­ing else, has gen­er­at­ed mil­lions of views.

The 2014 win­ner, Time Machine, for exam­ple, net­ted about 2.5 mil­lion views.

And, anoth­er 2014 final­ist, Fin­ger Clean­er, has 4.2 mil­lion.

So with near­ly a decade of Super Bowl crash­ing under its belt, what lessons does Crash the Super Bowl offer oth­er brands? Par­tic­u­lar­ly when it comes to har­ness­ing user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent?

Own Your Territory

“Basi­cal­ly, the rea­son I feel it is still ongo­ing is that they are the only peo­ple doing it and I think it’s as own­able a ter­ri­to­ry as hap­pi­ness for Coke and mak­ing peo­ple cry with ani­mals for Bud­weis­er,” said Jess Green­wood, vice pres­i­dent of con­tent and part­ner­ships at adver­tis­ing agency R/GA.

Dori­tos launched Crash the Super Bowl when user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent was a big buzz­word and “every oth­er brand leapt on it,” Green­wood said. But, since then, “Dori­tos dou­bled down and is lit­er­al­ly the last man stand­ing.”

That’s not to say the con­test hasn’t mor­phed over time. The brand now offers prize mon­ey and has opened up sub­mis­sions to an inter­na­tion­al audi­ence, which Green­wood said is an inter­est­ing tac­tic giv­en increased inter­est in the Super Bowl over­seas.

Dori­tos does a great job of per­pet­u­at­ing the hype cycle at the “one moment when every­one and [their] grand­moth­er gives a damn about what’s hap­pen­ing in the ad indus­try,” Green­wood said. “There’s def­i­nite­ly a cor­re­la­tion between the moment itself and the way they’ve cho­sen to cre­ate enthu­si­asm, which is very smart.”

While the prize mon­ey cer­tain­ly doesn’t hurt, Apu Gup­ta, CEO of visu­al mar­ket­ing plat­form Curalate, points to the oppor­tu­ni­ty to be seen on one of the world’s biggest stages as anoth­er moti­vat­ing fac­tor for fan par­tic­i­pa­tion.

“To me, it’s the same rea­son that even against all odds, peo­ple con­tin­ue to play the lot­tery,” he said. “But the pay­off in this case is recog­ni­tion.”

Make Your Content Memorable, Relevant

Dori­tos’ Crash the Super Bowl effort isn’t flaw­less.

While the con­test cer­tain­ly gen­er­ates head­lines each year, Green­wood said, “I do also feel this is one of those adver­tis­ing mech­a­nisms in which the mech­a­nism is way more inter­est­ing than the con­tent it is pro­duc­ing.”

In oth­er words, she said it has not result­ed in many notable com­mer­cials over the years while oth­er brands have instead invest­ed in work with agen­cies to pro­duce cul­tur­al­ly rel­e­vant and more mem­o­rable spots like Coke’s Amer­i­ca is Beau­ti­ful ad last year, which has 12.2 mil­lion views to date.

“I think what Dori­tos is try­ing to do is keep the mech­a­nism alive as long as pos­si­ble, but it does have the unfor­tu­nate effect that the con­tent is not stand­ing up against oth­er Super Bowl ad con­tent,” Green­wood said. “I won­der how much longer it will run. But I won­dered that in 2008.”

Give Your Fans A ‘Social High Five’

But that’s not to say user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent isn’t a pow­er­ful brand asset.

Per Gup­ta, out­side of the Dori­tos exam­ple because it requires so much work on behalf of par­tic­i­pants, con­sumer-gen­er­at­ed con­tent “has a lev­el of authen­tic­i­ty that brand-gen­er­at­ed con­tent does not.”

In gen­er­al, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent allows brands to rec­og­nize fans at scale like a “social high five,” Gup­ta said. “When you tweet out some­thing and some brand likes your pho­to or likes your tweet, it’s, ‘Ohmy­gosh.’ There’s a lit­tle part of you that feels incred­i­bly val­i­dat­ed.”

User-Generated Content Builds Brand Awareness

Con­sumers trust their peers more than brands, which means user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent can be more iden­ti­fi­able and inspi­ra­tional to con­sumers, Gup­ta said. “Essen­tial­ly, user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent aids in dis­cov­ery,” Gup­ta added.

He point­ed to a gallery on the web­site of retail­er Urban Out­fit­ters with curat­ed images includ­ing the hash­tag #UOonY­ou.

“Every day, peo­ple vis­it Urban Out­fit­ter’s web­site and find them­selves direct­ed to this page to check out real peo­ple cel­e­brat­ing their love for Urban Out­fit­ters. These pho­tos are beau­ti­ful and lend them­selves to brows­ing and explor­ing. These images are inspi­ra­tional – they pro­vide peo­ple ideas of how real prod­ucts look in the real world. It’s street style, cap­tured,” Gup­ta said. “And since these images are linked to prod­ucts, it’s incred­i­bly easy to go from inspi­ra­tion to pur­chase. This entire expe­ri­ence is pred­i­cat­ed upon brows­ing and dis­cov­ery – there’s no prod­uct search here – and con­sumers love it.”

Train Your Customers With User-Generated Content

Brands can use con­sumer-gen­er­at­ed con­tent to more or less train their cus­tomers to pro­duce the kind of con­tent they want.

“Urban Out­fit­ters gets to select which pho­tos get fea­tured [on its social chan­nels] and if, over time, a par­tic­u­lar aes­thet­ic style [is more pre­dom­i­nant, con­sumers learn that] if they want to get fea­tured, [they need to emu­late it],” he said.

Gup­ta said the sit­u­a­tion with Dori­tos is sim­i­lar. The Crash the Super Bowl videos share themes like quirk­i­ness and youth­ful­ness as if “some­one curat­ed the videos and said, ‘This is what we stand for.’”

Tell People What’s In It For Them

In addi­tion, Gup­ta said the user-gen­er­at­ed con­sumer land­scape has become much more con­sumer direct over time in which brands encour­age fans to get involved and that is in part due to tools like GoPro, which come at an acces­si­ble price point and allow con­sumers to cre­ate high-qual­i­ty videos.

“When you put a ton of tools in the hands of tons of peo­ple and put that against the back­drop of recog­ni­tion in a mas­sive way and [offer] prize mon­ey, too, it real­ly does cre­ate the right incen­tive to try out,” Gup­ta said.

Green­wood said this pure-play user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent strat­e­gy from Dori­tos relies on a large time invest­ment from con­sumers, it’s hard for many brands to jus­ti­fy that because con­sumers are busy.

“Peo­ple have a lot of oth­er stuff to do oth­er than make con­tent for brands. This is why Dori­tos now pays a lot of mon­ey to the win­ning entry, where they did­n’t have to in the begin­ning,” Green­wood said. “If you, as a brand, are expect­ing qual­i­ty con­tent, the val­ue exchange has to be very explic­it. Oth­er­wise, what’s in it for them?”

Partner With Influencers

The def­i­n­i­tion of a “user” has changed over time, said Green­wood.

“In 2005, when every­one was ter­ri­bly excit­ed by the idea that nor­mal peo­ple were cre­at­ing videos and upload­ing them to the Inter­net, a ‘user’ was any­one with a cam­era who was pre­pared to have a go. Now, con­tent is the most abun­dant resource on the Inter­net, and stand­ing out is dif­fi­cult. It’s there­fore unre­al­is­tic to think that all mar­keters could get the aver­age Joe to cre­ate stuff for them, for free, and expect it to per­form well,” Green­wood said. “Instead, we look to influ­encers: peo­ple with a proven lev­el of exper­tise and their own built-in audi­ences, which makes their con­tent effec­tive.”

One option for brands is to part­ner with influ­encers who are already cre­at­ing con­tent around their pas­sion points, which allows brands to reap some of the ben­e­fits of user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent with­out requir­ing either a huge time com­mit­ment from con­sumers, or a $1 mil­lion grand prize.

Motivate Your Customers

Gup­ta said brands should also make sure con­sumers know they are look­ing for con­tent from users that they are will­ing to fea­ture.

“A lot of brands have a lot of touch­points and they need to use those touch­points to make it clear to con­sumers – to essen­tial­ly ask for con­tent,” Gup­ta said. “We’re increas­ing­ly start­ing to see on a receipt or pack­ag­ing, a hash­tag [or mes­sag­ing about tak­ing a self­ie] and [brands] may be sur­prised, but a sim­ple ask actu­al­ly builds a lot of aware­ness and moti­vates [con­sumers] to par­tic­i­pate.”

In addi­tion, Gup­ta said brands can use user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent in much broad­er ways, includ­ing deter­min­ing how con­sumers per­ceive them.

“If you’re Dori­tos, how much you dis­like or like the video can help you start to bet­ter under­stand how con­sumers per­ceive you,” Gup­ta said. “Think about red Solo cups. A red Solo cup is used in a lot of dif­fer­ent ways, but if you look it up for user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent, it is almost invari­ably asso­ci­at­ed with par­ties, for flip cup and beer pong and fra­ter­ni­ty stuff. Whether you want your brand to stand for that is beside the point. But you can learn a lot about how peo­ple per­ceive you based upon how they use your prod­uct in pho­tos [and videos].”

Follow The Trends

Videos of peo­ple get­ting injured or with slap­stick com­e­dy cer­tain­ly make rounds on YouTube, but Green­wood said a gen­er­al les­son for brands is in look­ing at what the cul­ture cur­ren­cy of the Inter­net is at any giv­en time.

“A huge trend last year was cre­at­ing big, emo­tion­al films and video pieces that make you cry, which is direct­ly cor­re­lat­ed to the way con­tent is shared on the Inter­net,” she said. “Dori­tos has owned slapstick…every oth­er brand should look at what that cul­tur­al cur­ren­cy is as far as its own brand is con­cerned and how to trans­late that.”

And while time will tell which of this year’s spots will come out on top, Green­wood notes, “Five of the final­ists have adorable mop­pety chil­dren in them, which is a huge change from pre­vi­ous years where the com­e­dy’s been of a more bro-like nature.”

In addi­tion, she said it will be inter­est­ing if the win­ning ad this year is less slap­stick.

“Will it be real­ly emo­tion­al? Will it have a sur­prise twist end­ing? These are the things we see every day as trends on the Inter­net that we can iden­ti­fy very clear­ly. It might be com­plete­ly off-brand, but it’s pos­si­ble that users could cre­ate con­tent that address­es the tropes very clear­ly and it turns out to be the best of the lot,” Green­wood said. “And peo­ple vote on the win­ners – it’s up to us – so it will be real­ly inter­est­ing to see if it will sneak through or if it will be a vend­ing machine land­ing on some­one again. If the con­tent evolves, it could get fas­ci­nat­ing.”

Make User-Generated Campaigns Evergreen

Final­ly, Gup­ta also cau­tions to make sure user-gen­er­at­ed cam­paigns are ever­green.

“A lot of Dori­tos are con­sumed dur­ing the Super Bowl, but also through­out the year,” Gup­ta said. “So fea­ture and solic­it user-gen­er­at­ed con­tent through­out the year. It’s about cel­e­brat­ing con­sumers, not just one time of year.”

What lessons do you see in Dori­tos’ annu­al Super Bowl effort?