The future didn’t exactly arrive like we thought it would when the first consumer-generated Super Bowl ad ran a few years ago. At the time, the industry creative community got a little nervous, thinking that their jobs were in long-term jeopardy at the hands of brainy folks with video equipment willing to work hard for free. Well, the economy and 2009 aside, most of us still have our jobs and consumers are still mostly uploading their ad attempts on You Tube.

The real exception to this is the Doritos brand. Since they began with their first consumer-created commercial in 2007, they have led the charge in using that kind of crowdsourcing to promote their products. And last month they took it even further when they released the first consumer-created Xbox game, “Doritos Dash of Destruction.”

But other brands, even those that have dabbled in it, have shied away from consumers as creators of brand messaging. The reason I suspect: Doritos owns the space. It is a part of their brand now. When you think “consumer-made ads” the word “Doritos” comes to mind. And since Doritos does it on the world’s largest advertising event, The Super Bowl, it would take millions of dollars for some other brand to grab that mind share away from them. It is much cheaper and easier to create your own space in a consumer’s mind than to usurp one.

Creatives everywhere are relieved.