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.

Not the game, the commercials. This year, and I seem to say this every year, the effort seemed lackluster, restrained. Blame it on the economy, or on corporate fear, or whatever, but not many advertisers took chances. Indeed, some, such as FedEx, even declined to participate, citing $3 million as too steep a price tag to be paying in this recession. NBC didn’t even sell all the slots, as was evidenced by the local ads that kept showing up. Note to CPI Security: Call Trone, because you need help.

Some notable exceptions, early in the first quarter, Doritos had two spots that each got big laughs. And Bud Light opened the show with a spot that lived up to the expectations of entertainment value and surprise.

Pepsi Max scored with a riff on men being able to take anything but the taste of diet soda. And Teleflora impressed with their talking flowers in a box. E Trade reprised their baby as spokesman, which I always enjoy.

I thought the new direction Budweiser has taken with the Clydesdales was off. It felt too sensitive, less manly, very un-beer-like.

I was following AdRant on Twitter, and they reported that the CareerBuilder.com spot was a huge crowd pleaser at whatever party they were attending. And I liked the Denny’s spot, where the tough guys planning a crime were interrupted by whipped cream being squirted on their pancakes. The announcer comes in with the line “It’s time for a serious breakfast.” It worked perfectly.

My favorite spot was the Pepsi MacGyver send-up starring SNL comedians. It felt more like a skit on SNL than a commercial, which means it at least took a chance. Was that Scorsese?

I was disappointed with Coke, Bridgestone, H&R Block, Toyota, Cheetos and Priceline.com.  I hated GoDaddy.com and Sobe Lifewater, and that Arizona lost. Very few spots tried to get me to expand the experience with the web, and I expected so much more from Miller after the hype of the one second spots. But they saved a bunch of money, I bet you.

So the Advertising High Holidays come to a disappointing end. Look up the winners and losers on USA Today Ad Meter.

Part of my job at Trone is to continue to evaluate our online toolset to see what is out there that can be used to better serve our clients.  Compete.com has an extensive list of tools available to report on site metrics.  What’s the cool part?  They will allow you to report on site metrics for sites other than your own.  They do this by compiling data based on web browser toolbars (yes, those usually report usage back to someone), receiving statistics from internet service providers and other proprietary dark magic.  Recently, I went on a quest to entertain myself trying to find correlations between certain domains based on my perception of their success in this economy, times of year for spikes, etc.  Here are some fun/interesting results:

Obviously, there are annual events that spike certain site usage during the same time each year:

In light of Obama being sworn in today, this is interesting (nevermind that the October stats for unique visitors are within a half of a percentage point of the electoral vote):

Hummer’s site traffic suffered in close inverse proportion to the increase in site traffic to sites that help consumers find cheap gas.  I believe the spike in April was a response to some Feb/March ads before the gas prices started really increasing.

Also interesting this year are the graphs for visitors to popular job hunting sites:

The social networks are battling it out:

My favorite one shows people obviously play hard ramping up to the holidays, work hard in the new year and then get spring fever.

What can we truly deduce from these?  Nothing for certain with just this information in a vacuum, but our strategy and research guys can do stuff that makes my head spin.  I’m sure they have their own interesting (and almost certainly more accurate) views on the simple data I’ve played with.

This year, Doritos brand snack chips have decided to repeat their success of two years ago by running consumer created content as a commercial during the Super Bowl. This makes everyone in an agency job nervous. I mean, if every Joe Videocam can conceive of, direct, shoot, act in and edit a 30-second TV spot, why do brands need agencies? Why not just pick up the phone and get Joe in here to fix our brand?

If you go to crashthesuperbowl.com, you can view the top five spots in the Doritos contest. The site is well crafted, easy to navigate and loaded with content. The treasure here is not just the top five, which are obviously done by truly talented individuals or companies, but the gallery of all entries submitted. Here’s where the real marketing genius lies, hundreds of films devoted to making a hero out of Doritos. The majority are amateurish, simply-not-good commercials that only exist as a testament to a brand that knows how to create not just brand loyalists, but true fanatics.

And this idea is the strategic nugget at the core of the marketing effort. Sure Doritos will air a spot on the Super Bowl that was created by an average citizen, supposedly. But it took an agency to help guide the brand down this sophisticated, media aware, consumer-centric path.

With the economy in a downward spiral, everyone’s net worth diminished and many families losing income altogether, marketers have to wonder what the most appropriate tone would be for their consumer messaging. It’s a serious time out there. Does this call for a serious message? Or will consumers and TV viewers reward with their loyalty and dollars some escapism and humor from brands?

One newcomer to the Super Bowl advertising fray is the dog-food maker Pedigree. And The Wall Street Journal reports on their message. Read the article here.

A serious take on pet adoption is not like a wacky beer commercial. One wonders if, in the moment that is the Super Bowl, with viewers relaxing, watching a football game, most likely in a party setting trying to have some fun, a serious message is the most effective one? Will a serious message get lost in the frivolity? Will it be remembered the next day? Will it resonate with viewers so that they remember Pedigree when they make their next dog food purchase?

Another point of concern for brands is how, in this age of hyper political correctness, where everyone has the very real possibility of offending someone with almost any statement, can any brand poke fun at life, and our situation, and not feel vulnerable to potential backlash? This could impact the percentage of humor in ads run on this year’s Big Game. And make my Super Bowl party one drab affair.

Until last October, the only demographic group one could still ridicule is the Caucasian American male. Now, thankfully, there is the investment banker. “What’s the difference between a pigeon and an investment banker? A pigeon can still make a deposit on a Ferrari.” This doesn’t really change the demographic, as most investment bankers I know are Caucasian American males, but at least it focuses the efforts.

So, can humor in advertising be used safely this year? I think we need to laugh to keep us from crying. And the search for escapism is a documented behavior from the public in tough economic times, as was demonstrated by the popularity of big, extravagant Hollywood musicals after the Great Depression. Joe Lavin sums up the feeling in his article Surviving the Bad Times in Style, here.

Here’s hoping for some brave marketers this year.

I’m not talking about the holidays. With the capital “H.” That event will pass this year with an unusual amount of economics-driven apathy. The wonderful time of the year I am referring to is the advertising industry’s High Holy Day, the Super Bowl. With a capital “S” and “B.”

Forgive my giddiness, but it is the best time to be in this business of advertising. Because the NFL and the networks, this year NBC, conspire to create the one must-see TV advertising event, which is wrapped up around a football championship game at the highest level of football championship games. It’s a guy fest! With beer. And beer ads. And the point is: everybody’s watching, not just guys.

So I can be at a party during the game, watching the game but talking, laughing, eating chips and salsa, and then the commercials come on and the room gets quiet. I listen as people chop off their sentences, or shush the person talking to them in mid joke, to turn and watch what major advertisers are putting on the screen for their enjoyment. And then they instantly render an opinion on the likeability of what they’ve just witnessed.

Occasionally someone will ask my opinion. But these days it seems that everyone is a marketing expert during the High Holy Day. They all know how much an ad costs for 30 seconds. Reuters has told them here. They all know what works and what doesn’t. USA Today has taught them that with their Super Bowl Ad Meter. See last year’s results here. Some even know how to do commercials themselves, as Doritos proved a couple of years ago. Thankfully, that trend remained a fad.

With all this attention, you’d think advertisers would be nervous. It’s almost as if the game comes second, and the commercials come first. With those expectations, do you dare air a mediocre spot? Do you risk your brand’s likeability and reputation and run an old spot? Or one that is judged to be inappropriate? Or simply not funny?

At $3 million a pop, it’s a risk. But for us at home, it’s the best free entertainment we’ll see on the tube. I love this time of year.