While Steelers fans cheered Sunday after their team's Super Bowl win, Franklin Hines was cheering for a different reason.
Hines, a Ball State University alumnus, was the production assistant for the commercial that won the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl Contest 2009 and its $1 million prize.
"My girlfriend Kylie and I were talking about the possibility of our commercial airing," Hines said. "We were watching the Ad Meter as it was calculating the results. In mid-conversation, it aired. The anticipation and waiting for it to air was driving me insane."
Transit Films, an independent film production company in Batesville, was responsible for the million-dollar commercial which was voted the number one commercial to air during the Super Bowl through USA Today's Ad Meter. The Ad Meter is an annual survey taken after the Super Bowl to see which commercial was liked the most by viewers.
Other members of the crew Joe Herbert, Dave Herbert, Steve Booth and Jim Timperman landed in Orlando, Fla. on Jan. 27 after Doritos gave them an all-expense paid trip to the Super Bowl. In addition to seeing the game, they met with producers of the commercials theirs beat.
"We are on top of the world," Joe Herbert, co-owner of Transit Films and writer of the commercial, said.
"It was an amazing feat for us to be there. Three quarters [after the commercial aired], we're getting phone calls saying we are in the number one spot on USA Today's Ad Meter and that we beat Budweiser who had one for the last 10 years. We won a million dollars and everything is just a whirlwind."
"Free Doritos" featured two men in an office. One man has a snow globe he says is a magic crystal ball. The man asks it if the office will have free Doritos just before hurling the globe into a nearby vending machine containing bags of Doritos.
The man's co-worker then asks the crystal ball if he'll get that promotion he's been wanting before throwing the globe like the previous man. This time hitting a co-worker in the groin.
Hines said Transit Films planned the $1 million to go toward an independent film project if the commercial won.
"It's kind of a heist-type thriller action movie and it'll obviously be lower budget," Hines said. "[The Herbert brothers] have a couple scripts written. The original agreement was that we would all get paid to work on the film, so hopefully, we'll all be working on that project."
Of the four other commercials in the top five this year, three of them were made in Los Angeles and the other in New York. All four were made by major production companies, Hines said. The David vs. Goliath situation could be inspiration for small-town producers in similar contests in the future, Hines said.
"I can see [our commercial] giving amateurs more opportunity to try to make commercials for the Super Bowl or other events in coming years," Hines said. "I think it's great that we won because we're showing that Indiana doesn't have a huge market like L.A. or New York, but we can still put together an excellent commercial or product and take down nationally recognized companies through sheer dedication and hard work."
If he wasn't a Ball State Alumni, Hines said, he wouldn't have been a part of this commercial.
"I met [the Herbert brothers] while I was at Ball State," Hines said. "They had made a comment about a full-length film and I just started doing little projects with them and ended up where we are now."
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