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SALT LAKE CITY -- Two men with Utah ties continue to collect online votes in a contest that could get their advertisements on TV during Super Bowl Sunday.
Tyler Dixon and JR Burningham are finalists in the Doritos/Pepsi "Crash the Super Bowl" national contest. Five commercials made by non-professionals are in the running. Three will be chosen to be aired in the Super Bowl. A prize of at least $1 million comes with that honor.
Dixon is a BYU graduate and currently a door-to-door satellite TV salesman. The total cost to produce his ad, "The Best Part," was a whopping $82.
In the ad, an awkward office worker is so desperate to eat the cheese left behind by Doritos chips that he resorts to stealing the cheese off a co-worker's fingers.
"I always wanted to work in television," Dixon told KSL Friday morning.
"I was brainstorming with the guys who helped me shoot it and I was just thinking about my favorite thing about Doritos. For me, it's licking that delicious, cheesy dusty off of your fingers when you're done," he explained.
"If you were at the office and ran out of Doritos and ran out of cheesy dust, where are you going to go next?" he said. "To a co-worker I guess."
The stars of the commercial are not professional actors and did it for free. "You couldn't ask more out of pros let alone friends," Dixon said.
Burningham is a Salt Lake City native who went to the University of Utah and graduate school at USC's School of Cinematic Arts. He spent $ 500 on his ad, "Pug Attack." It features a pug that wants Doritos so badly that she breaks down a glass door to get them, knocking a man who taunted her to the floor.
"We found out about this competition like two weeks before the deadline," he said Friday morning. "We just did this mad sprint of trying to put together an idea. There is this pug that belongs to a good friend of ours. We were like, ‘OK we have to do something with the pug.'"
Burningham said response he's received so far indicate his commercial is a hit with kids as well as adults.
Viewers can vote online until Jan. 31. CLICK HERE to vote.
