Doritos Teams Up With The Lonely Island in $250,000 Donation to the Berkeley Unified School District
Donation is Part of the Entertainment Group's Partnership with Doritos for the Annual Crash the Super Bowl Consumer Ad Contest; District Will Use Funds to Improve Community Theater
PLANO, Texas, June 1, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Doritos brand and The Lonely Island today announced a donation of $250,000 to the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) as a part of their collaboration on the annual Doritos Crash the Super Bowl contest. One of the hottest entertainment teams in the industry today, the award-winning trio of Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone that make up The Lonely Island, designated BUSD as the donation recipient because of the group's hometown ties to the region — all three members attended school there and Samberg's mother is a longtime educator in the district.
BUSD and The Lonely Island have designated the funds for improvements to the Berkeley Community Theater, which is located on the Berkeley High School campus and used by district students for music and theater performances. The theater has been an important part of the Berkeley community for more than 60 years.
The donation is a result of The Lonely Island's participation in Doritos' Crash the Super Bowl contest: a competition in which consumers are invited to create homemade ads for Doritos, one of the flagship brands from PepsiCo's Frito-Lay division. This year, two consumers had their Doritos ads air during the Super Bowl XLVI broadcast, with both winning an opportunity to consult with The Lonely Island on a future Doritos brand project.
"Working with The Lonely Island has been a real pleasure, and they have truly embraced everything about this program," said Ram Krishnan, vice president of marketing, Frito-Lay North America. "Their involvement in Crash the Super Bowl has served as an inspiration to Doritos fans with dreams of pursuing an entertainment career, and we felt it was only fitting to show our gratitude by helping them give back to where their success got its start."
"The Berkeley Unified School District has been a huge part of our lives — it's where we met and became friends," said The Lonely Island members Samberg, Schaffer and Taccone. "Now having the ability to give back to it feels great. Hopefully it will help today's students pursue their creative dreams and make their school a generally nicer place to be."
The Doritos brand received a record-setting 6,100 entries in this year's Crash the Super Bowl contest. Two of these consumer-created Doritos ads were aired during the Big Game — one taking the No. 1 spot in the USA TODAY Super Bowl Ad Meter, and the other ranking No. 1 in the USA TODAY Facebook Super Bowl Ad Meter. The creators of the two ads, Jonathan Friedman and Kevin T. Willson, were each awarded $1 million bonus prizes for their No. 1 rankings.
Doritos tortilla chips is one of the billion-dollar brands that make up Frito-Lay North America, the $13 billion convenient foods business unit of PepsiCo (NYSE: PEP), which is headquartered in Purchase, NY. To learn more about the Doritos brand, visit its website at www.doritos.com or on Twitter at www.twitter.com/DoritosUSA or on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/DoritosUSA.
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