In general, I'm pretty tired of talent searches. There are so many of them. It's as if "American Idol" has spawned dozens -- if not hundreds -- of unimpressive and practically unseen copycats.

Though I wasn't aware of the "Crash The Super Bowl" promotion before I saw Kina Grannis's commercial during the first quarter, I'm intrigued by the joining of Interscope Records with Doritos that culminated in a very expensive ($5 million) Super Bowl ad. (The commercial also quietly tagged iTunes at the end. An EP with songs by the three finalists is already on sale at iTunes and Wal-Mart.com.) This article from yesterday's Boston Globe has information on the contest.

The singer-songwriter instantly got a fair amount of attention. Grannis received about 5,000 hits on her MySpace page between the second quarter and the end of the third quarter (at which point she was over 15,000 for the day). She was one of three finalists in the contest. As the winner, Grannis will receive $10,000 and a record deal with Interscope.

Will it work? "We have absolutely no idea," Interscope's Ted Mico told the Globe. "No one has ever done anything like this. We’ve had all kinds of online talent contests but nothing has even been done on this scale."

Will we see more promotions like this? Absolutely. Labels are increasingly using the Internet to scout talent, and they are piggy-backing on the advertising budgets of consumer product behemoths like, as in this case, Frito-Lay. If somebody else picks up the tab, a label can remove much of the risk and gain an incredible amount of awareness.