Alumnus’s commercial airs during Super Bowl

Nick Dimondi (holding the microphone) is shown during the filming of “Underdog,” which aired during the Super Bowl on Sunday.

A TV commercial produced by a Liberty University alumnus was shown during Super Bowl XLIV on Sunday.

Nick Dimondi, a 2007 graduate of Liberty’s School of Communications with a specialization in broadcast and video, started the North Carolina-based advertising agency, Five Point Productions. With Dimondi as the producer, he and his co-workers submitted two commercials for Frito-Lay’s Crash the Super Bowl commercial contest, landing as two of the six finalists out of more than 4,000 entries from around the country.

The public cast their votes online and the top three commercials were played during the Super Bowl on Sunday, including Dimondi’s “Underdog,” which shows a dog taking revenge on a young man to win a bag of Doritos.

As one of the finalists, Frito-Lay has already paid Dimondi’s crew $25,000 for each video and flew them to Florida for a private Super Bowl party hosted by Doritos. But a big plus came after the Super Bowl when the commercial ranked No. 2 on the USA Today “ad meter,” earning them an extra $600,000.

For Dimondi and Five Point, this is not the first time to see success with the contest; in 2007 the group’s commercial, “Live the Flavor,” featuring Dimondi, was a winner and shown during the Super Bowl. The spot beat out Nationwide Insurance’s “Rollin’ VIP,” featuring Britney Spears’ ex-husband Kevin Federline.

“There were a lot of factors going into our decision to enter the competition this year including; the current economic state and simply to prove that we aren’t one trick phonies,” Dimondi said. “We never imagined that both of our commercials would be chosen and that is such a blessing in itself.”

Five Point’s other finalist in this year’s contest was “Kids These Days,” featuring an elderly man who tasers a young man for a bag of Doritos.

Dimondi said his experience at Liberty was as a major contributor toward his success in the industry.

“I learned so much at Liberty, the professors were so dedicated to teaching me the heart and soul of video production,” he said.

After such continuous success it could be assumed that Dimondi is indeed all that and a bag of Doritos chips.