I didn’t realise it was almost a week since my last post… I actually did such a great job of advertising Nintendo to myself that I was just compelled to clean the dust off my GameCube and start playing Metroid Prime, which I had bought and never played…
Anyways, let’s talk about the little bits of gold given that’s what “Doritos” means. I’ll have to watch myself and be careful not to go on a huge snack eating binge after this.
I’m a complete sucker for crisps, particularly corn crisps and these little triangles come first on my list, they crunch and taste great. It’s also a family thing: I have 3 siblings and whenever we meet, you can sure there’ll be a bag of them not far… Beyond that, I’ve looked into what they’ve been doing lately on the communication side and found out one of the most amazing campaigns they launched last year in the US, called “Crash the Superbowl”. As everyone knows, the Superbowl is the most watched event on TV in the US, about 90 million Americans tune it to it every year, it’s the most expensive time slots for advertising and unofficially became a competition for the best ads as well.
Last year, Doritos decided to give the power to its consumers with this new campaign. Starting online, they built a cool looking 3d website called”Snack Strong Productions” that looks like a kind of Universal Studios Theme Park. Anyone could upload their own Doritos ad, the videos were viewable online and people were invited to vote for their favourite one. The winning video of the competition would be broacasted during the 2007 SuperBowl. I think it’s a brilliant idea, I don’t think anyone has done such a thing before and it anchors digital as a backbone for an integrated campaign that truly interacts with the brand’s consumers – it’s all going T shaped as they say… I have to find out more about how successful the campaign was, but I know there was over 1100 applicants for the competition where they weren’t expecting to have more than 200, and here’s the winner:
According to USA Today, the ad was voted 4th best out of the 62 adds shown during the Superbowl, and this is the first time Frito-Lay makes it into the Top 5. User generated content rules it seems… The campaign also won a Gold Media Lion at Cannes this year. You can read about the winners success on their blog: The Doritos Story. And now Youtube is featuring hundred’s of videos of other applicants, that many Doritos ads being viewd by thousands of people, here are the 5 finalists and some comments from the Doritos marketing department:
With the success of the previous campaign, Dorits decided to renew the Crash the Superbowl campaign this year, this time with music – I fail to see the connection between music and Doritos, at least at first thought, but I guess if it works, why not. You can read a USA Today article about it here.
I think the x-13D flavour experiment campaign produced by Doritos this year was very interesting as well. They released a new bag of crips under the mysterious X-13D flavour, more expensive than the others and invited consumers to guss which flavour it was as part of a competition. (it turned out to be “Cheeseburger”). I think the idea was brilliant as well and I wonder how well it sold. I saw some videos on Youtube of people trying it and saying there were disappointed, but I guess it’s still buzz and more word of mouth for Doritos. In any case, I’m really happy my favourite brand of crips is embracing interactivity with consumers in an original and engaging way. Here’s a post about it on Brand Autopsy.
I didn’t find much about what they were doing on the advertising side in the UK, but I did find out that Doritos was the 4th fastest rising brand this year in the top 100 grocery goods in the UK with a growth of 18% and making into the 91st position. (from “The UK’s most valuable grocery brands” on www.intangiblebusiness.com).
To finish, I think it would be nice to see Doritos do more things of a socially oriented intention. That said, I have found they participate in one venture that I think is pretty cool. They sponsor a site called “Do Something” Anyone can submit a project they are commited to realising and they can win a grant to realise it check it out.
