Doritos: Spicing It Up

A crisp that not only is good to munch on but one that's bagged the prizes in the entertainment stakes. Belinda Archer dips into Doritos to find something a little spicier than your average cheesy snack

Everyone loves snacks and crisps. It's the naughty fact that we should really be eating something far healthier and non-fattening that makes them so delicious. And Doritos are possibly even more delicious than your regular crisp, with their special triangular cheesiness, their crunchiness, their tortilla chipness…..Give me Doritos every time.

So what does the brand's advertising really have to do? Any snack is surely pushing at an open door when it comes to advertising. Apart from humourless health freaks with their yogurt and bean sprouts, we're surely all right there, ready, with our wallets ajar? We don't really need any very sophisticated marketing messages other than 'these taste fab and they won't cost too much either'?

Apparently we do. And, in the case of Doritos, it's all about L-O-V-E, according to Rudy Wilson, vice president of marketing at Frito-Lay, the convenient foods business division of PepsiCo responsible for Doritos. He has been in charge of the brand since 2009 [TBC by Belinda]

"Crisps are there in our everyday lives but we need to remind the consumer about the types of love they have for them," he says. "It's like being in a relationship with someone. It starts to become routine and needs spicing up. We love you and you love us, but how do we spice things up a little? There's nothing spicier than Doritos."

The famously cheesy (and other-flavoured) tortilla chip brand has in fact been the number-one flavoured tortilla chip in the US for many years, as well as a leading food brand overall, but in 2006 Doritos felt the need to shake up their communications strategy. Out went BBDO, who had looked after the snack for several years, and in came West Coast creative superheroes, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners.

"BBDO's work was good," says Wilson . "We were happy but we wanted a change. We had asked them to investigate more traditional tactics and media outlets, but in 2006 we wanted something different."

BBDO had certainly produced some great work, not least Cheese Wheel, the Sony Balls spoof featuring loads of big cheeses rolling at speed down the streets of San Francisco, with the endline, "now that's a lot of cheese". But the client wanted change.

Goodby Silverstein was hired in the spring of that year and handed a gorgeously broad brief - "to make Doritos part of the conversation again, to re-engage with the consumer, its fan, and encourage them to be a part of the brand".

"We really, really enjoyed what Goodby Silverstein did generally and found that they did a great job of thinking differently and non-traditionally. We really wanted to engage our consumer in a different way and we were very excited about doing that," says Wilson .

Rick Condos and Hunter Hindman, executive creative directors on Doritos at Goodby Silverstein, recall: "They came to us on the heels of several years of flattening sales. Growth was slowing and it seemed clear that the core audience was just losing interest in the Doritos brand. Our overall brief was to make Doritos relevant again. To put it back in the conversation for young people."

Soon they began to think about placing the consumer at the forefront of the brand and effectively running it. 'This is a brand of the people, so let the people run it' was the broad strategy hatched by the brand team and the agency together. Goodby Silverstein then ran with it, and dreamt up various big, bold initiatives, such as letting the customer choose the next new flavour and soliciting their input for the creation of Doritos' all-important Super Bowl ads.

For the last four Super Bowls, the brand used consumer-created ads in its Crash the Super Bowl campaign. Each year the amount of user generated content aired during the game has increased, reflecting the success and popularity of the initiative. The first two years they aired one ad, the third year they aired two; this year they aired four. One hit spot was the Free Doritos ad from 2009, in which an office worker reckons he can predict there will be "free Doritos at the office today" by consulting his crystal ball. He then hurls it at a vending machine: job done.

Other ideas included combining Doritos with entertainment, so consumers could buy a bag and get a low-cost video game at the same time. This was the thinking behind the soaraway success of the Hotel 626 and follow-up Asylum 626 video game initiatives. The first of these was a personalised interactive film in which the player went into a spooky hotel and worked out how to get out via a series of complex mini games. It was aimed at promoting the resurrection of certain Doritos flavours, a theme that was talked about at the beginning and the end of the game. Asylum 626 moved the story on to a ghoulish hospital setting, and the only way to unlock the story was to have a bag of Doritos and park them in front of your webcam.

"It was about empowering the consumer and reminding them about the love and making special moments for them throughout the day," says Wilson . "The consumer is looking for these moments, to be entertained. We wanted to give them the opportunity to buy a bag of crisps and get entertainment at the same time. We are more bang for your buck. We give you entertainment AND crisps."

Condos says: "Doritos is the king of flavoured tortilla chips. And the chips are pretty ubiquitous in American lives. So we knew we wanted to make the brand equivalent to something more than just the chips. We wanted to broaden the experience that Doritos provides."

"It really was a consumer-forward strategy," adds Hindman. "We wanted to give the consumer the reins and give them a sense that they were being marketed with, rather than marketed to. Giving them a hand in every experience we made gave us a replenished sense of relevance in the core crowd. We pretty much wanted to turn the brand into a playground for any interested consumers to help create the larger story."

This is how SnackStrong Productions was born, the side of the company that doesn't just make chips, but makes entertainment properties that accompany the chips and that everyone can participate in.

The Late Night series of last year falls into this added-value bracket too, a ground-breaking initiative in which consumers could buy specially marked bags of Doritos Late Night chips as their ticket to a virtual concert of 3-D performances by blink-182 and Big Boi - all made possible by the power of augmented reality technology. Then there was the tie-up with the leading interactive software company EA Sports for the Madden NFL 11 game, and the partnership between Doritos and Xbox that offered aspiring game designers (and Doritos consumers) the chance to have their ideas made into an Xbox Live Arcade game. All a far cry from tortilla chips, and, while not Goodby Silverstein's sole work, all projects that they were involved in promoting.

As Goodby Silverstein came on board in 2006, Doritos hired The Marketing Arm, promotions and in-store specialists, and PR agency Ketchum. The three agencies have worked closely together since then as one combined task force, and Wilson attributes this coalition of agency know-how to the resurrection of the brand. Another shop, the entertainment consultancy UEG, was also hired in 2008 to add to the mix.

"We think great ideas come from anywhere, and all the agencies build the ideas together and attend meetings together. Our success as a brand is because we work in a collaborative way. We are a family, not just a team, and we operate accordingly," says Wilson .

As with all families, however, there can be difficulties, and in this case it was a particularly demanding 'parent' who pushed and still pushes his offspring. "The client expects a lot from us. And we expect a lot from them," says Hindman. "But that's what drives our relationship, frankly. They often push us further than we would have gone, and in return, they are receptive when we give them an extra nudge. It's a give and take relationship founded on trust, if not a little bit of blind faith."

Despite the chummy, seamless, multi-agency input, Wilson says he can strip out the impact that Goodby Silverstein's advertising has specifically had on the brand. Once the creative concept has been thrashed out and agreed upon by all parties, each agency then takes it forward employing their particular expertise. Goodby Silverstein was responsible for bringing to life the white paper concept of the consumer-generated Super Bowl ads, as well as promoting all the 626 work.

"We are really excited about the results," says Wilson, who proves to be frustratingly reluctant to reveal specifics. "We don't talk about sales or market share, but the consumer engagement statistics are really mind-boggling."

For one of the promotions, The Quest - a Doritos website programme featuring Indiana Jones-style puzzles - Wilson says that users were spending over an hour playing it on the site. "The computer timing system actually timed out, so it could have been a lot longer than that."

Warming to his theme a little more, Wilson adds that sales have "started increasing again" and that Doritos' equity with its core target market has increased. "Goodby Silverstein completely accomplished that," he says, adding that the brand team now get heaps of unsolicited emails from fans - instead of getting none at all.

Awards have been plentiful too, but the client says the gold Cyber Lion at Cannes in 2009 for Doritos 626 and the work of SnackStrong Productions was a professional high that really stands out.

Hindman adds: "We're very proud of our achievements across the spectrum. The 626 franchise has yielded a gold Lion at Cannes . The Late Night project last year won a media Lion. And we have been recognized in several arenas strategically. It proves that Doritos' success is not creative alone, but reflects a lot of good thinking from the various disciplines. And of course, the continued success of consumer-created spots on the world's biggest media stage, the Super Bowl, is a testament that the formula for the Doritos brand is working."

As with all these agency/client relationships that work so well - and the Goodby Silverstein/Doritos tie-up has just entered its fifth year - trust is at the heart of it. "The relationship works so well because it is a true partnership. They trust us to do what we do best and we trust and value their opinions. Everyone on both sides of the table has a voice so we develop great, effective creative ideas that work for the business and the brand," sums up Hindman.

As to which is the client's favourite ad, the brand's marketing vice-president is suitably tactful. "That's like saying which is your favourite kid. I like them all," he says, tangibly spreading that special Doritos love a little further.