This is the end

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  • Doritos The End: Doritos invited consumers to kill an unwanted flavour in a creative fashion
  • Doritos Sample ending submissions
  • Doritos The flavours up for destruction
  • Doritos 'The End' branded YouTube channel
  • Doritos Melanie Normandin was behing the winning idea.

Doritos has a strong history of consumer engagement. The snack brand has experimented successfully with user generated content and consumer influenced product development.

In Canada, Doritos made media headlines a couple of years ago with its "Guru" campaign. Doritos released an unnamed flavour and invited fans to guess the identity, and create their own advertisement for the new Doritos variant.

The activity was very successful and translated into some impressive sales figures. Doritos was a strong advocate of similar user generated advertising in other markets, and fans played an increasingly large part of marketing activity for Doritos.

But any idea can become stale and overused, and in an interesting twist on consumer influenced marketing, Doritos have launched their latest campaign in Canada which invites fans to 'kill' an unwanted flavour.

A tale of two flavours

In 'The End', Canadians are challenged with tasting two new flavours, and choosing which should be allowed to survive, and which should be destroyed. Fans visited the Doritos 'Write the end' website and compsed the ultimate ending to an unifinished Doritos commercial that will destroy one flavour in a suitably creative fashion.

The two flavours, Falvour A (Onion rings and ketchup) and flavour B (Buffalo wings and ranch) are sold in plain black or white bags.

Entrants are encouraged to campaign for votes on their own social media platforms. A prize of $25,000 (CAD) and 1% of future sales from the surviving flavour is awarded to winner behind the chosen submission. The unfinished commercial will be completed with the winning ending, and the winner will become part of the Doritos 2011 brand team.

Thousands of submissions were entered which garnered more than 200,000 votes for the most creative ideas. Fourteen finalists were chosen, seven for Flavour A and seven for Flavour B. An expert judging panel made up of Doritos brand representatives, an agency rep and the commercial director were tasked with the responsibility of critiquing and choosing the final winning ending. The winner was announced when the finished commercial was revealed for the first time.

Next generation UGC

In an evolution of the user generated content prize model, not only did the winner receive some serious cash, Doritos offered to develop the winner's skills with membership of the Doritos Think Tank, a new extension of the brand team dedicated to customer insight, helping to keep the brand on the cusp of cool. This was an unique opportunity for a Doritos fan to sit at the boardroom table and share their knowledge of current trends in pop culture and social media to influence brand activity. The lucky winner was flown to Toronto for three days of brand integration and then given the chance to participate in monthly Think Tank projects allowing the winner to contribute to brand decisions.

'The End' was more than a contest, it was the next level of consumer engagement where handing over the brand to Canadians gave them a chance to play a role in Doritos history, in a way that hadn't been done before.

The contest was supported with a custom website, Facebook fan page (both official and unofficial) Twitter account, YouTube channel and a regular TV and online ad campaign.

Results

As of 16 March 2011, the Doritos Facebook page had more than 75,000 fans, and the highest voted entry had received in excess of 4,000 votes. Voting closed end of March 2011.

In total there were 29,923 contest entries, which received more than 200,000 votes. The eventual winner was Melanie Normandin from Quebec.

 

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Brand:
Doritos
Brand Owner:
PepsiCo
Categories:
Confectionery/Snacks
Food
Region:
Canada
date:
February - March 2011
Agencies:
BBDO
Proximity
Media Owners:
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Media Channel:
Online,PR,TV
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