Doritos

Doritos Guru, which invited consumers to name and create an ad for a new mystery flavour in exchange for a cash prize and 1% of sales, was the most important promotion in the history of the brand. With only a month to drive submissions, OMD had to get 15- to 24-year-old young snackers across Canada excited about trying the product and entering the contest. The agency realized that only 1% of the audience were “creators” who would actually take part, and the remaining 99% would have to be engaged as “critics” to create buzz and make the promotion a success.

Canadians use Facebook and watch online video more than almost any other country, so OMD unleashed a national social video campaign. Launched at midnight the night before the Superbowl, a teaser video on YouTube had logged 60,000 views by morning. A bizarre Superbowl spot continued to drive chatter. Homepage expandable video ads hit the mass audience, while targeted executions reached video uploaders on YouTube – exactly the kind of people who would enter the competition.

OMD created a Facebook application that automatically uploaded user videos from Doritosguru.ca and vice versa. Videoegg executions, Xbox Live in-game advertising and SEM using Google drew visitors to the competition. In Quebec, humour website Têtes à claques loved the promo so much that they produced bilingual vignettes that were shown online.

Concurrently, OMD convinced MuchMusic and MusiquePlus to work together, with VJs promoting the competition on air and on blogs, branded programming and on-air integration. In a massive first, Doritos bought all ad time during the flagship MuchonDemand program for the week running up to the finale. The winner was revealed live on air on MuchMusic, with the MusiquePlus crew reporting live from the set.

Over 4,000 user-generated ads were submitted and viewed over 1.7 million times with 588,841 votes cast. The YouTube channel became the number one subscribed channel in Canada. The Facebook group drew 30,184 fans, while 75,666 people registered at Doritosguru.ca. And Frito Lay sold a pile of chips [numbers were provided]; a second production run of the flavour had to be ordered mid-campaign to keep up with demand.