Advertising Category – Brand Brief
Doritos is a popular snack food product. The brand’s products fall under the Consumer Packaged Foods Category. Doritos is a subsidiary of Frito Lay North America Inc. a subsidiary of Pepsi Co. (MarketLine, 2015). Frito Lay North America Inc. produces many popular brands of potato chips. The company who reported over fourteen billion dollars in profits in 2014, began its operations in 1934 selling corn chips (MarketLine, 2015).
Purpose of the Advertising
The purpose of the advertising it to promote the brand image in order to compete in a highly competitive industry. The Doritos ad campaign aims to maintain the consumer perception of youthful fun snack food product.
Creative Strategy/Brief
Doritos has a reputation of dynamic advertising that stirs up conversations. The most recent Doritos Super Bowl commercials are no exception. The brand aired their Crash the Super Bowl campaign during Super Bowl 2016. Doritos also actively promotes their products using social media, print and their website. The brand uses a unique comical appeal in their integrated marketing scheme.
The Doritos Crash the Super Bowl campaign is an audience produced advertising contest. This is the tenth year of the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl. Every year at least one of the ads submitted by contest entrants is aired during the Super Bowl. This year was announced as being the last year that Doritos would run the Crash the Super Bowl contest so two commercials would be chosen to air (DORITOS® Crash the Super Bowl, 2016). The reason the campaign is ending this year is the shift in the generation of the targeted audience. Doritos aims to reach the early twenty year old demographic group but since the campaign’s start ten years ago the targeted group has shifted away from television (Schultz, 2016).
The contest became of topic on social media using the hash tag #CRASHTHESUPERBOWL the contest page used easy share buttons to make it easy for consumers to promote the contest (DORITOS® Crash the Super Bowl, 2016). Visit the contest page @ https://crashthesuperbowl.doritos.com/
The creative approach the ad campaign uses is consumer interaction. The campaign generated thousands of entry videos and has sparked millions of conversations. The Super Bowl is the most widely viewed television event. Doritos president of consumer engagement Andrew Robinson was the originator and manager of the campaign since 2006. The campaign is targeted towards twenty year old young adults. The company’s chief marketing officer Ram Krishnan told the media he credits the ten years of Crash the Super Bowl ad campaign for raising the value of the Doritos brand from a$1.5 billion to a $2.2 billion. The ad campaign is highly successful because of the high levels of interaction the contest creates (Schultz, 2016).
The key benefits Crash the Super Bowl promises is interaction with the brand. The contest delivers to consumers a chance to produce a widely view ad.
The Doritos Super Bowl 2016 "Ultrasound" commercial pushed the boundaries of social acceptance while creating a lasting laugh for the audience. In the ad a women is having an ultra sound and becomes annoyed that her partner is munching on Doritos. The scene then shows the unborn child reaching for the chip. The woman gets angry and throws the chip downwards and the baby quickly fallows to his birth. For a good laugh watch the video by clicking on the following link Doritos Super Bowl 2016 "Ultrasound"
The company’s website and social media channels match the campaign focus of the Crash the Super Bowl campaign – fun and interactive. The layout of Doritos website focuses on the interactivity. The site is loaded with social media links and opportunities for consumers to interact with the brand.
Competitive
Doritos faces competition from many angles. On top of other chip brands, the snack food industry has many varieties of packaged goods; meanwhile social trends are edging towards healthier food choices. Many of the leading chip brands are owned by Frito Lay as well so for the purpose of competitive analysis we will examine competitors that are not linked to Frito Lay and the parent company Pepsi Co.
The American savory snack food market has climbed to reach an annual value of twenty-nine billion dollars U.S. in 2015. Chips make up the largest portion of industry’s sales (32 %). The sales of packaged savory foods have been impacted by the healthy eating trends. Pepsi Co. along with their subsidiaries (Frito Lay – Doritos) are the largest producers of packaged savory snacks in the U.S. followed by the products produced by ConAgra Foods Inc., Diamond Foods Inc. and Kraft Heinz Company. (MarketLine, 2015).
Diamond Foods manufactures chips under the name Kettle Chips. However the advertising for Kettle Chips hardly compares to the advertising campaigns for Frito Lay’s products. The company uses a more traditional family oriented approach in their advertising. The company’s website does not place much emphasis on social media interactivity but on the sub- pages there are links to the company’s Facebook and Twitter accounts. Found at https://www.facebook.com/KettleBrandChips the company’s Facebook page continues in the same traditional style and features ads promoting the healthy aspects of their products.
Image Source: https://www.facebook.com/KettleBrandChips
The immense difference in the marketing budget of Pepsi Co.’s Doritos and Diamond Food’s Kettle chips is evident. While Doritos pushes out edgy, interactive advertising campaigns Kettle uses an integrated marketing technique that focuses on the quality of the product and fresh ingredients.
Media Strategy
Doritos uses a wide range of channels to reach their targeted audience. The brand is targeting young adults in their early twenties. Their highly interactive social media focused advertising provides the brand with the best mediums to reach their audience. Doritos plans to change their primary campaign style from the Crash the Super Bowl model to tactics similar to their Legion of the Bold campaign. Legion of the Bold asks consumers to produce the entire range of the products advertising instruments. Over five thousand advertising pieces were submitted by consumers. The company chose the best entries for the twenty one creative projects and payed the participants based on the level of complexity of the project. The shift in Doritos advertising is towards fully consumer produced interactive creative pieces. The strategy that has proven highly effective for the brand is being amped up.
Doritos has already established themselves on most popular social media channels. With over fifteen million likes their main Facebook page can be found at https://www.facebook.com/DoritosUSA/?brand_redir=DISABLE. A quick scan of the page demonstrates the level of interactivity the company shares with their consumers. The majority of the creative works found on the page are user generated. The latest company promotion features Doritos ketchup roses. The brands YouTube channel has established 48,305 subscribers and can be found at https://www.youtube.com/doritos. The page provides a medium to display additional videos submitted by contest participants. Via Instagram, Doritos has made 121 posts and attracted sixty-eight thousand followers. The company’s Instagram hashtag is #doritos and their profile can be seen at https://www.instagram.com/doritos/. Then on Twitter, Doritos has over 558k followers and just under 1500 likes. The brands most recent Twitter campaign rewarded three participants $50,000 for their Crash the Second Screen Twitter competition (https://twitter.com/Doritos).
References
DORITOS® Crash the Super Bowl,. (2016). DORITOS® Crash the Super Bowl. Retrieved 18 February 2016, from https://crashthesuperbowl.doritos.com/
Doritos,. (2016). NEW - Doritos Super Bowl 2016 Commercial "Ultrasound". Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HgEvD2ygJp0
MarketLine (2015). Frito-Lay North America, Inc. MarketLine Company Profile, 1-24.
MarketLine (2015). Frito-Lay SWOT Analysis, 1-7.
MarketLine (2015). Savory Snacks Industry Profile: United States, 1-42.
Schultz, E. (2016). The Final 'Crash'; How Doritos' 'Crash the Super Bowl' contest changed advertising and what's next for the snack brand. Advertising Age, (1).
