In 2006, one of the leading brands of chips in the United States, Doritos, owned by Frito-Lays released what came out to be one of the most successful social media campaigns to date, Crash The Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is the most watched few hours on US Television. Aside from its sports factor, the Super Bowl is known for its nail-biting, fully anticipated and innovative commercials, making it the ultimate window for advertising. Doritos took this opportunity and ran with it.
Doritos’ objective with this campaign was to increase its share of the snack foods category by using user-generated content. This brilliant strategy lead consumers and videomakers to come up with creative, inventive and original viral commercials for the campaign. This was a social media engagement campaign.
Doritos used a contest as its primary strategy for this campaign. The campaign was introduced online, where fans uploaded their content followed by creating a site for people to view and share, comment, like and vote. The video with most votes won. The campaign’s tactics includes a prize, which has varied through the years, but the main reward is that the winning commercial airs on the Super Bowl.
The “Crash The Super Bowl” campaign used various social media tools including the most popular one-to-many tool, Twitter. Doritos endorsed the #CrashtheSuperBowl “hashtag” to encourage users to share and participate in the campaign of a lifetime. Finalists also had their own accounts (i.e. @Vote4cowboykid) where they encouraged people to vote for them, among other things. Their Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/DoritosUSA, established current engagement and updates of dates, information and details such as the semifinalists and where to vote. Doritos Facebook page is currently at a massive over-4 million likes. The brand also increased visits and engagement trough their actual website http://www.doritos.com and their youtube page http://www.youtube.com/user/CrashtheSuperBowl.
Because of its success, the campaign has continuously been done annually since then, making 2014, its ninth year. Fans look forward to it every year, with the hopes to win and have their life changed.
The campaign was effective as it maximized Doritos exposure and allowed consumers and fans to have one-on-one contact and participation with the brand and what it stands for. Consumers have put Doritos as one of the highest snack foods out there, and Doritos gave back. The campaign allowed consumers to feel appreciated and part of the brand they all love. For next year’s campaign, I would suggest for Doritos to take this chance and launch a new product, giving participants a bigger challenge to be creative.
For those of you who haven’t seen it yet, here are the 2014 winners of the Doritos “Crash The Super Bowl” Campaign:
Until next time,
Elisa Tactuk
A Splash of PR 