Yesterday, we sat down with Tony Matta, Vice President Marketing at Frito Lay Canada (http://www.fritolay.ca/). We spoke about crowdsourcing product development, reconnecting with customers and the use of social media as part of the DoritosGuru Campaign (http://www.doritosguru.ca/).
Refresh Events: Hi Tony, thanks for sitting down with us today.
Tony Matta: Thanks for having us. We’re glad to be here.
RE: What technologies were used to develop Doritos® Guru, and what challenges were faced during the development of the campaign?
TM: When developing the Become the Doritos Guru program we focused on the consumer, specifically Millennials (ages 13 to 24) and looked at what they do, how they interact with media and how they engage with technology. To develop a program that would truly resonate with our consumers we created the Engagement Map of the Millennial consumer’s journey, found all the touchpoints they experience in their lives, and categorized our consumer into three types of participants: content creators, critics and viewers.
We identified that a website would be the hub of all activity, and wanted a seamless experience with absolutely no barriers. Rather than asking our consumers to come to us, we used technology to make it easy for them to participate wherever they are.
Frito Lay Canada’s agencies, BBDO Canada and Proximity Canada, worked closely with Stuzo on the back-end development of this promotion which includes a custom solution build on top of Stuzo’s proprietary Win Big Promotion Platform. This “game-changing” promotion lives within Facebook, YouTube, and on the Doritos Guru microsite. Users can register through Facebook or the Doritos Guru microsite with seamless integration between both sites. Video entries are uploaded through Facebook or the Doritos Guru microsite, hosted on YouTube, and can be voted or commented on in either Facebook or the microsite; the two properties essentially duplicate each other. Content is shared socially through Facebook with actionable news feeds. Technologies leveraged include PHP, Facebook Platform and API and Connect, and YouTube API.
This breakthrough technology helps users navigate through the experience seamlessly, where they want, when they want.
RE: It has been said that the relationship between companies and consumers has disintegrated over the years. Is Doritos using this campaign to reconnect with its customers and create increased brand awareness?
TM: The relationship between brands and their consumers has shifted from one-way conversation from the brands to become about conversation and participation between the consumer and the brand. In recent years, the Doritos brand has taken the lead in this new form of marketing to ensure the brand maintains relevance with its key audiences. The Become the Doritos Guru campaign was built on a foundation of two-way dialogue with consumers and as a result every element was developed so it would appeal to the audience, would revolve around them and their creativity, and be valuable to them and enrich their social
communities (Facebook and YouTube, for example).
RE: Crowdsourcing product development is not a new concept, but using interactive media to do is uncharted territory. If possible, can you talk about what other campaigns were looked at during the scoping of this project?
TM: Crowdsourcing and user generated programs are becoming increasingly popular in marketing; however the approach taken in the Become the Doritos Guru program is unique. The campaign’s structure asks consumers to name a new product flavour and make a 30-second ad to promote it. Consumers then cast votes to determine the ultimate winner who will receive $25,000 and 1 per cent of future net Canadian flavour sales of the flavour they’ve named. Some of the elements of this program are:
- A new product with no name.
- A new product with no distinct packaging to reflect what’s inside.
- A new product where the consumer had no idea what taste or flavour they were going to eat.
- Leveraging social media to drive hype and buzz about the campaign.
- Working with national media properties (MuchMusic and MusiquePlus) to create branded content on our user generated content.
- Working with the same national media properties to execute unique and innovative programming formats that have never been done before.
- Building a destination website that integrated seamlessly with two of the biggest properties on the Internet: YouTube and Facebook.
- Using Twitter as the channel to build relationships, develop dialogue, and provide updates in real-time to consumers and participants.
The Doritos brand has been a pioneer in developing these types of user-generated programs and when developing the Canadian program we looked to past successes from similar programs in the UK and US. In particular we looked at the popular US Crash the Super Bowl program where consumers created an ad that ran during the Super Bowl. Not having the benefit of a Canadian Super Bowl, OMD Canada leveraged its relationships with MuchMusic and MusiquePlus to use media in a different way that fit within our consumers lives.
While the Canadian Become the Doritos Guru campaign is quite different than the highly-successful global Doritos campaigns, we were able to leverage some experiences from those global programs to offer the best campaign possible to Canadian consumers.
RE: How does social media, especially the use of Twitter, fit into this campaign? Are content creators able to share their creations with others?
TM: The entire Doritos campaign has been built around the social media behaviours of our consumer. Elements such as creating original content, sharing videos with others, voting and rating other user submissions are all behaviours that our consumers engage in and enjoy so it was important to us that we leverage these mediums effectively.
We wanted to ensure that the user experience was the focus of the campaign, particularly within social media environments, and we are working diligently to maintain a human, real voice in our interactions in this space. For example, we are responding directly to wall posts on our Facebook fan page and reaching out to people that are engaging with the program. We are also leaving the unflattering comments available to view as they too are part of the real consumer story.
We took social media a step further in this program and worked with Facebook to create an integrated campaign in which the social media interactions of the Doritos Guru website are mirrored on our Facebook page. As a result, the consumer behaviours are as seamless as possible.
Our participation on Twitter takes a similar approach. We have a profile on Twitter where fellow Twitterers can learn about program highlights and milestones, where we can answer any questions the community might have, and generally give a human face to the campaign. We want all Doritos interactions on Twitter to be valuable and relevant to our consumers, answer their questions, and give them something funny to watch, like a new video when it’s published live for the world.
Content creators are the backbone of this program and one key element is enabling these creators to campaign for themselves to become the ultimate Doritos Guru and ultimate campaign winner. With this in mind we have provided numerous tools for consumers to use when campaigning for votes including share tags to spread their message virally through the Web, standard embed and URL links for them to spread their ad through their own social networks or blogs. We know that nothing beats a good idea, a good laugh, or just an insight that is the eureka moment, so we encourage our entrants to make a video based on a good idea, rather then them being in front of a webcam and talking about why their flavour name should win.
RE: Is there anything else that you would like to share with us about Doritos Guru?
TM: The Become the Doritos Guru campaign was created from insights and suggestions we received directly from our consumers. Consumers told us they wanted to be involved in our brand and tell us what they think – so we listened. This program is about breaking new ground, giving power to our consumers, and being a true partner Doritos fans.
When developing the program we sat down as a team and developed some criteria we wanted to test ourselves against – Is this idea bold, does it scream “I want in!” and does it bring the WTF factor? Everything we are doing here is about engaging the consumer in a way that is fun, different and relevant to their needs and wants.
RE: Well, thank you for your time today. The campaign sounds great, all the best!
TM: Thanks, Justin. We look forward to seeing who the winner is.
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Some additional information regarding the DoritosGuru Campaign:
Doritos Contest: Fact Sheet
Doritos Fact Sheet
DoritosGuru Agency Full Credits List
DoritosGuru Press Release - Feb 17 2009
We’d like to send a big thank you to Tony Matta from FritoLay and Kim Saunders from Fleishman-Hillard for facilitating the interview and getting us everything that we needed.