an “endless” campaign
February 9th, 2011 • Uncategorized
Most of us are familiar with Frito-Lay, a company that manufactures and sells various snack food products (particularly potato chips), including popular brands such as Cheetos cheese puffs and Sun Chips. Recently, Frito-Lay Canada has launched a new campaign for their Doritos product, which entails showing consumers a commercial promoting new chip flavours. Nothing new there. However, this latest ad created by Frito-Lay’s is “endless”.
In the ad, two researchers who have each developed a new Doritos flavour presents a sample of their product to the “Flavour Master”. The Flavour Master enjoys both, but decides that one flavour must be destroyed. At this point, the ad ends abruptly and asks viewers to finish the story: Which flavour will be destroyed and how? Consumers are encouraged to go on www.writetheend.ca and answer this question as a part of a contest. The writer of the winning story will receive a substantial prize and their ending will become a part of the commercial.
The point of Frito-Lay’s campaign is to use this contest to get consumers to communicate which flavour they prefer through their choice of ending to the commercial. As the ending-less commercial is very neutral, there is no indication of which flavour is superior. Therefore, the choice consumers make will inevitably be based on their opinion and feeling of which flavour is most attractive to them. Frito-Lay’s campaign allows them to obtain invaluable information about their consumers’ attitudes toward potential new products: they want their consumers to tell them what they want.
I believe Frito-Lay has come up with a very interesting way for the company to interact with the target market, those whom they hope will buy and consume their products. This contest entices consumers to interact with the product, as customers can impact the outcome of the advertisement which will ultimately be released to the public. This also allows Frito-Lay to generate innovative ideas without increasing their costs significantly. The most important thing about this campaign is that they can effectively identify consumer needs and wants, and as a result, can better market the product.