Nowadays, almost all companies have an online presence. It is practically a necessity, and the companies that don’t have any social media presence often do not do as well as their competitors. This is because digital marketing allows marketers to create connections and understanding between the business and its customers. To make this connection, companies use digital marketing and social media to market content in the form of videos, blogs, images, infographics, and case studies. This content marketing aims for the consumer to see it and hopefully share the information either by word of mouth or online.
Sometimes companies have a stroke of genius, which leads to viral content. This means that their online content was shared from person to person in such a way that it could be considered contagious. One such viral social media campaign was the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” Series, which ran from 2006 to 2016. In 2013, Doritos utilized YouTube to present the winner(s) award in a short video, which has a current total of 1,308,528 views. This video can be found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ciwjIpVipk
The Super Bowl advertisements became something that everyone talked about. Watching the Super Bowl was no longer just about the game. It was also about the best Super Bowl ads. These ads were something that people connected over, during the game, and even after. But the Doritos commercials became even more talked about because they were created by the public, which is something that I remembered while searching viral social media ad campaigns. While the Doritos campaign is not the only Super Bowl ad that saw success, it was one that the public could join in on for several years.
One of the many Doritos Super Bowl ads shared was the ‘Ultrasound’ video by Peter Carstairs. According to Nut (2016), this ad was “the most shared Super Bowl ad” that year, “with nearly 900,000 shares.” Nut (2016) also mentions in the article that Carstairs was one of the three finalists that year. You can watch Carstairs’s (2015) Doritos advertisement here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugn_qmQ0NFo , which has 13,203,267 views to date.
According to Witt & Nichols’s (2016) case study, the Doritos “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign was created in 2007 and went viral sometime between 2007 and 2009. Part of the reason for its virality is because, in 2009, Doritos decided to raise the stakes by “offering one million dollars to the fan whose ad took USA Today’s No. 1 spot in the Super Bowl ad meter” (Witt & Nichols, 2016). Another reason for its virality was the emotion that the advertisements elicited among the public. The most memorable were often humorous, like the ‘Ultrasound’ ad. I also think that the creation of these “stories” helped spread the Doritos advertisements. They started conversations among people, which helped Doritos reach more consumers through the sharing of the videos.
Since Doritos allowed the public to create content and decide the winner, the campaign ran successfully for ten years (Witt & Nichols, 2016). Throughout the years, the campaign offered different awards to actively engage with the audience, which is why Doritos was able to run the campaign for so long. “In order to reach their target audience, they targeted college newspapers, top film schools and the largest universities, utilized viral video/photo sites; targeted blog and podcasts for core consumers, film makers and ad industry, generated news around finalist grassroots and social networking efforts” (Witt & Nichols, 2016). But these were just a few ways that Doritos reached its target audience. To gain new viewers and convert them to loyal followers, Doritos asked consumers to vote on the final five, and then the top two would air during the Super Bowl. This interaction by the consumers helps create the sense of relationship, where the consumer feels included in who won the top two spots and, in turn, watches to see the final two ads. Through this relationship, the consumers share with others who will also watch the Super Bowl and be influenced by triggers that will remind them of the Doritos brand.
References
Carstairs, P. (2015, November 11). Doritos ultrasound – youtube. YouTube. Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugn_qmQ0NFo.
Doritos. (2013, September 26). Doritos® crash The Super Bowl 2014 – YouTube. YouTube. Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ciwjIpVipk.
Nut, A. (2016, February 5). Update: Aussie-made Dorito’s spot leads all Super Bowl ads in shares: The work. Campaign Asia. Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://www.campaignasia.com/article/update-aussie-made-doritos-spot-leads-all-super-bowl-ads-in-shares/425801.
Witt, E., & Nichols, R. (2016, February 24). The importance of including social media as seen in “Crash the super bowl” Doritos campaign. Penn State. Retrieved October 20, 2021, from https://sites.psu.edu/comm473/2016/02/25/the-importance-of-including-social-media-as-seen-in-crash-the-super-bowl-doritos-campaign/.
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