2017 Winners

In 2015, Doritos Ketchup chips were brought back as a limited time offer to generate extra attention for the brand. The flavour developed a cult-like following among 18- to 34-year-old males, garnering ravenous support and a need to meet higher demand. However, even with the success of the LTO last year, mass penetration was still low.

For the return of the Doritos Ketchup Limited Time Offer (LTO) in early 2016, Doritos needed to re-introduce the flavour in the boldest way possible so that people would take notice and flock to shelf (including those who hadn’t tried it). Unlike previous years, the goal was to make noise amongst a larger audience and get fans to spread word of their love for the chips to the masses.

The brand’s key objectives were to increase baseline sales by 3.5%; reach 1.7 million views through video content; and achieve these objectives with a total budget of $541,000 ($208,000 for production, $213,000 for media, $120,000 for PR).

To reach a larger audience, Doritos and agency BBDO sought to leverage cultural context that engaged a larger group of people than the traditional Doritos fan. Doritos Ketchup was set to launch just before Valentine’s Day, an event that has traditionally been geared more toward women than guys. Since guys were the target, the team conceived a bold and irreverent way to ride the cultural wave of the event, while ensuring that the brand would stand out in all of the noise surrounding the day.

A bouquet of flowers is the go-to gift guys rely on, but there’s no equivalent go-to gift for women to give to men. This provided the tension Doritos needed to create a disruptive idea for its Ketchup product and significantly expand its potential audience.

To fill the void in Valentine’s Day gift-giving options for men, the brand decided to create Valentine’s Day bouquets made out of actual Doritos Ketchup chips and call them “Doritos Ketchup Roses.” Fans could visit DoritosKetchupRoses.com and order a bouquet for their loved one, to be delivered to their door on Valentine’s Day, absolutely free.

The connections plan for Doritos Ketchup Roses embraced social, key influencers and news media. To spread the word prior to launch, the team pre-seeded bouquets of Doritos Ketchup Roses to key media outlets and bloggers the week before Valentine’s Day, when gift-giving was top of mind for the big day ahead.

It paid homage to the throwback Doritos Ketchup packaging and created a 70s-inspired infomercial asking fans to go online and order their bouquets of #DoritosKetchupRoses. Since the target lives online, the brand committed 100% of our limited budget to the digital space. On February 9th, the Doritos Ketchup Roses program was announced on all of Doritos’ channels with a launch video. The campaign was supported with social posts on Facebook and Twitter, and irreverent memes and GIFs were seeded on Reddit and with social influencers.

Hundreds of male consumers tagged their girlfriends on social and urged them to order a bouquet. The team tapped into additional earned media opportunities by sending roses to media personalities, key influencers, and celebrities who helped drive hype for the uber-exclusive bouquets. For example, Charles Barkley received a bouquet on live TV before the NBA All-Star game on TNT, creating further buzz that extended into social media.

The brand further fuelled the story by showing consumers how to make their own Doritos Ketchup Roses, and leveraged that across news, sports and entertainment media and YouTube vloggers.

The campaign results exceeded all campaign objectives and performance expectations and has been held up globally by PepsiCo as best-in-class innovation and engagement. Baseline sales grew at 8% (2.3x the sales target), there have been 4.3 million views (2.5x above projections) and #DoritosKetchupRoses became a top 10 organic Twitter trending topic. There has also been a 247% lift in ad recall, 45% lift in purchase consideration, over 56 million earned media impressions in Canada and internationally, with earned media valued at over $675,000 (more than 3x the media budget).