2021 Winner

CASE SUMMARY

Challenge & Objective

2020 marked the sixth straight year of Doritos Ketchup returning to shelves for a three-month window. There’s an annual challenge of disruptively announcing its return and finding a new way to fuel the obsession of Doritos Ketchup fans. Attracting these loyal fans would be important to achieve the objective of increasing Doritos Ketchup sales by 10%.

Insights & Strategy

A simple strategy was established: entertain Doritos Ketchup fans (Gen Z) to get them to buy bags. The brand investigated Gen Z’s media consumption, more specifically, the media they consume while snacking. An opportunity was discovered – there’s a shift to watching video content on ad-free video streaming platforms like Netflix or Crave, with a total of 1/3 of Gen Zs watching a streaming service daily. Adding to these rates, the global pandemic resulted in a rise of online video watching.
These insights created a bigger opportunity that aligned with Doritos Ketchup’s history of integrating itself in youth culture. It could transform from solely being a chip brand to also becoming a media company by creating its own streaming platform for the Doritos Ketchup obsessed, a brand-new way to enjoy the product they love.

Execution
The brand launched Ketchup+, a mobile-first video streaming platform stocked with 21 snackable shows - it's the first snack you can stream. Unlike other platforms that Ketchup+ closely resembled, it was cost free and just like the chips, temporarily available.
The snackable shows on Ketchup+ covered numerous genres that are popular among Gen Z. In line with Doritos brand purpose of igniting bold self-expression, the brand partnered with a group of creators and influencers across multiple countries and gave them creative freedom to produce their own Doritos Ketchup inspired shows in accordance with local COVID guidelines. They produced the shows, and also promoted them on their social channels to drive Ketchup+ viewership.
Ten show trailers were created and promoted across digital channels alongside an online video to showcase Ketchup+. To help legitimize Ketchup+ as a streaming platform, these trailers mimicked other streamers messaging, sonic branding and graphics. A social media optimization plan trafficked the most engaging trailers per genre to audience pools defined by their genre preference. Additionally, media outreach efforts seeded Ketchup+ in publications relevant to the target audience.

Results

Within five weeks of launching, Ketchup+ surpassed key campaign benchmarks by over 65% with 151,974 site visits while they streamed an unbelievable 39,428 minutes of what’s essentially a series of Doritos Ketchup ads.
The idea resonated with a mix of major publications and consumers on social media resulting in earning 8.8 million impressions. This obsession with Ketchup+ extended to Doritos Ketchup, setting the brand on track to achieve an 11% increase in sales from 2019 (10% objective) with nearly a month left in market and doing so without in-store display, a major sales driver in the consumer-packaged goods category that was cancelled due to the pandemic. Ketchup+ truly reignited fan obsession for Ketchup chips.

Credits

Client: Shirley Mukerjea, Senior Marketing Director
Agency Lead: Stephanie Page, VP GAD
Account Lead: Hailey Scott, Account Director
Creative Lead: Derek Blais, SVP CD
Strategic Lead: Colin Kikcio, Senior Planner
Production Lead: Dave Lembke, Executive Producer, Flare