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Doritos has been everywhere lately, all over the radio, a few other ads here and there. Basically they have been punting their Facebook page.

I eventually saw that one of my friends on FB had joined the group as well as ±1500 people.

My immediate reaction is that this is a flop of a campaign. Advertising on radio is no cheap affair but an affair it is. You face the risk of being caught out by your better half - the listeners or target market. And to me it seems as though this has happened to Doritos.

Why I think this is campaign was a flop?

Coming off the back of a great advertising campaign with their “Moment of boldness” A few years ago I can’t believe that Doritos could have done so badly with this one. That campaign was a viral campaign before there were viral campaigns. To this day I know many people who still joke about their moments of boldness.

At the time of writing this post there were 777 122 people from South Africa above the age of 18 on Facebook. That works out to about 0.2% of the users on FB, from SA actually bothered to become a fan of the brand. In my mind, that’s a bit of a flop.

Why this could be perceived to be a successful campaign

Theoretically what we could be looking at here is quality over quantity. Involvement and activity over masses of inactive users/fans.

But let’s look at this for a moment before we get ahead of ourselves. The available features on the FB page of Doritos are: Notes, Photos, Video, Wall Comments, Events and Discussion Board.

To analyse these in a bit more detail:

Wall
313 posts

Discussion Board
Topic 1: 120 posts by 95 people
Topic 2: 29 posts by 25 people

Videos
12 fan videos

Photos
44 photos
5 albums

Events
Event 1 - 6 confirmed guests, 4 wall posts
Event 2 - 28 confirmed guests, 6 wall posts

Notes
7 notes
144 comments

Looking at the above breakdowns I honestly cannot say that all the money Doritos must have spent on their mainstream ad campaigns was worth it. 44 photographs and 12 videos is really not a good response in my opinion. Especially considering that there are ±1500 people in the group and over 750 000 people in SA on FB. That means that less than 1% of the fans on the page posted a video and almost 3% of the fans posted a photograph.

I’m not sure about you, but I’ve posted, viewed and commented on hundreds of photos on FB, that should’ve been the saving grace but alas, it wasn’t.

What Doritos could have done differently

Expanded their “moment of boldness” campaign to an online network of viral campaigns. Blogs, videos, podcasts and “fake events” that could have boosted the reputation of the brand for the young and socially in touch.

I can picture the blog and videos now; South Africans all over filming their moment of boldness, recording fake jumps, dares and ironic, satirical parodies of the “bold” factor.

Doritos could have done more with their Facebook group. Updates, invites, ads, coupons, giveaways, freebies. Sometimes it just takes a bit of gritty interaction to spread the word for a fan page, not an entire radio ad campaign. Other than giveaways the Doritos fan page gave nothing to its members. No community offering. I know a lot of people who feel an affinity to Doritos, it’s their choice chip, but they were not enticed to join this group. People like Apple Students has it right on their page. They have a community, not a product.

Below the line marketing would have worked better. Get bloggers involved, send them a box of crisps and ask them to eat them, rally a party around the chips, get other bloggers in on it and spread the word slowly to all their readers via the subsequent posts.

Print would even have worked better than radio. More people will sit near a computer while reading a newspaper/magazine than will be listening to the radio, so why put it on the radio? You are probably driving in your car when you hear about the Doritos fan page, not sitting by a pc with internet access. Bad move.

I did try to contact Doritos, the admin of the group or anyone but no one responded. I gave them a few working days. I’d love to know if they consider this campaign to be successful or if they are looking in to recovering from the flop that I see?

I, for one, am not fond of maitstream music. It’s nice and I can recognise the value of it when I’m at a club or with friends or something froo-froo like that.

But it is really pissing me off lately that radio stations have finally seen the light and recognised under-ground rock, pop, funk, heavy metal, hip-hop, emo, alternative or any other genre. Why I am pissed off at the “new discovery” by the radio stations is because radion stations have a tendancy to kill a song long before it deserves to be killed.

Why is it necessary for stations to play 30 seconds to mars every hour on the hour? Hell, why is it necessary for radio’s to play them at all. They were mine. Now they are dead because the radio killed them.

“Video killed the radio star”

- Methinks not. Here’s my version:

“Radio killed the underground star”

And to be honest, radio is killing the die-hard listener. I get upset when a hear a tiny tot of twelve singing the tune of a Papa Roach song. They are not mainstream.

Don’t get me wrong, I grasp the concept of mainstream equalling money for the band, but many of the bands I love have my money and I paid for them to be mine. Not some tiny-bopper-pimple-faced-wanna-be-gothchild.

Rant Over.