Doritos is marking the return of its Sonic Sour Cream flavour with a track that celebrates the many sounds associated with eating chips.
The PepsiCo brand teamed up with Toronto music group AutoErotique to turn the musicality of chip eating – the bag popping, the crunching, the finger licking – into an original tune using nothing other than a bag of Sonic Sour Cream.
Describing the “sonic” quality of the flavour, which differs from original sour cream, posed a challenge, says Shereen Yasseen, senior director of marketing at Frito-Lay core and global brands. So Doritos’ creative and brand teams decided to take a different, more auditory approach to selling the product.
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Yasseen says Doritos’ customers have long requested the return of the Sonic Sour Cream flavour, which has been on hiatus for 14 years. Back then, the brand’s marketing strategy for the flavour centred around traditional media, POS support and store-level initiatives.
The new campaign is more fitting to the digital environment, she says. Communication and media support will last eight weeks, at which point Yasseen expects consumers to continue generating content online. The chips will be in market until January 2018.
The passion points of its target audience (millennials in the 18 to 24 age bracket) include music, sports and “living life in a bold way,” according to Yasseen. AutoErotique’s beat-driven music style was a good fit for the demographic.
BBDO worked on creative, OMD on media and Citizen Relations on PR.
This isn’t the first time Doritos has sought fan engagement with the return of an old flavour. The brand gained traction in 2015 with an award-winning campaign focused on Doritos Ketchup, which returned after a decade out of the market.
Meanwhile, Doritos and fellow PepsiCo brand Mountain Dew have partnered with Xbox for the “Win Every Hour” contest.
The contest gives customers a chance to win one of 1,000 Xbox One X consoles every hour between noon and midnight, from Oct. 10 to Jan. 7. Contestants can find codes on the packages of Dew and Doritos products, which they can use to enter the contest.
A national digital and social campaign targeting gamers is supported by an in-store program in target shops, such as convenience stores and gas stations.
