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This year, Doritos brand snack chips have decided to repeat their success of two years ago by running consumer created content as a commercial during the Super Bowl. This makes everyone in an agency job nervous. I mean, if every Joe Videocam can conceive of, direct, shoot, act in and edit a 30-second TV spot, why do brands need agencies? Why not just pick up the phone and get Joe in here to fix our brand?
If you go to crashthesuperbowl.com, you can view the top five spots in the Doritos contest. The site is well crafted, easy to navigate and loaded with content. The treasure here is not just the top five, which are obviously done by truly talented individuals or companies, but the gallery of all entries submitted. Here’s where the real marketing genius lies, hundreds of films devoted to making a hero out of Doritos. The majority are amateurish, simply-not-good commercials that only exist as a testament to a brand that knows how to create not just brand loyalists, but true fanatics.
And this idea is the strategic nugget at the core of the marketing effort. Sure Doritos will air a spot on the Super Bowl that was created by an average citizen, supposedly. But it took an agency to help guide the brand down this sophisticated, media aware, consumer-centric path.
Remember how great the one from 2 years ago was. Me neither. I remember it was amateur, but I don’t remember a thing about it.
Hey Martin, you make a very good point here. It’s ultra simplistic to believe that user generated content negates the need for an agency’s involvement in marketing a major brand.
Between generating initial interest in the promotion, then managing a complex website for entries and voters, there are still a myriad of functions an agency handles in getting this “Joe” created advertising on the air.
And I would agree that the agency’s role in directing the high level strategic thinking is certainly not in jeopardy either. Asking people to create a brands Ad invites no risk of abdicating the control of a brands Message. That can still be carefully managed. Like any good magician, or trial lawyer knows, you can ask questions a certain way to get the answer you want.
Although it’s not the most imaginative tactic to repeat this idea year on year, Doritos seems to have successfully garnered attention and an ever important new crop of advocates and all of their friends who will be sent a link and asked to “vote for my ad for Doritos”.
Probably the best news of all in this is the fact that, now that Doritos has made this such a priority, any other brand that does the consumer-made commercial thing might be accused of copying Doritos. And in the agency world, no one want that accusation.
I totally agree and think you make a great point. These are the days of CGC and I have no doubt plenty of marketers are thinking, “Why pay an agency, when I can get a loyal consumer to do my ads?” But what they don’t understand is that they aren’t getting the true measure of what a good marketing firm can bring them. You can order an application that does your design, one that even does copywriting and name generation, but you can’t find one that offers the big ideas. We still own that skill and it is worth what we charge. (Not that the applications I speak of are any replacement for good designers and writers…)
Ironically, the fact that we’re even discussing this gives Doritos a win. Because of this post and the discussion around it, I’ll be looking just a tad harder for those Doritos commercials during the Superbowl.