Doritos Abandons Super Bowl For Internet

http://www.adage.com/news.cms?newsId=33851

Will Triple Spending for Online Advertising

By Stephanie Thompson

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — Frito-Lay is forgoing its usual Super Bowl ads and tripling its online investment for Doritos this year in an effort to reach teens where they live and play on a daily basis.

Doritos’ new tagline, “For the bold and daring,” will make its way well beyond TV in an online marketing plan developed by Atmosphere, the digital arm of Frito-Lay’s ad agency BBDO Worldwide, New York, a unit of Omnicom Group.

Revamped Web site

The effort includes the revamp of the tortilla chip’s Web site, doritos.com, to make it a better vehicle to promote offline efforts; the development of quarterly partnerships with hot teen sites, initially mtv.com; and a viral-marketing effort that includes the creation of an unbranded “underground” Web site, fortheboldanddaring.com.

“We want to make sure teens are talking about and thinking about Doritos all the time, and it is impossible to do that without having a significant presence online,” said Cammie Dunaway, Frito-Lay’s vice president and general manager for children and teen marketing.

Frito-Lay decided to up its digital investment as part of a strategy to strengthen the brand’s positioning among the 12-to-24 set. Online efforts will now make up roughly 9% of Doritos’ overall marketing budget, which for the first 10 months of 2001 included $21 million in measured media, according to Taylor Nelson Sofres’ CMR.

Vending machines and malls

The decision not to advertise during the Super Bowl was also driven by the teen strategy, as are plans to develop more branded vending machines and mall kiosks, Ms. Dunaway said.

“I’d much rather have continuity with an all-channel media presence 52 weeks of the year,” she said.

Beginning this week, doritos.com will promote Frito-Lay’s offline X-box giveaway. The site will also feature streaming video of spots from the Doritos TV campaign featuring an ascot-clad gent named Clive.

Doritos begins its tie to mtv.com this week, offering teens the chance to enter bold and daring stories for a free MTV Spring Break trip.

Entertainment, music, games

“The teen target has a lot of skepticism toward marketing activities online, but if we align with the content they’re interested in — entertainment, music, games — it allows us to engage with them in a more meaningful way,” said Jonathan Glicksberg, director of client services at Atmosphere.