In the past few weeks, Frito-Lay’s Doritos has quietly achieved online product-launch metrics most marketers would kill for. A microsite for its new Spicy Sweet Chili chips has garnered more than 13 million page views and nearly 200,000 unique visitors in its first few weeks, with an average of 34 minutes spent on the site.
If those numbers seem to you to come out of nowhere, perhaps it’s because you’re not an MTV viewer. The network is the sole media outlet Doritos is using to promote its new flavor, beginning with a highly trafficked companion Web site to MTV’s “Next” dating series, nextornot.com.
A national media campaign rolls out this summer, but MTV viewers will be the first to get a taste of the product’s offerings next month with the debut of “When Spicy Meets Sweet,” a short-form series co-produced by MTV and Frito-Lay. The show consists of 18 60-second episodes that will air during ad breaks of MTV’s Friday-night dating programming for three straight Fridays each month starting in April, as well as online.
The mini miniseries’ concept is nothing new.
It’s the distribution model that’s unique, and it’s one Doritos has championed for the past two years, beginning with its “Crash the Super Bowl” campaign in 2006, one of the first to marry user-generated Web content with the reach of national TV. Its microsite is being used as both a casting couch for potential spicy or sweet daters and a forum for generating buzz around the show.
Although new media has become a larger part of Doritos’ budget (the brand more than tripled its online ad spend to $2.2 million in 2007), TV is becoming an increasingly important outlet for its ad messaging.
According to TNS Media Intelligence, Doritos more than doubled its 2006 spending on broadcast network TV to $7.6 million last year, with an extra $7.3 million going to cable.
That’s why Rudy Wilson, director of marketing for Doritos, has a national ad campaign planned for the Spicy Sweet Chili chips later this summer, after new episodes of the MTV miniseries wrap up in June.
MTV, plagued by its viewers’ fickle commercial-viewing habits, has successfully made branded entertainment and integrations a major part of its on-air business model in recent years. While its commercial breaks average a loss of 13% to 15% of the total viewership, the network is making ad-break retention a top priority going into this year’s upfront. Yet MTV remains one of the few networks, cable or otherwise, with the resources and infrastructure to accommodate a
unique marketing request from a brand like Doritos.