Social Media Monitoring Part 1: How Does Doritos Stand Out From Other Snack Brands?

Introduction

Doritos is a brand of seasoned tortilla chips produced since 1964 by American food company Frito-Lay. Not only are Doriots' chips packed with serious crunch and bold flavors, the Doritos' brand is all about intense experiences in snacking and beyond.

As one of the Doritos' most popular marketing campaigns, the "Crash the Super Bowl" contest was an annual online commercial competition run by Frito-Lay since 2006.

In this contest, amateur film-makers were invited to create and upload their own Doritos ads. Then Doritos would offer bonus prizes ranging from $400,000 to $1,000,000. 

From 2006 to 2016, fans have submitted more than 36,000 entries. In fact, Doritos has never given up on marketing promoting since the company was founded. And this competition has brought Doritos dozens of amazing commercials along with goodwill.

The reason why I choose Doritos' marketing campaign is because Doritos perfectly illustrates how to utilize the impact of groundswell for building its reputation and brand effect. Besides, I love the way that Doritos let the public participate in their brand content distribution process, and I also have to admit the "Crash the Super Bowl" contest is really a genius strategy! Now, let's take a look at Doritos' brilliant "Crash Super bowl Ads" campaign.

How does Doritos tap into Groundswell

• Facebook:

Doritos achieved a great success on Facebook in promoting its brand, with 15,676,814 likes( as of 2/26/16). Mostly, the Facebook is used for posting daily updates or upcoming events which are related to its brand and campaigns.

As we can see from the comments on Doritos' "Crash the Super Bowl" campaign, the public was actively participating in this campaign through voting for their favorite ads. In other words, this represents Doritos' marketing campaign has achieved its objectives to some extent. A large amount of people was promoting and advertising for Doritos though talking and joining  in Doritos' campaign.

• Twitter

With more than 559 thousand followers on Twitter,  the number is relatively small when compared with Facebook. But Doritos still actively takes advantage of the social media, by updating related information with #Doritos, mainly for advertising.

Besides, Doritos is also fully aware the importance of energizing the groundswell. On the Twitter, during live-show of the Super Bowl game, Doritos  selected tons of its followers to award them a year's worth of Doritos for their honorable mention of #Doritos on Twitter.

• Instagram:

Doritos would never let off the chance of promoting its brand with cool pictures and videos. With more than 69 thousand of followers, Doritos posts creative images or videos at least once a week to attract followers' attention. Each of its post usually can get thousands of likes.

Comparing with the using frequency of the other two social media platforms, it seems like Doritos more inclined to use Facebook and Twitter than Instagram. However, there is nothing wrong with increasing the visibility of your brand and being active in social media platforms. Even with the low exposure rate, Doritos is still working on promoting its brand through attractive pictures and videos on Instagram.

The Trends 

• Google Trends:

Google trends is a public website facility for illustrating how often a particular search term has been searched online. As we can see from the screenshot of Google trends about the "Doritos Superbowl", comparing with the years from 2011 to 2012, Doritos had experienced a relatively low degree of media attention between 2013 and 2015. However, this year, the focused topic about "Doritos Superbowl Commercial" has caused a dramatic growth since the contest started.

One of the reason why Doritos received much attention this year, from my perspective, was the company has devoted greater efforts than ever before, especially its high exposure of propagandas on social media platforms. Another reason would be the impressive results of Super Bowl commercials competition that Doritos has achieved this year.

• Meltwater IceRocket:

Meltwater IceRocket is a tool for researching how frequent a specific topic has been searched over a period of time.
Through the trend tool, it is not hard to find that the heat of "Doritos Super Bowl" spiked especially high from Feb 6 to Feb10. 

It may not so hard to explain the spike of search volumes. Considering the situation that Doritos has achieved a greater success in this year than ever; the commercial and "Ultrasound" and "Doritos Dogs" won the second place and the third place in 2016 Super Bowl Ad Meter, according to USA Today. It is entirely reasonable for the public's attention fell on Doritos.

• Social Mention:

Social Mention is a social media search engine for examining the mention volume for a specific topic on social media.  

Last Week

Last Month

1. Strength is the likelihood that your brand is being discussed in social media.
2. Sentiment is the ratio of the mentions that are generally positive to those that are generally negative.
3. Passion is a measure of the likelihood that individuals talking about your brand will do so repeatedly
4. Reach is a measure of the range of influence.

As we can see from the two images, compared with the results of last month(1/1/16-1/31/16), there is a slight increase in the last week(2/15/16-2/21/16). Because the heat of the "Crash the Super Bowl" contest has a long-term of duration, people's attention on Doritos' campaign continued more than a month. Moreover, especially because of the impressive result of Doritos' Super Bowl advertisements this year, Doritos' hit commercial videos have been spread several weeks. That explains to why Doritos' social mention volume increased.

Conclusion

Doritos did a great job on energizing the groundswell through its marketing campaigns. 
Instead of persuading customers buying their products, Doritos always keeps in mind the importance of participatory marketing. Compared with other snacks brands, Doritos is more willing to trust the ability of their customers. 
Moreover, the company has never expressed the concern about whether the amateur film-makers would ruin its brands. Considering the fact that it is not impossible for the public voting for the lamest advertising out of entertainment, however, Doritos has never intervened the voting process or made rules for voting procedures. Instead, Doritos gave the public 100-percent of confidence in helping the company make the decision. And it turned out what Doritos has done has totally paid off.

Suggestions
Through the social media monitoring, I found that Doritos' marketing campaigns like the annual "Crash the Super Bowl" contest and offering activists one year's worth of Doritos snacks are amazing strategies for tapping into the groundswell. 
However, beyond these marketing campaigns, Doritos barely interacts with the public on social media platforms. 
This got me thinking about Doritos' real purpose of its marketing strategies. Are these campaigns just out of attracting public's attention and utilizing the impact of "word of mouth" or they really want the public get involved in?
From my perspective, it is essential for a company building close connection between company and customers. Doritos should take actions to interact with and actively listen to customers more often in normal times.