Episode 138 - Doritos Triangle Tracker Ad Reviewed by EY and The Next Wave
How can you reach the “anti-ad generation” to increase market share? For Doritos, it was a gamification of the world approach, as seen in their Triangle Tracker ad chosen by Contagious on Advertisers Watching Ads this week 🔺🔎
The chase for triangles looks fun and engaging enough, but was using a Snapchat filter the best move for the target audience? And is “owning the triangle” that innovative of an approach?
Watch the latest episode to hear from our marketing experts Diksha Idnani (Marketing Leader), Kate Mackie (Global Integrated GTM Director at EY), and David Esrati (Chief Creative Officer at The Next Wave), who only gave this ad a 3/5. See what you think!
Episode 138 - Doritos Triangle Tracker Ad Reviewed by EY and The Next Wave
Transcript is automatically generated, so not perfect, but you get the idea!
Dan Moseley 0:00
Hello. This is Advertisers Watching Ads. It's a weekly show where we have brands watch other brands' ads.
Dan Moseley 0:30
My name is Dan Moseley. I'm the Head of Automated Creative in North America. And I'm going to introduce this week's guests.
Diksha Idnani 0:37
Hi, everyone, I'm Diksha Idnani. I like to think I'm a lifelong learner and a marketer at heart because I nerd out about brand development and really happy to be here.
Kate Mackie 0:48
I'm Kate Mackie. I look after Integrated Go-to-Market within EY.
David Esrati 0:53
Hi, I'm David Esrati. I own a small ad agency in Dayton, Ohio, home of the Wright Brothers. It's called The Next Wave.
Dan Moseley 1:01
We are going to get straight into the ad.
Dan Moseley 2:47
We are going to vote. So on the count of three, if I can get a vote out of five for Doritos, the Triangle Tracker. Oh, we've got... All right, split vote. We got three. Let's average three.
Diksha Idnani 2:58
Something that for me kind of swims to the surface in some ways is like how they're owning the triangle right? They're really a trendsetter when it comes to Super Bowl advertising. And they spend millions of dollars on the production and the media, and they've really relied on their fans and their users to do their, to share their experiences. And that's been kind of how they've set the trend. And I think this kind of campaign just continues the evolution of that through user generated content. And I really think that, you know, how they've owned the triangle and how they are trying to break through from a creative power, power perspective really kind of shines through.
Kate Mackie 3:38
It's not an ad, it's a campaign for me. And I think we should be thinking about it holistically in terms of, you know, yes, the objective is to connect with the generation of individuals who don't watch advertising. So it's like the anti-ad. It's about really enabling the buyers of the... Maybe it's a new audience? I don't know. This particular audience is enabling them to take control and be part of the brand, which is to your point around the triangle and how they've owned it. You know, I see it as a three-pronged. It's a three-pronged campaign. One's your tease. Your pre-tease with, you know, all of the, kind of famous buildings. You know, The Louvre as the triangle. Then you've got the gamification piece so what can I win? That's triangular... You know is it 250 grand on a card? And then the third is how do you make the most of the user generated content? So it's those kind of three chunks. And I'd imagined that the first piece, that tease piece, had quite a chunk of money behind it. And then the rest of it is at is, is much more organic and enables those audiences to be part of the story around Doritos. The fact that it had 3 billion media impressions. I want to know, how did you get that? What was the detail within that? Because ultimately those media impressions are eyeballs across a number of channels. It's not pure advertising in its previous sense. It's much more to me around kind of that, that campaign from tease, gamification, and UGC.
David Esrati 4:50
I'm gonna tell you flat out, we all sound fantastic when we make a case study. And that's what this was. This was a case study, and this was set up for winning awards for Goodby Silverstein & Partners, which they are more than capable of doing. The audience they're trying to reach already eats these things and getting them to increase sales by having a faux sweepstakes and engaging some complicated technology. And I say this it's a very small segment. The kids that I have working for me right now as interns, they deleted Snapchat a long time ago. Kids are either on Instagram or TikTok. So putting all this effort into Snapchat, in this filter and everything was limiting.
Dan Moseley 5:36
Do you have any thoughts on the level of participation you're expecting from consumers versus some kind of giving them something kind of on a plate?
David Esrati 5:44
I think this was way too much work, and I don't think they had near as much pushed through or response and this, this just didn't do it for me.
Diksha Idnani 5:55
Calling it an anti-ad and like a case study is more accurate to what the form factor and what the, like... What the intent behind it is, right? And if we were to look at it as not an ad perhaps to use Kate's words on an anti-ad and then think about like what was the intent? I really think that it was about competing for a share of mind in the target audience. And that's why you like... You look at that ad, there's no call to action. It's not about, go buy a packet of Doritos or check out this new flavour, right? Like, it's not about that at all. If the target audience is not really engaged with ads, what they're doing is spending time natively with them digital, like they are on TikTok, they're on Snapchat, they're like on all of these other channels and mediums. And that's how they are interacting with the world.
Kate Mackie 6:43
Pringles did a similar ad where they owned the shape of Pringles. So I don't necessarily think the shape thing is new in the category. Corn chips or tortilla chips are totally commoditized. So you know, actually, if you're a price sensitive kid wandering around the supermarket aisles, it doesn't take much to lean to the left and buy something that's not a brand name. But I do think Pringles, Cheetos and Doritos, all have to have that kind of what is the value add? What is the higher level? Why are you... Why are you worth paying a bit more? Having that brand recognition and that perception link to the value, so in a similar way to the Nike tick, it gives you the triangle for Doritos. I think they're trying to move away from just the kind of 70% male youth category, because the majority of the icons or of kind of some of the stuff that was shown and used in the, in the case study were much more female or much more non-male or non, you know, atypical kind of male. So I do think they're trying to move out of that 70% pure kind of boy culture and you know, not gaming and eating chips the entire time, but looking at, oh look, we're looking at art museums, we're looking at iconography, we're looking at earrings, you know, it's kind of, it's taking it out of that, that kind of a very male gendered approach. But I think there are better... better ways of doing that because it also becomes a little bit tired and kind of obvious. And I think owning the triangle makes total sense for Doritos, but I think they could own and they can do it differently and they could execute in a better way.
Dan Moseley 8:11
Do you see a lot more brands trying to get into this or continue to keep going in a more augmented real world meets brand space?
Diksha Idnani 8:19
Nobody is going to argue that they are just going to sit and watch it unfold, right? I think we are already beginning to see signs of brands partnering with Apple to even understand what upcoming technology is going to look like. Going back to the Doritos commercial like or whatever we might want to call it, campaign, anti-ad, case study that could be about like, garnering more revenue but if you're Pepsi and you're like swimming in the kind of ungodly amounts of cash that they have, I think even a one percentage point increase in your relevance with your target audience, I think can be that edge that you have over your competitors.
David Esrati 8:54
When you put this campaign out and depend on their technology, you have to make sure that it's going to maintain and stay there. How many people built websites and flash that are no longer relevant? How many people used? I can't even remember Microsoft's technology that they told us all to use, and then they pulled it away. I just don't like campaigns that are predicated on something that we can't control. I find that as risky.
Dan Moseley 9:21
Thank you very much for all of you taking part and this has been Advertisers Watching Ads. Thanks so much.
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