2012 PRO Award Finalist: The Marketing Arm for Doritos
Doritos and Mountain Dew, both PepsiCo brands, decided to create growth through synergies. Knowing that the audience that eats Doritos and drinks Mountain Dew are heavy gamers, The Marketing Arm decided to work with Activision’s “Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3” during its launch.
In games like “Call of Duty”, gamers climb levels by collecting experience points (XPs) or minutes. XPs enable gamers to rank up, or reach skill levels from which they can partner and match up against more experienced players. Ranking up is the single strongest objective/motivator of any gamer.
To create a “must-buy” sense of urgency for all three brands, Doritos and Dew worked with Activision to develop a system where gamers could accrue double XPs by entering codes found on bags of Doritos and cans/bottles of Dew. The more they purchased, or the bigger the ounce-count, the more points they accumulated.
At Walmart, purchase of exclusive family size bags of Doritos and specially-marked 20-packs of Dew provided consumers with Mega XPs, or larger units of time (up to 90 minutes) during which their point accrual would be multiplied two to nine times.
To emphasize their relevancy within the gaming community, Doritos and Dew created thematic flavors and packaging: Doritos Battle Black Pepper Jack, exclusive for Walmart, and Mountain Dew Game Fuel Cherry Citrus and Tropical flavors.
From October to December, consumers logged on to rankupxp.com to register and enter the unique codes. Every code entered automatically received points.
Marketing support included national TV and digital advertising; the Doritos Facebook page, ads on Walmart gamecenter.com; a Walmart in-store TV ad; and a 10/30 TAB feature in a Walmart circular. These included special value offers, in-store displays, retailer exclusives and PR.
Nearly 335,000 users registered to collect double experience points, while top users accumulated up to 90 days of double experience points before the game even launched. There was a 35% redemption rate and an 18% increase in the sale of Doritos’ core Nacho Cheese flavor, which carried the promotional snipe.
“Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3” had the largest entertainment launch of all time, with over 775 million copies sold in the first five days. The website generated more than 6 million unique visitors with 100+ million page views. Consumers redeemed over 20 million Doritos and Mountain Dew “Rank Up” codes during the program.