Frito-Lay fires up brand engagement with Doritos Jacked flavor experiment

The company recently rolled out three mystery Doritos Jacked flavors​ and asked consumers to vote on their favorite flavor. The most popular snack will brought back to shelves this fall.

Speaking to BakeryandSnacks.com, senior director of marketing at Frito-Lay Jeff Klein said such campaigns were a crucial part of the company’s wider strategy to deepen brand engagement.

“The Doritos brand is driven by consumer input and voice, which is why we launched the ‘Bold Flavor Experiment’,”​ he said.

The Doritos brand had always been built on “putting control in the hands”​ of consumers, he said. “[They’ve] always been the driving force for the brand.”​

He said the latest campaign encouraged consumers to engage on a deeper level with the brand; something critically important for business.

A snack major like Frito-Lay has to create campaigns like this… ​

David Jago, director of innovation and insight at Mintel, said such a campaign was also about generating excitement around the brand, something a company like Frito-Lay was almost obliged to do.

“It’s expected of them. If you get to the stage where you’re the category leader, who else is going to create excitement? If you don’t do it, the risk is the little, entrepreneurial guys will,”​ he said.

“They’ve got to do it to keep where they are in the category and keep their offering fresh and exciting.” ​

In addition, Jago agreed that such a campaign was important for deepening brand engagement.

“The campaign is about creating the buzz but also about developing an emotional engagement with the brand,”​ he said.

This, he added, was extremely important when targeting younger consumers. “You can never understand the consumer too well, particularly the younger consumer. They’re quite fickle and they’ll swap flavors and brands easily but a campaign like this is a way to keep them coming back to your brand.” ​

Good strategy for flavor NPD?​

From a new flavor point of view, Jago said the ‘favorite’ flavor would likely do well in the short-term, as a novelty product but added it would likely just be that.

“Generally the flavors that get picked in these campaigns stay around for a while which doesn’t surprise me as everyone wants to try it,”​ he said.

It was a good fit for the Doritos brand too, he said, because of the desire among Millennial consumers to try new flavors.