Lessons from Ten Years of Crash The Super Bowl

Most of you have heard by now that we’ve decided this will be the final year for the Doritos® Crash the Super Bowl promotion (CTSB), marking the end of a decade of unprecedented industry recognition and success. For those unaware, CTSB provides consumers with the opportunity to create a Doritos® ad that might air during the Super Bowl, and is credited as being one of the first catalysts of the consumer-generated content phenomenon back in 2007. Like many marketing programs of significance, the story of CTSB -- from “almost didn’t happen” to celebrating its 10th anniversary -- is filled with interesting twists and turns, as well as valuable lessons that are worth sharing here.

Fight for Great Ideas

CTSB was created by our promotional agency, The Marketing Arm (TMA), and originally presented to the Doritos® brand team and PR executives in 2006. The initial reaction by the marketing leadership team was negative. They were primarily concerned that consumers would not be able to deliver creative that would be worthy of airing during the Super Bowl, by far the nation’s most important advertising platform. After considerable deliberation and debate, the brand team and TMA brought back the idea for consideration, and fortunately, it was approved.  

Don’t Play It Safe   
 
When Doritos® and TMA presented CTSB to the NFL for the first time, we learned that several other Super Bowl advertisers were planning to air consumer-generated ads. However, in each of these cases, the advertiser played it safe by limiting the role of the consumer and hedging their bets by having the ads filmed and produced by a traditional advertising agency. Doritos, on the other hand, gave its consumers complete control over creative and production. By handing over that trust to consumers to deliver outstanding ads, CTSB was widely recognized for transforming the marketing landscape. CTSB was the first program to truly empower consumers in a way that was authentic and meaningful.  

Stay True to Yourself

After the extraordinary success of the first CTSB program in 2007, which included a spot called “Live the Flavor” that finished 4th in the USA Today Ad Meter, the brand team decided to change the programming focus. In 2008, we asked consumers to create a music video instead of a commercial. While we are proud the music video that aired helped launch the music career of a very talented artist, it did not play as effectively as a brand advertisement aimed at generating brand equity.  Fortunately, Doritos also aired a consumer spot called “Mouse Trap,” created the previous year, that ranked 4th in the Ad Meter, which saved CTSB from extinction. This was the last time the brand would venture away from the core idea centered on consumer-generated commercials. 

These are just a few of the important lessons we’ve learned from this remarkable program, which has won every major industry award, generated over 32,000 ads for the brand from 31 countries, produced four #1 ads in the USA Today Ad Meter, and awarded more than $7 million to support aspiring filmmakers and passionate fans.    

Want better engagement? Take a chance

As a brand, if you truly want to connect with your fans, sometimes it helps to break the bonds of ‘traditional’ in advertising to truly reach them. Take our Doritos fans, for instance. Our core audience plays on the bleeding edge of mobile technology, and to get in front of them, we need to meet them on their level instead of expecting them to come to ours. 

Driving engagement for Doritos Roulette presented us with an interesting challenge. This represented one of the most unique product experiences ever: in each handful of nacho cheese chips, one was extremely spicy, despite looking identical to all others. 

The product was one-of-a-kind and too novel to promote via the usual means. It didn’t even feature any promotional messaging. The standard framework just wouldn’t work this time. We decided that Twitter was the only appropriate path for this launch scenario.

With that in mind, we created #DoritosRoulette, an online game which seamlessly addressed four objectives central to this product:

1) Authenticity: You take a chance every time you grab a Roulette chip; that same product experience had to come across in the program. Similarly, with #DoritosRoulette you could win or get burned with every turn.

2) Engagement: We created an interface where fans could choose their own prizes and tag their friends—the burn prize remained a secret until the tweet was sent. Here are some of the user interface designs, in case you missed it:

3) Awareness: Word of mouth is always your best friend. For Roulette, we leveraged this by letting players tag three friends, who could in turn tag three more and increase their chances. Pay it forward with boldness, fans pay it back with attention. 

4) Digital-Only: Daily drawings on Twitter engaged thousands of consumers and generated millions of impressions. One day, we brought live action to #DoritosRouletteLive with Periscope, giving fans the chance to ‘win or get burned’ by the roulette wheel in real time. 

#DoritosRoulette was the single most successful limited-time-only promotion Doritos has ever done. The graphic along the side provides a snapshot of the program and really illustrates how adapting to your consumer can instantaneously transform the face of a product. 

Re-Thinking Audience Targeting

We all know that serving up content to the right audience results in better engagement. Marketers have been doing this since the early days of Google and banner networks. And as social platforms get better at inferring our interests and matching them up with brand content, the consumer experience has the potential to become a lot more relevant -- a win-win for both sides of the marketing equation. After all, relevance means attention means action. 

While this represents a huge leap from simple demographic targeting that has been the staple of marketers since the first magazine rolled off the printing press, I think it’s time we also evolve our perspective to look beyond the audience and see this as an opportunity to target the actual content being served.

This is the insight we tapped into when we came up with an idea for Doritos that leveraged interests to not only reach the right audiences, but serve them the most compelling content. 

We know that emojis have quickly become an everyday part of the internet vernacular. So we got creative by combining emojis in the caption line of Facebook posts with autoplay videos under them. What did we get? Emoji heads with different animated bold bodies. Voila!….the BOLD emoji was born.  

I’m a huge fan of hacking, and I believe that a simple change in perspective can often lead to the best hacks. This example of using the same features and functions available to all brands, but doing so in a novel way is something that I think Facebook would agree is a great example of a creative “hack” of their existing platform. We created three of these to start and will serve them up to surfers, drummers, and shark enthusiasts. Check them out below. You can see how the possibilities are endless. Micro audience targeting? No, micro content targeting, my friends. 

Given that football season is around the corner and everyone knows – well, Facebook knows – I’m a Michigan fan, I’m hoping for a Wolverine emoji showing up in my feed soon.

Leading through an evolving consumer landscape

The environment in which we live and work today is neither simple nor static. It is patterned, but not predictable.  And while it is reassuring, simply managing the probable leaves us more vulnerable to being blindsided. Some problems do not lend themselves to rote methods, simple models, or sophisticated algorithms. However, when we treat them as different, complex, and uncertain, we can unlock solutions of immense creativity and power.

How do we as leaders make that a reality instead of an aspiration? I find that by exercising three simple habits of mind, we can consistently create an impact in the marketplace:

• Hold opposing ideas without reconciling them. If it looks as though we’re confronting an either/or choice, we can reconsider our narrow framing and examine what we’re missing.
• Don’t waste time arguing about the best solution; instead, pick several good solutions and experiment with them on a smaller scale. Data and technology enable this constant testing and learning.
• Instead of hunting for the root cause, look to the edges of an issue for your experiments. The company's core is most resistant to change, but tinkering at the periphery can deliver outsized returns.

These are some of the ways I’ve consciously adjusted my thinking in order to more effectively adapt to our ever-changing marketing environment. I would love to know what habits of mind you’ve adopted to help navigate this change. 

Beyond Marketing

Just a thought to re-shift our perspective out of the marketing box for a moment…

I saw a powerful documentary short last weekend, Last Mile, that tells the remarkable story of a tech incubator operating behind the iron bars of San Quentin federal prison. Founded by venture capitalist Chris Redlitz, the incubator acts as a resource for inmates to stay current on rapidly advancing technology, learn business techniques, presentation skills, and in some cases even receive funding for their ideas. 

The United States currently incarcerates 1 in nearly 100 American adults. Research over the past two decades by stakeholders across various jurisdictions shows that there are better ways to protect our communities than mass incarceration. Yes, we will still need to be tough on crime, but in ways that emphasize personal responsibility, promote rehabilitation and treatment, and allow for the provision of victim restitution where applicable. I thought it was a powerful case of how the private sector and technology can come together to offer alternative and effective solutions to long-standing societal issues like prisoner re-habitation. When we think about return on investment, it’s important to sometimes think about what return really means. 

The Super Bowl livestream ad bundle. All in or wait-and-see?

I tweeted earlier in the week about the decision by CBS to livestream Super Bowl ads and how this represents the first time a network has required advertisers to purchase an online spot along with their broadcast spot since livestreaming of games became available in 2012. 

I believe that this is a step toward finally recognizing that TV time has evolved to becoming a shared experience with the smartphone and tablet, and that all networks and advertisers need to adapt to the multi-screen world that consumers live in. It is also clear that this bundling is a smart revenue tactic by CBS. As an advertiser who has been part of the last nine Super Bowls, I have mixed feelings about the bundling move and the fact that the advertiser can’t opt out. According to Variety, NBC’s online stream of this year’s game attracted 2.5 million unique viewers. While this number is large, when put into the context of the 112.2 million who tuned into the broadcast, this audience size was miniscule.

My question for CBS and other networks is if you believe in the multi-screen world the consumers have migrated to, then why not mandate and sell all your TV content bundled with online spots? As an advertiser I want to pay to reach the total audience across multiple devices on which the content is consumed. I realize that the Super Bowl bundle represents a symbolic leap toward this new paradigm for content, consumption and reach, but unless the networks can apply this consistently across everyday programming, I’m afraid it will remain simply that. In other words, you’ve got the ball - are you going to run with it?

Guest post: How good does it really have to be?

Incredibly privileged to have a guest writer on my blog. One of the legendary creatives whose landmark campaigns has defined the advertising world for decades: Mr. Jeff Goodby of Goodby, Silverstein and Partners. I thought it would be interesting for marketers to get Jeff’s perspective, as he has been a fixture at Cannes for many years, including being the President of the overall Cannes in 2002. 

Jeff Goodby's bio:

Jeff grew up in Rhode Island and graduated from Harvard, where he wrote for the Harvard Lampoon. He worked as a newspaper reporter in Boston, and his illustrations have been published in TIME, Mother Jones and Harvard Magazine.

He began his advertising career at J. Walter Thompson and was lucky enough to meet the legendary Hal Riney, whom he still thinks of as his mentor, at Ogilvy & Mather. It was with Riney that Goodby learned his reverence for surprise, humor, craft and restraint.

He also met a guy named Rich Silverstein at Ogilvy & Mather. They founded GS&P in 1983. Since then, the two have won just about every advertising award imaginable.

Two commercials he directed were selected to be among the top 30 advertising films of the 1990s by The One Club. In 2006 he was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame.

Jeff lives in Oakland, California, with his family, a dog, a cat, a rabbit, three horses and probably some other things he doesn’t know about.

Jeff's Post:

One of the themes I heard about from several sources this week might be described as “the return of content.” 

It’s not like content has gone anywhere. There’s more of it now than at any time in history, and we’ve created a maw that will only demand greater shovels’ full.  

What people are talking about, I think, is a return to content of a higher quality per unit time. It’s a recognition that, in a now sped-up content war, it’s better to drop bigger and bigger, higher quality bombs during the moments we have with our audiences.  

This was a theme amidst the two most interesting conversations I had this week – with Nick Denton of Gawker, and Jonah Perretti of Buzzfeed. Both said, in effect, that there would be a greater and greater emphasis on the quality of content as the number of pipes we could push it through leveled off over time.  

Jonah cited the “Short Girl” phenomenon. “We ran a feature about short girl,” he said, “and it was such a hit that we had to keep putting out more and more content around the same theme. Eventually, it was ‘Adventures of Short Girl.’ People loved it. And then it was over.” 

It struck me that this was more or less like network television showrunning at light speed. The show was hatched, episodes ran, themes ran their course, all in a few days. The quality per episode hasn’t had to be all that high.  

Yet. 

How good does our content have to be, to do its job? So far, not all that great. But as time goes on, it will have to be better and better. Because, as Peter Mead quotes David Abbott in his terrific new book: “Crap at the speed of light is still crap.” 

A few questions arise. What is the role of agencies, going forward? Who will run this world? 

I think the winners will be anyone who rises above the hack level and starts to produce quality, lasting, really fast stuff. It’s like eye-blink Merchant Ivory. These new companies might be agencies, if they’re smart, but they might be more like a new kind of production company, built to have a particular sensitivity to marketers and advertisers. You could argue that content companies like CAA and smart clients like Nike and Frito-Lay are already in this business. But it will get so much more sophisticated over time.  

We are a long way from dedicating ourselves to great quality per unit time, however. Think about it. Will people excitedly enjoy reviews of the Internet content of our era?  Maybe in concept form – “Hey, remember cat videos?  Remember Bubble Boy?”  -- but not in specifics. There will be no amount of nostalgia that will make us revisit reality TV celebrity selfies in the same way we watch, for instance, old media like great Levi’s commercials. People will not fill the Grand Audi auditorium to watch presentations of “Remember when we hashtagged the shit out of that party?” 

Buried in here of course are deeper questions about us all as humans. Will we demand this higher level of quality or just settle for the smattering onslaught of so-so content we love to gobble from the big fire hose? Will we evolve and even change genetically into a race of animals with shorter attention spans and shallower yet faster processing capabilities?  

When I start talking this way, I think I must be nearing the end of Cannes week.  

I hope you all had fun and learned as much as I did.  

Final thoughts from Cannes Lions

We have come to the end: this is my final report from the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity.

It’s been overwhelming and inspiring. The sheer volume of work on display was daunting and I won’t pretend that I was able to see more than a small portion. But what I did see renewed my faith in the ability of like-minded people to come together to find creative solutions to some of our biggest challenges.

Much has been written about how some Cannes entries seem designed to be, well, Cannes entries. There were lots of PSAs and one-off projects that told a great story, but some question if they were really in service of a brand and its business goals.

But that strikes me as a cynical view. I saw a lot of great work that strived to add value to consumers’ lives. Great brands understand that adding value is the best way to get consumers to reach for them on the shelves. I’m all for marketing that puts more value into the marketplace.  

As the festival winds down, the final batch of awards was handed out for film and film craft, for branded content, and the “granddaddy” category: integrated/titanium. 

By the final days of the festival, some campaigns are well known, having collected awards in earlier categories, and this final batch serves a victory lap where they add more to their haul.  Campaigns like the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, House of Mamba and #LikeAGirl (highlighted in earlier posts) received more top honors at the final ceremony.

Some other standouts: 

Emoji Ordering – The Titanium Grand Prix went to Dominos for this simple but smart idea: let people order a pizza simply by tweeting the pizza emoji. And kudos to the jury for celebrating an idea that actually sells a product. (Ironically, this campaign didn’t even shortlist in the “Mobile” category, which just goes to show how subjective this whole award thing can be.)

Clever Buoy – Talk about “adding value” for your customers, how about saving them from a shark attack? This clever campaign took home a Titanium award as well.  

RE2PECT – Nike’s impressive campaign that tapped into social media to showcase the love that players, celebrities and fans had for Derek Jeter at the time of his retirement took home the Integrated Grand Prix.

Un-Skippable Ads – A why-didn’t-we-think-of-that idea from Geico built on the simple, but revolutionary question, “What if we made a pre-roll ad that people didn’t want to skip after 5 seconds?” (And I like that a great insight about online/mobile behavior was the genesis of the Film category’s big winner).

Monty the Penguin – This charming holiday spot from John Lewis won the Grand Prix in Film Craft. A reminder that great storytelling combined with craft can lead to something special. This was also one of the most shared pieces of content last year.

Whether branded content or film or integrated, the best-of-the-best had a clear point of view, told a compelling story, was emotionally engaging and (here it is again) provided value to those who interacted with the work. It’s a great reminder of what we should look for whenever we marketers green-light new work. 

Many post-mortems will be written about what this year’s festival means for the future of advertising. The rise of ad tech and gender equality in advertising were two big themes this festival. But the biggest theme, for me, was the transformative power of creativity: what it can do for people and, yes, what it can do for brands. 

I’m grateful to everybody who helped make possible my first trip to the Cannes festival, especially the Frito-Lay team back in Plano who kept things rolling while I was away. I’m coming back with lots of inspiration and a new appreciation for what’s possible in our work together. 

Highlights from cyber, er, digital…or whatever we’re calling modern marketing

The anachronistically-named “Cyber” category is full of a wide range of work showing that the lines between traditional-digital-mobile-experiential are forever blurred. 

Here are a few of my favorites: 

Honda – The Other Side – This ingenious execution received a lot of deserved attention when it launched a few months back and it’s racking up wins this year at Cannes. This product demo feels like a feature film with a digital interface -- a technological marvel with a great story at its core. 

Nike – House of Mamba – The coolest basketball court I’ve ever seen. As Kobe Bryant himself said, “I didn’t even know this was possible.” For a brand like Nike, which has embraced technology to provide a better athletic experience, this was a real-world digital execution that perfectly manifested Nike’s core values. 

Samsung – Safety Truck – A great example of a brand using technology to improve the lives of its customers in a very direct way. As their case study proclaims, “instead of changing people’s lives, we’re saving them” – now that’s a big idea!

Deep dive on mobile

Regular readers of this blog know my feelings on mobile: it’s really the only screen that matters.

So I spent some extra time this week digging into the Mobile entries. There is an incredible range of smart, interesting work happening in the space. And yet, it still feels like we’re in the early days of really uncovering the full potential of the medium.

I think that’s one of the reasons that Google Cardboard won the Grand Prix in Mobile (I wrote about it earlier on my post about ad tech).  Everybody is searching for the next big thing and those companies and brands that are pushing the medium into new territories are being rewarded.

Here are a few other favorites:

The Unforgotten – Heartbreakingly powerful work from the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence. This was an art installation with a mobile component, providing a forum for the physical and digital worlds to mesh, without any of the usual clunkiness. Mobile video made it come alive but it was woven together in such a way that the story was the story, not the technology.

Madden Giferator –  Built upon insights around how competitive football fans can be, this combined so many elements integral to mobile-social culture: second-screen commentary/banter, real-time content generation, memes, gifs, and more. And the brand was a critical element of the execution, not merely something tacked on at the end. This was also a great example of a partnership between a brand and multiple agency partners. 

Hammerhead – One of those ideas that you see and say, “Of course!” This product is a wonderfully intuitive use of mobile technology for cycling and an application that can make our roads safer. 

Inspiration everywhere you turn

There’s so much inspiring work to see and nowhere near enough time to see it all. The exhibition hall is jam-packed with so many ideas, ads and case studies that I know I’ll only be able to see a small portion of all that’s here to take in. 

To see the shortlisted and award-winning work, I encourage you to spend some time “wandering the halls” virtually on the Cannes site (Public access is limited to this week and a short time after the festival, so please visit soon).

Always #LikeAGirl – I’d seen this work when serving on the Grand Effie jury earlier this year and it’s still just as inspiring. It won a well-deserved Grand Prix in PR, collected honors in other categories and looks like it will be one of the big winners at this year’s festival. It tapped into a cultural movement and supported the cause, the hashtag was memorable, easily sharable, and it reiterates that the classic persuasion model is dead. You have to create content that consumers want to embrace.

Dove #SpeakBeautiful – Another entry in the long-running Dove Beauty campaign, this is a great example of using the power of social media to tap into pop culture and stamp out negative self-image tweets from women. Tactically, it was smart to center it around the Oscar broadcast, when so much attention is paid to the way women look. Oh, and it had a great hashtag. You know how I love a great hashtag.

The year of ad tech

In the weeklong hothouse of Cannes Lions, different themes, gossip and predictions rise and fall amidst the chatter between the seminars, after-award presentations, and the thousands of meetings that take place along the Promenade de la Croisette.

Certainly, the well-documented rash of media account reviews (more than 20 in the last eight months, representing between $17 and $25 billion in business) is a hot topic. Technology is undoubtedly one of the driving forces behind this phenomenon. With the rise of online video and the maturation of mobile and social channels, we marketers want to be sure we have best-in-class partners as the media mix shifts. 

Plus (and this will come as no surprise to regular readers of this blog) there’s a desire for analytics that more clearly demonstrate ROI. Marketers are seeking next-generation metrics that reflect real engagement and value, not just clicks or likes.

It’s also clear that ad tech is a major topic at this year’s festival. Long-time attendees tell me that the presence of vendors in the ad tech space this year is unprecedented. 

And that makes sense. The ad tech marketplace seems to double in size each year. Earlier this year, chiefmartec.com put out this vendor snapshot that confirmed that I wasn’t imagining the increased number of tech pitches I was seeing in my inbox.

Many of them are here at Cannes too. 

And it’s interesting to me that one of the early Grand Prix winners (the first four were handed out Monday) comes from one of the biggest players in ad tech: Google.

Google Cardboard won the Grand Prix in Mobile, beating out thousands of app entries and digital ideas. The win was not without controversy: it was submitted directly by a client and not an agency and, technically, one of the most traditionally-technical prizes was captured by, well, a cardboard box. 

Ironic as it was, this illustrates what Cannes was designed to celebrate: innovation. This low-cost virtual-reality solution created a platform that opened the door for others to create their own ways to use technology. 

I’ve written before about how platforms like YouTube gave Doritos a chance to embrace a customer co-creation program like “Crash the Super Bowl.” To me, Google Cardboard is another such platform whose potential has been barely scratched.

As technology dominates more and more of the buzz at Cannes and beyond, it’ll be interesting to see which of these break out to become true game changers and which will simply be swept into the bells n’ whistles box once the dust and glitter settles. 

The lion grows up

In case you missed my last post, I’m writing you this week from the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.

It’s my first time at the festival and my first impression is that all the clichés are true. On one hand, it’s all too much—the spectacle, the competition, the over-the-top parties, the self-promotion, the celebrity cameos, the postcard setting along the French Riviera, etc. On the other hand, it’s inspiring to see the world’s best work, to hear from marketing’s top-thinkers, and to get away from your day-to-day responsibilities long enough to dream about the future of the brands you oversee. 

Cannes veterans talk about the festival with an insider’s shorthand. But as a first-timer (and for those of us who haven’t had a chance to attend) it’s helpful to understand a little bit about the history of the festival and how it became the “Oscars” of the marketing world.

The festival was born (perhaps appropriately) from envy. In the early 1950s, members of the Screen Advertising World Association looked at the International Film Festival that had been staged in Cannes since the late 1940s and said, “advertising films deserve their own show too.”

The first festival was held in Venice, Italy in 1954 and it attracted 187 entries from 14 countries. There were two categories: TV and Cinema. 130 people attended, according to event archives.

Who was the big winner at that first festival? This toothpaste commercial from Italy: 

During the early years, it alternated locations (Monte Carlo, Venice and Cannes all hosted) before Cannes became its permanent home in 1984.  

It wasn’t until the early 1990s that the festival programming expanded to include seminars and added categories beyond film. With the addition of press and outdoor categories in 1992, the “film festival” was rechristened an “advertising festival.”

As the years rolled on, and advertising’s footprint morphed from traditional media to the hydra we have today, additional categories were added: Cyber (1998), Media (1999), Direct (2002), Radio and Integrated (2005), Promo (2006), Design (2008), PR (2009), Film Craft (2010), Effectiveness (2011), Branded Content and Mobile (2012), Innovation (2013), Product Design (2014).

There are also now two-day mini-festivals for Health and Innovation that extend the festival’s reach. 

To say that the festival has grown over the years is an understatement.

The numbers for this year’s weeklong festival are staggering: 40,133 award entries, more than 12,500 delegates from more than 95 countries (and many more non-registered attendees are floating around town). There are 130 official seminars -- and that doesn’t include the hundreds of additional sessions sponsored by agencies, brands and vendors. The festival will almost certainly surpass the record 542 million Twitter mentions set last year. And there are more numbers that tell the tale. 

Cannes is such a big, sprawling beast that it spawns numerous “How to Survive Cannes” articles every year in the days leading up to the festival. 

Another telling number: 25%. That’s the percentage, according to Cannes organizers, of registered attendees last year who were marketers, like myself. If my presence is any indication, that number is going up this year. While Cannes may have been a private party for agency creatives back in the day, there is no doubt that brands are reveling alongside them these days. 

I’m looking forward to seeing what we all learn together this week.

Seek innovation, not perfection

Later this week, I will not be sitting here: 

Instead, I will at the Cannes Advertising Festival observing, learning, and bringing lessons back from the most innovative work in the world to inspire my marketing department.

This will be my first time attending Cannes, so naturally I’m very excited about it. 

Beyond the rosé and the beaches (I hear that’s what they do in France, but I don’t drink) what I’m most excited about are Frito-Lay’s submissions to this year’s festival -- especially because they are all ideas borne out of a personal philosophy of mine:

“Imperfect action trumps thoughtful inaction.”

It’s a maxim that isn’t often followed in the marketing industry, but should be. Don’t wait around to make something perfect when you’ve got something great that you can run with today. 

Think about it. You usually know whether an idea is going to be great or not the minute you hear about it. So why spend countless hours iterating, perfecting, tweaking and over-thinking when you can perfect it as you go? The marketing landscape is littered with great ideas that never saw the light of day because perfection was the team’s goal, rather than success. 

You can’t have success if you don’t put something out there. 

I’ve talked about the 70/20/10 principle on this blog before. Originally covered in the Harvard Business Review, the principle refers to a balanced approach to innovation where 70 percent of a company’s efforts should be focused on core activities, 20 percent to adjacent ones (validated risk), and 10 percent towards transformational ideas. 

At Frito-Lay, we have applied this principle to marketing, and we have empowered our agencies and the marketing department to bring more 10 percent ideas. These are ideas that aren’t fully formed nor perfected, but they are different, game-changing, and great the moment you encounter them. 

I charged myself and our leadership team to approve more of those ideas and charged my teams with getting them quickly out into the world once approved. Modern marketing departments need to be full of idea makers, not idea iterators. 

This is how you are going to win in the digital world. Everyone is a creator. There are no boundaries. 

We are fortunate to have agency partners like Goodby Silverstein & Partners, OMD, TMA and Ketchum who also fully embrace this new world – they did it with Crash the Super Bowl early on – and they continue to do it as we explore new marketing territory. 

The most validating aspect of all this is the fact that all of our submissions to Cannes were 10 percent ideas. 

Enjoy a few of them below, and look out for more missives as I post from Cannes in the coming days.

Tostitos Chip Kelly 

Every Chip Gets a Dip Tostitos Campaign. Watch the ad here.

Doritos Boldest Radio

Cheeteau, the wonderfully cheesy fragrance that Chester Cheetah graced the world with on April Fool’s Day. See the ad below; see the Cannes Lions video entry summary here.

YouTube’s Legacy: The Rise of the Consumer Creator

Last week marked the 10-year anniversary of the first video uploaded to YouTube. 

Whether that feels like just yesterday or forever, and honestly it feels like both, it’s hard to imagine a world without YouTube and its stars. YouTube has risen from its humble beginnings to a business so big that it's as much a household word as any brand that has been around for generations. One billion unique monthly users? Yes. Six billion hours of video watched each month? Yes. Over 100 hours worth of video uploaded each minute. Yes. All, yes. 

Dominance in every way of the online video space is even a huge understatement. YouTube hasn’t only drawn massive audiences, it has become an arena for creating stars that often dwarf those being produced by Hollywood. Michelle Phan was one of the earliest YouTube adopters to find fame on the platform. Over the past seven years, she has uploaded more than 300 beauty tutorials and her more than six million subscribers and almost one billion video views have made her a star in every sense of the word. Most interesting thing about her? She put herself out there and the people made her a star. No middleman required.

Interesting parallel to this success story is the fact that we launched one of the first large-scale consumer User Generated Content (UGC) campaigns with Doritos Crash the Super Bowl in 2007. The creative brief was simple: create a 30-second ad celebrating your love for Doritos for a chance to have it air during the Super Bowl. Pretty much in the spirit of all things YouTube.

And the people liked it. Nine years later, that consumer love has generated:

• 32,000+ Doritos ads created by consumers
• A 6-month engagement program with consumers every year (submission phase, finalist phase, voting phase, reveal on Super Bowl)
• $6MM+ in grand prize money awarded
• Last year, the winning consumer won $1MM and a job on the set of Avengers
• Submissions from 31 countries
• #1 ad in USA Today Ad Meter three times
• Top 5 ad all 9 Years per USA Today Ad Meter

New creators, new opportunities. Awarding this year's Crash The Super Bowl winner.

You could say our Doritos consumers seized the moment and have given Madison Ave a run for its money.  The dawn of YouTube and Doritos Crash the Super Bowl fundamentally altered the creators and consumer equation, with technology being the great equalizer. Every person with a smartphone is a potential creator. 

The old “one percent rule” assumed that only one percent of an online audience creates content, while an additional 9 percent modify or edit the content, and the remaining 90 percent consume it. It’s called an old rule for a reason: we’ve been in the midst of a major paradigm shift. The internet is becoming more participatory, thanks to the development of democratizing tools; and this has paved the way for a lot more than one percent to be curators and creators.

Ten years ago, creating a webseries that would get millions of viewers without a significant investment was virtually Impossible. You would need to build a site, configure video players, host and serve content, then begin to work on cultivating an audience. Today, a little desire and a smartphone is all one needs to become a content creator. YouTube (and likely many more to come after it) has eliminated the barriers that used to come between creative inspiration, content and distribution.  

As someone who has seen firsthand what eliminating those barriers can accomplish, I actively support it as a marketer; however, more importantly, I am truly inspired and excited by it as a consumer. 

3 Takeaways from the Ad Age Digital Conference:

Last week, I had the opportunity to take part in a panel discussion on technology and the consumer experience at the Ad Age Digital Conference in New York.  As an executive who embraces the idea of the marketing technologist, I very much enjoyed the timely topics, diverse POVs, and range of speakers. I’d like to share my favorite takeaways from the event:

• Attention Metrics – In order to address viewability concerns, the industry is beginning to look toward a new way to measure: “Time Spent.”  I would say it’s about time! As an advertiser, I was losing confidence in a proactive solve from publishers.  Other potential metrics discussed were CPH (Cost per hour) or CP30 (Cost per 30 seconds). Prediction was in the next year, we will start to see a shift across publishers and advertisers.  
• Transforming “Storytelling” into “Story Making" – More and more, brands are tapping into what consumers are creating and sharing with each other vs. pushing the story. Could not agree more. Today’s consumer is seeking active engagement with brands, and the opportunity is ripe for brands to create a much more passion-driven organic narrative instead of simply pushing out brand-centric content. More on this from Ad Age. 
• Building a Culture of Creatives – It is important for companies to foster a culture of creativity to keep up with the speed of our ever-changing content creation and consumption environment.  A good idea can come from anyone within the organization.  I am a firm believer of this approach. Would love to hear POVs on how organizations are accomplishing this.

I think it’s beyond clear that these takeaways don’t simply represent landscape or industry shifts. These are profound changes to the fundamental core of how brands engage and connect with the consumer. From this point on, successful marketing will be determined by how willing organizations are to truly internalize these shifts into their marketing DNA.

SXSW…Still packing a punch for brands?

Unless you steered clear of the Internet for the first half of March, you probably noticed more tweets and articles about South by Southwest than you ever thought possible. And of course, there was Meerkat. While it debuted a few weeks earlier, SXSW was definitely where it enjoyed its moment in the limelight (and with Twitter’s Periscope now in play, I fear that a moment is all it’s going to get). Despite its short time in existence, Meerkat’s real-time streaming has already been used to broadcast everything from protests in Ferguson and celebrity narcissism, to the swearing-in of federal government officials. SXSW definitely lived up to its reputation as the place where the conversation of the day takes place. 

Social stream-of-consciousness aside, the question I pose today is from the perspective of the brand: is there still a value to SXSW?

We certainly thought so in 2012 when Doritos unveiled a 64 ft. vending machine on the #boldstage for the first time to introduce Doritos Jacked to the world. 

… and in 2013, when Tesla coils kicked off the Doritos #boldstage, fully interactive concert experience. We turned things up once more in 2014, when Doritos brought a fully immersive experience inside the #boldstage, making consumers complete a bold challenge to enter.

However, after 3 years of going all in with the Doritos #boldstage, we sat out this year’s SXSW, pondering the inevitable question: are the brands that sponsor free shows even getting their money’s worth?  Is content marketing really the way of the future; does it build long-term brand equity? I would love to hear from brands that have been at SXSW the past few years, and compare learnings.

I’ll admit sitting out this year was tough. SXSW has always been a major awareness builder for us, but the time has come for the brand to start thinking about reinvesting attention on new emerging opportunities.  I personally oscillated between resentment and respect as I followed the brands at SXSW this year. I resented that I missed out, and wasn’t part of the action at arguably the most pop culturally relevant event of the year, but I must say I respected them too… mostly because they seem to have good taste in music.

People want to engage with ideas, not advertising

When you walk away from a 19- year relationship with college football’s Fiesta Bowl to go “pro” with America’s #1 sports property, communicating that fact can be almost as difficult as the decision itself.

How do you announce something as epic as “Tostitos is now the official chip and dip sponsor of the NFL” and match the magnitude of that message with your actions?  It couldn’t simply be on TV, or even online. This had to be one for all the senses. It had to be all encompassing. It had to be an experience. Thus, Tostitos Party BLVD was born.

The concept: American Ninja warrior meets the ultimate party games.

From Wednesday through Sunday at Super Bowl 49, party met sports as Tostitos challenged fans to complete in a series of larger-than-life tailgate games, while capturing their team spirit with slow motion video, and helping them get their snack on with new Tostitos products.  The BLVD spanned two city blocks, and established itself as the ultimate party destination in downtown Phoenix.  Fans tested their speed, agility and humility as they tackled a variety of backyard party games, including:

• Slingshot Blitz: A party game favorite reimagined as an arcade-style experience complete with surprising special effects. 
• Double Dipper Dunk: A duel-themed twist on the classic dunk tank, this game invited participants to hit a target opposite them with a football, to “dunk” their opponent into a massive bowl of Tostitos dip.
• Mega-Mecha Cornhole: The biggest and baddest game of beanbag toss anyone could ever imagine – a true test of man vs. machine. 

To fuel the competitive spirit, we outfitted participants with wristbands embedded with RFID technology to track their scores and power a “Giferator” that showed images and videos of them showing off their skills.  We also captured real time user-generated #PartyBLVD tagged images and videos to populate an online content hub.

Because a true party isn’t complete without guests who can bring the fun, former San Diego Chargers running back, LaDainian Tomlinson, arguably one of the greatest players of the game (and a guy who knows a thing or two about an awesome tailgate party) and Chip Kelly, Head Coach of the Philadephia Eagles, joined the festivities. They interacted with fans, provided tips to game players, and even got in on the action themselves, challenging participants for top honors.

The “Big Games” may only have lasted a short while, but the bragging rights were forever, and I’m not just talking about the fans. With 1 billion fun-filled impressions generated, we know that people aren’t simply aware that Tostitos is the official chip and dip sponsor of the NFL. They’ve fully engaged with the “idea” of what Tostitos + NFL truly means. And that’s a game well played!

#PARTYBLVD Fun Facts:

Creating of these games took over 1000 man-hours of custom fabrication and painting. 

• The dip jars were 14' wide by 13' tall – large enough to hold 86,633 standard sized jars of salsa.
• You’d need a Tostitos chip that was 6 ft tall to dip this jar of salsa.
• The Pepsi cups were 3 ft tall and 2.5 feet wide at the top, which means they could hold 430 liters of Pepsi. 
• The Double Dipper Dunk game platforms incorporated a two-story drop. Custom engineered and machined trap doors were designed just for this. 
• An entire semi-truck was needed to transport all the foam needed for the padding and pit. 
• At max pressure, the Mega Mecha Cornhole cannon could fire a beanbag over 80 feet – just enough distance to score the extra point after a touchdown.

Check out the timelapse video of Tostitos Party BLVD being built:

... and here are the games in action:

Before I sign out, I wanted to acknowledge the hard work, vision and creativity of my team members Jeff, Tyler, Pablo, Dana, Neha, Liza, Troy, and Christine, without whom these larger-than-life dip jars, cannons and slingshots would not have been possible.

Observations from Super Bowl 49

WOW… what a game that turned out to be! For a guy like me, it’s hard to pick which floored me more: the game itself, or the record rating of 49.6, which beat last year (47.6), as well as the previous high from New Orleans (48.1). 

Aside from Katy Perry’s “flamin’ hot” entrance, dancing sharks, a heartbreaking call (depending where your team loyalties lie), and an insurance ad that left people speechless (momentarily at least), the most noteworthy thing about year’s Super Bowl was how much more digital-first it was than ever before. I think we can all agree on one thing  -- “watching” the Super Bowl no longer means what it used to.

The Broadcast Has Gone Broadband
The most noticeable difference was that much of NBC’s broadcast of the game didn’t involve broadcasting. 

• First-ever free streaming to laptop, PC, or tablet
• Instant posting and curation of the ads to a Tumblr page as they aired
• First-ever livestream of the halftime show

This marks the beginning of a redefinition of the Super Bowl “stage” and “moment,” since audiences can no longer be considered “captive” as they jump freely from platform to platform. 

Tech Takes Advantage
This change in content consumption and engagement is why we saw tech media brands like YouTube and Facebook leaning in with new offerings.

• YouTube hosted for the first time a YouTube SB Halftime Show, with YouTube stars, fake spots, stunts and other entertainment to lure attention (and future marketers). I am anxious to see how much viewership it attracted versus the 118 million who tuned into the Pepsi Katy Perry Half time show on NBC.
• Facebook, interestingly, conducted real-time tracking of user posts during the game, and used that data to offer hyper-targeted ads to advertisers.  Again, a first. But I have to wonder if this is truly a scalable game changer or if it merely adds more meaningless second-screen clutter. 

It’s the Game Around the Game
For us as advertisers, capitalizing on our large SB investment has now clearly become more about the social world surrounding the big game, than the in-game time itself. This is exactly why we saw so many brands leaking teasers of their ads. In fact, last year:

• 45% of Americans sought out ads before kickoff
• 160 MM Super Bowl ad views were recorded on YouTube before the game even began

Of course, our Doritos team had to bring some levity to the mad rush to release ads early. In signature Doritos style, as always.

Hacking the Super Bowl
Let’s face it, “teasers” have become table stakes. The best advertisers attempted radically different creative strategies to break through. 

• Bud Light built a life-sized Pac-Man experience in LA and used pics and videos of the set to promote their spot, “Coin,” in which one unsuspecting dude was invited to play.
• PepsiCo launched a reality show featuring Food Network star Anne Burrell, and eight culinary students in a cooking competition.
• Hacking or Crashing the Super bowl is something, we on the Doritos team have pioneered for the past 9 years. Doritos consumers were engaged for 5 months leading up to game day. The engagement we got from asking consumers to create the ads, narrowing down the 10 finalists, and then asking the consumers to vote on the ad that should air on Super Bowl Sunday has always made it a stand out “hack” of the super bowl. http://crashthesuperbowl.doritos.com/finalists

The 10 Crash the Super Bowl finalists at the Doritos suite getting ready to find out in real time who the winner was.

• Carnival and GoDaddy borrowed a page from the Doritos playbook and employed voting to engage audiences around their Super Bowl efforts. Carnival had fans vote on one of four spots to air, and GoDaddy had people vote on the name of a puppy in their ad (“Buddy” won). 

Getting Serious
I also noticed a creative trend with brands getting more serious, making a statement to the Super Bowl audience rather than eliciting a laugh. In social media, the strategy of these brands was to start real conversations about real issues. 

• Toyota had an ad this year called “To be a Dad” which strikes a more serious, emotional chord. 
• Dove had a spot called “Real Strength,” a recut of a Father’s Day spot with a new hashtag. 
• That aforementioned insurance ad from Nationwide warrants a mention here too, since it forced everyone to think of their own child dying. 

As I take these observations back with me to Dallas to derive new insights and strategies, I can’t help but welcome this changing landscape and the challenges it brings. We may have lost the traditional paradigm of audiences “glued to the TV set,” but in the long run, being able to transcend platforms and engage on their terms means to me that the experience can only become more real, which only creates stronger, more genuine connections. 

Bringing Art & Science to #SB49

“Active” Art
To generate awareness and excitement for Tostitos Party BLVD across the Phoenix metro area, and get people talking about the biggest party in America, we unveiled larger-than-life Tostitos art installations in two of the most highly trafficked malls in the area. The installations drive engagement by inviting the consumer to ‘complete’ the art. To promote sharing and conversation across social media channels, consumers are also encouraged to take pictures and share their “masterpieces” with the #PartyBLVD hashtag for a chance to win a year’s supply of chips and dip.

iBeacon location sensor

Mobile FTW!
Tostitos is also one of the first brands to incorporate seamless mobile engagement through the use of iBeacons. Through iBeacons placed at the art installations, the ASU campus, light rail locations, sports bars and other high traffic areas, we are pushing coupons and promotions triggered by users’ locations to drive awareness of PartyBLVD. 

Kudos to my team members Ashwin, Liza & Dana, a.k.a. the Frito-Lay “bold” marketers, for pushing the 10 in “70-20-10” (70% tried & tested, 20% validated new, 10% inventing-the-future “new”)