The Wall Street Journal-20080201-Super Bowl Is Crunch Time for Doritos- Risky Youth Strategy

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Super Bowl Is Crunch Time for Doritos' Risky Youth Strategy

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Tujunga, Calif. -- Rudy Wilson's eyes were glued to a television monitor as a crew filmed Nivla featuring P. Oberoi, a little-known hip-hop group, performing at a staged house party. Suddenly, the PepsiCo Inc. executive spotted a problem.

A gyrating dancer in a low-cut, white sleeveless top was showing too much cleavage. And with the group competing in a contest to appear in a Doritos tortilla chip commercial on Sunday's telecast of the Super Bowl, neither Mr. Wilson nor PepsiCo nor the National Football League could afford a wardrobe malfunction.

"It has to be reshot," Mr. Wilson declared. "It should be sexy, but not sexual," he said of the dancers' wardrobe choices at another point during the shoot.

The video is part of a provocative but risky strategy by PepsiCo to give an aging megabrand new life among the YouTube and MySpace generation. After big sales declines earlier this decade, the company's Frito-Lay snack-food unit is trying to rekindle interest in its 42-year-old Doritos brand by turning over as much of its marketing as possible to the irreverent voices that attract consumers half as old as the brand. To do that, Frito-Lay in the past two years has carefully engineered an edgy marketing blitz designed to look as little engineered as possible.

PepsiCo is expecting a big pop when, at the end of the first quarter of the Super Bowl, the company will air -- at a cost of more than $5 million -- a 60-second music video featuring the winning artist or group chosen by consumers in an online vote. None of the three finalists' songs mentions Doritos, although the Doritos name and logo will be included in a text accompanying the video.

But the line is very fine between bringing the voices of a bunch of unknown Gen-Yers into a marketing campaign and truly letting go of the image of PepsiCo's second best-selling snack food after Lay's potato chips. Giving Super Bowl airtime to a song that isn't about Doritos may do nothing for sales. And if notoriously fickle young consumers suddenly conclude that Doritos marketers are trying to manipulate them, it might trigger a generational gag reflex.

The Purchase, N.Y., food-and-beverage giant has already seen the unpredictable results that can emerge from consumer participation. In a contest last year, one video on YouTube made using a clip released by Doritos welcomes viewers to the "dumba -- Doritos show."

Frito-Lay says it likes stirring the pot, says Ann Mukherjee, a vice president of marketing for Frito-Lay. So far, most young consumers don't appear to be too suspicious. The MySpace page hosting the Super Bowl video contest has attracted more than 16,000 online friends. (MySpace is a unit of News Corp., which also owns Dow Jones & Co., publisher of The Wall Street Journal).

Introduced in 1966, Doritos, which according to Frito-Lay comes from the Spanish term for "little bits of gold," rose to fame as comfort food mostly for male students and young professionals. Teens and young adults are Doritos' heaviest consumers, and their munching habits contribute to its more than $1.7 billion in annual sales in the U.S.

Frito-Lay once relied heavily on celebrities like comedian Jay Leno and Ali Landry, a former Miss USA whose Super Bowl ads earned her the moniker "Doritos Girl," to promote its chips. But about five years ago, consumers seemed to lose interest, and in 2005, U.S. unit sales for all Doritos products slipped 8.2%, according to market-research firm Information Resources Inc.

In early 2006, a new Doritos marketing team jettisoned the old blueprint and spent weeks dissecting data, reading blogs and interviewing consumers. The new team included Mr. Wilson, 32 years old, an avid videogamer who plays Xbox and Guitar Hero in his office, and tracks much of the Doritos Internet chatter. The new strategy launched with an online contest inviting consumers to design an ad for last year's Super Bowl.

In the year since, Frito-Lay has had several Doritos contests and promotions, including the "X-13D Flavor Experiment," a contest in which consumers were invited to guess the flavor of a new Doritos and to create soundtracks to a video clip the company posted online. Last fall, Comedy Central, owned by Viacom Inc., asked PepsiCo if Stephen Colbert, host of a hit Comedy Central faux-news show, could tout Doritos in a mock presidential bid.

PepsiCo agreed, and advocated for Mr. Colbert to use the company's classic nacho-cheese flavor. Mr. Colbert's campaign drew speculation from political pundits about possible violations of campaign-finance law. The companies say they didn't violate the law. A spokeswoman for John Edwards, then a real-life candidate, quipped that Mr. Colbert's "hands are stained by corporate corruption and nacho cheese." Mr. Colbert loudly munched Doritos on air.

Doritos sales are showing promise. U.S. unit sales for all Doritos products rose 6.4% in 2007, according to IRI, whose data excludes sales at Wal-Mart, warehouse clubs, convenience stores and vending machines.

Frito-Lay launched the music competition in late October, and advertising and music publications and blogs quickly picked up on it. A panel of Doritos and music-industry representatives chose 10 semifinalists, out of a pool of 352 contestants, who reflect Doritos'"bold, intense" image because they "bring a passion" to their music, Ms. Mukherjee says. PepsiCo didn't want contestants to write Doritos jingles.

Consumers picked the three finalists in December in an online vote: Kina Grannis, a 22-year-old songwriter; Landon Austin, a 19-year-old finance major at Belmont University in Nashville, Tenn.; and Nivla, a New York-based group that blends South Asian and hip-hop music. The winner's song will be released as a single by Interscope Geffen A&M, a unit of Vivendi SA's Universal Music Group.

When shooting the potential Super Bowl videos, Frito-Lay wrestled with its role. Some at the company pushed for a Doritos-signature red background for the opening to the videos. (That was overruled.) Mr. Austin wrote his song, "Waitin," as a plaintive tribute to a girl he'd liked in high school but never asked out, but in his video, he was a street crooner. "I feel good about it all," said Mr. Austin.

Preparing for the filming of the Nivla video, Ms. Mukherjee and Mr. Wilson reviewed wardrobe choices for about 20 dancers. The video was supposed to capture the cultural blend inherent in the song, "Be Easy (Koi Naa)," which is sung in English and Punjabi.

Ms. Mukherjee, a Kolkata native, wasn't going to let the provocative hip-hop flavor of the video offend viewers used to more modest Indian dances. She quickly vetoed the tight black shorts on one svelte dancer. "What you don't want is any backlash from any community," she said. "You don't want anyone saying Doritos crossed the line."