Doritos X13D - THe Flavor of Interactive Branding

OK, this is a very cool concept. Doritos develops a new flavor (pretty tasty, I might add). Rather than just slapping a name on it and releasing it, they put it in a black bag and give it a codename "X13D". Then they develop a promotion that encourages consumers to figure out what the flavor its themselves, visit a new microsite (http://x13d.doritos.com/), and participate in a contest to name the new flavor.

Here's where it gets even better. In the past, a promotion such as this might hinge on a big cash prize, a fantastic vacation, new car, etc. So what is the prize that Doritos is offering in this promotion? 100 of the people who submit a name will be selected to become Doritos "Flavor Masters", getting a year's supply of chips (who figures out how much that is, anyway?) and membership in a tasting test panel for new flavors.

How cool is this? They're leveraging the consumer's sense of creativity and the new trend of audience participation to generate brand excitement without even having to put up an expensive prize. This isn't the first time Doritos has leverage the huge trend in user-generated content. In a move that helped draw attention to the prospect of crowd-sourced advertising, Doritos recruited fans to create their own Doritos Super Bowl commercials, and the winners were aired during Super Bowl XLI.

Although consumer-created advertising is proving to not be a big cost saving for the companies sponsoring it, it certainly gets the attention of the consumers themselves. In my book, that's a tasty reason to keep the consumer participation going strong.