Online campaign asks Canadians to write the end of a commercial

Frito Lay Canada has just launched an online campaign that asks Canadians to write the last 20 seconds of its new Doritos commercial, asking contestants to choose which flavour will remain in production.

The commercial shows two scientists presenting two different Doritos flavours to a woman that looks as though she just stepped off the set from The Chronicles of Narnia . At the end of the unfinished video, she tells the scientists that “the lesser flavour must be destroyed”.

The contest found at WriteTheEnd.ca will be officially launched during the Canadian broadcast of the Superbowl, and it will air the final commercial containing the winner’s ending on May 5th 2011. Winners will receive $25,000 in cash and 1% of future sales of the particular flavour that was saved. Aside from financial gain, the winner will also become the first member of Doritos Think Tank, allowing them to be involved in upcoming projects.

We’re asking them to develop our content on a level that’s better than ever before, .. They have full access to our world class agencies, they can be in touch with the ad director and they’re also actually going to decide what flavour we end up with on the shelf, which is something we’ve never done before.- Haneen Khalil, marketing manager, Doritos.

While the prize is pretty nice, the more interesting story is the campaign itself. It’s somewhat intriguing to see how big brands such as Frito Lay are using the Internet and social media to market their products and engage customers. Doritos is also putting the fate of the winner in the hands of the community by asking Canadians to choose the fourteen contestants for them. If you’re interesting in watching the commercial, it can be found at the WriteTheEnd site.

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A lot of other brands got into the user generated space, so the question we asked our selves was ‘How can we top that and continue to deliver something completely different?