This paper tells the story of how the Doritos snack brand created a minor cultural phenomenon, and in the process stretched its consumer base to unlock new opportunities for brand growth.

Mariachi Doritos is an idea that came about by re-framing the role of our brand - transforming Doritos from makers of tortilla snacks to purveyors of party stimulation.

The big idea behind the campaign was that the Mariachi Doritos would ‘bring the party to the party’.

By creating our own branded music band covering cheesy pop songs at parties across Britain, the ‘Mariachi Doritos’ captured the spirit and fun of the Doritos brand, and acted as a metaphor for the role that Doritos could play at parties, to break down formality and help people to let their hair down.

Our band would sit at the centre of our communications as the ‘engine room’ of our content creation. They would appear at social occasions up and down the country in real people’s living rooms, dinner parties, birthday parties, BBQ’s and Christmas parties to add a little Mexican fun, and help warm up any party. The band became a huge success around Britain; performing at music festivals, playing privately for Prince Charles and were even signed by an agent.

This campaign delivered significant commercial benefit to Doritos. Prior to the campaign, Dorito had set out aggressive objectives for the brand in the UK. These included broadening the brand appeal amongst 25-44 year olds without alienating 18-24 year olds, achieving a volume and values sales uplift of 5% and finally achieving a higher ROI for Doritos’ communications than had been delivered previously.

We successfully broadened our audience without alienating our younger heartland. The band’s tour resulted in us beating our sales targets (volume sales +9%, value sales +11%: Nielsen).

The campaign ROI is £3.00 (Nielsen). The campaign’s ROI is almost twice the FMCG category norm and previous Doritos norms and is in the top 10% of all campaigns measured in the Nielsen database. Our value sales increase has contributed an additional £12.6 million pounds in incremental values sales to the brand over the length of the campaign.

By orienting our brand around a simple, relevant and fun brand purpose – to bring the party to the party – not only did we create a minor cultural phenomenon, we successfully stretched the Doritos consumer base to unlock new opportunities for brand growth.