The assignment for aspiring game designers was simple: Use Doritos as inspiration for the game, thinking about the iconic shape and bold flavors. Thousands of game ideas were submitted and five finalists were flown to Seattle to meet with Xbox development teams to begin working on flash-based, playable beta versions of their game concepts. Each beta game was posted on our custom site, unlockxbox.com, and America was invited to play and vote for their favorite game, ultimately leading to the winner. The broader audience of the core Doritos consumer responded to the invitation in social networking arenas like MySpace, where the message was disseminated virally among Doritos’ 10,000 MySpace friends.

Our specialised expertise in gaming and relationship with Microsoft converged in a game-changing idea that had never been realised before: for the first time, Doritos gave consumers unprecedented access to the Xbox 360 platform and Microsoft professional game designers.

Doritos sales +13%C&G stores sales +16% +2,300 submissions 580,000 unique visitors 900,000 site visits 4.4MM views +300,000 downloads +10MM users will play winning game online100,000 consumers played betas for an average of four minutes +50MM Xbox Live/Doritos impressions