How do you shake up a branded, consumer-generated contest to shatter U.S. records for consumer, media and retail response? You let PR take the reigns for the first two weeks, creating a pop-culture moment that ignites a craze to create the next Lay’s potato chip flavor.

The Lay’s brand knows consumers everywhere love to name new chip flavors; the brand’s “Do Us A Flavor” contest has produced solid engagement and sales in many countries. But when it came to the U.S., Lay’s #1 sales market, expectations soared. We needed to smash all-time brand records on every level.

So we didn’t just offer prize money; we put up a million bucks and added a twist: take the money or 1% of sales revenues. We didn’t just invite consumers with ads to name a flavor or enter at retail; our integrated team created a Facebook app that let entrants virtually concoct their flavor, design their own Lay’s bag, and enter ‘Flavor Showdowns.” We even replaced Facebook’s “Like” button with an “I’d Eat That” button.

A contest announcement? How about a giant pop-up store in New York’s Times Square, where thousands mingled with celebrity judges, sampled exotic Lay’s flavors, and entered the contest instantly using our app and the iPads that lined the wall.

Within 10 days, PR generated 1.26 billion impressions and a 12% weekly sales increase. Old records fell fast. We’ve now logged 3.8 million flavor submissions and 3.7 billion impressions in the most successful activation program in Frito-Lay’s global history.

PR was expected to drive the entire campaign for two weeks before any paid media kicked in. Our job: gain massive media exposure at launch and compel hundreds of thousands of 25-34-year-old snackers especially to enter “Do Us A Flavor” within the first weeks. Within 10 days, we needed to log 1.2 billion media impressions to beat previous benchmarks and set a campaign launch record for Frito-Lay. The participation goal was no less ambitious: at least 500,000 installs of the of the Do Us a Flavor Facebook app among our target, and 500,000 million flavor submissions within six weeks (by August 31). Plus, the Lay’s brand sought a 6% year-over-year sales increase within the first month.

Within days of launch, PR had generated 1,419 stories and 1.26 billion impressions – including cover stories in The New York Times, USA Today, Yahoo.com and PopSugar.com. Two thirds of coverage was in targeted outlets, with 56% directing consumers to the brand’s Facebook page and including call-to-action messaging.

Launch week saw 100,000 contest submissions, and we logged nearly 3.8 million submissions by the time submissions closed (a global campaign record). In the first 6 weeks, we had a total of 1,174,078 app installs, and Facebook likes jumped by 732,718.

What’s more, sales increased 12% in the program’s first week (over the comparable 2011 week), double the original goal of 6%. By week 5, Lay’s saw a $22 million sales increase, making it the most successful sales period for the brand in 2012.

Do Us A Flavor is the most successful integrated campaign in Lay’s history. And the winner has yet to be announced.

Before launch, we paired two food celebrities popular with millennials –actress and restaurateur Eva Longoria and celebrity chef Michael Symon -- as spokespeople and judges. And we chose America’s cultural melting pot of flavors, New York’s Times Square, where we built a giant Lay’s pop-up store for the launch.

Inside the pop-up store, we enticed people to taste Lay’s flavors from around the country. Once inspired by these flavors, they could use the iPads we had on-hand to quickly – within one minute – create and share their own flavor via a Facebook app we had built. The app let them show off their new flavor with an image of their own personalized Lay’s bag complete with customized food photography. On our Facebook timeline, we even offered inspirational videos from Michael and Eva, and ingredient pairings and other flavor idea starters. With their completed flavor, contestants could compete in “Flavor Showdowns.” We even added an “I’d Eat That” button to our Facebook page.

The Lay’s brand has more than 50% of the $4.2 billion potato chip category, according to IRI Sales Data. But consumption has dropped among 24-34 year olds, while the emotional connection to the brand has also weakened among this group. So our challenge was to create an emotional connection and commitment to the Lay’s brand with the next generation of U.S. snackers -- millennials.

While the “Do Us A Flavor” promotion had successfully engaged Lay’s consumers in other countries, we couldn’t “lift and shift” if we wanted to engage America’s young adults. They had seen countless crowdsourcing campaigns in the last few years.

We asked America to “Do Us a Flavor” by tapping into and becoming a part of the millennial social world. Millennials loved to create, share and get recognized. We needed to give them a reason to do these things with us, but in their world. No successful major brand crowdsourcing campaign had waited for young adults to come to the brand’s page.

We would let them be a part of a pop phenomenon, launching with a pop culture event and partnering with top-tier food celebrities to drive coverage in lifestyle/pop culture outlets that our consumer reads. With a focus on Lay’s wide world of flavors, the event would drive sampling and contest submissions.

After the launch, a panel of judges would help narrow the field to three flavors, which we would make. America would then vote for the winner, who would get instant fame and either a million dollars or 1% of the winning flavor’s sales.