MYIQ ///// Mobile Youth IQ

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What Is It?
Doritos launched a campaign in support of their new Black Pepper Jack-flavored chip.

A recent promotion popped up on billboards with the teaser, “What is inNw?” and offered a chance to win the CD-Rom game, “You Don’t Know Jack.”

How to Get It?
After seeing the call to action “What is inNw?” you respond by sending a text to 46691. You immediately receive a text stating: “Doritos: Do you know Jack? Answer our quick quiz and u could win a customized ‘You Don’t Know Jack’ CD-Rom game. Want 2 play? Reply ‘play’.”

When you reply “play” you get the question via text: “Doritos: Ok! Tell us what is missing from ‘Black _____ Jack’ Doritos a) Magic b) Pepper c) Nacho. Reply a, b, or c only.” After you reply with the answer, Doritos responds with a code and instructs you to go to the web, enter your code and see if you’ve won the game.

In the View of MYIQ?
Here’s a big packaged goods brand integrating a mobile offer into their full campaign. Our panelists initially gave Doritos credit for their innovation:

“I think it’s a good campaign because it catches peoples interest and makes them want to text the number,” texted a panelist.

Once in it, however, many problems emerged.

First, after being intrigued by the billboard, the message you receive by text is disappointing—an easy-to-answer question about a product—not of any real interest to the consumer.

“intriguing but boring”

In fact, the question itself seemed like “busy work”, driven by the idea of text technology as opposed to an idea of how the consumer wants to use that technology:

“It’s kind of a hassle,” texted a teen.

Further, the panel was disappointed by the fact that once you answered the question, you have to go to the website to find out if you are a winner. If they were being engaged by mobile, they wanted to win by mobile. Additionally, most who entered via mobile were not at their computers—defeating the purpose of the campaign.

Learning
The Doritos mobile campaign seems to have broken the “Golden Rule”. It provides no particular value outside of the possibility of winning a game. Marketers need to remember that mobile content should be interesting and entertaining to the receiver and should capitalize on the untethered aspects of the media. The point is to get the message “on the go” and have some fun and instant gratification while you’re doing it.