Inside Doritos’ ‘creator-led’ marketing strategy

It’s part of Doritos’ larger plan to increase its investments in creators, with James Wade, the brand’s senior director of marketing, characterizing the move as a “pretty dramatic jump this year.”

“Creators are such a big umbrella now,” said Wade, who declined to share specific figures. “It’s everything from micro-influencers, macro-influencers, ambassadors, that model of local influencer on [college] campuses. [All of those creators] matter to me. Those are the relationships we want to build long-term.”

While Wade didn’t share Doritos’ specific marketing mix, he did note that the brand will continue to move dollars toward creators. “I imagine even by 2026, I’m going to further shift my mix to creators and then just tap the more food-forward creators, as well as the culture creators,” said Wade. “I will still be tapping into all the key swim lanes I need to talk to from a messaging and demographic standpoint. But I can get all of those with the creator community. I think that’s my long-term goal.”

Going forward, when Doritos is debuting a new flavor, or looking at partnerships, or even if there are more “traditional, big brand moments,” they should be “creator-led,” as that’s Doritos’ brand voice, said Wade. “If we’re a brand that did something like [the “Crash the Super Bowl” contest] back in the day, we should be a brand that’s at the forefront of creators driving our messages,” he added.

The Doritos found the contest submissions were of “varying degrees of quality and fit,” with much of the work meeting the brand’s “threshold of content” to be leveraged for other occasions throughout the year, explained Wade. “Some of these have a horror, Halloween tone to them,” he said, adding that others hit various brand attributes that could work for other promotional moments later this year. “As a content plan, [we’re looking] to say, ‘Okay for the balance of the year are there spots that were created either ready to air today or we can go back to the creator to polish or adjust that can fit into a full media strategy,’” Wade said.

Doritos’ approach makes sense to Grace Murray Vazquez, vp of strategy at influencer marketing company Fohr. “By planning to use other entries throughout the year, Doritos isn’t just running a contest, they’re building a creator content engine,” she said, adding that it allows the brand to “turn a moment into momentum.”

“This wasn’t just about crowdsourcing a TV spot, though, it gets to the heart of one of the biggest challenges in marketing today: identifying creative talent that can entertain audiences and drive engagement across platforms,” Murray Vazquez said. “We’ve been seeing more brands create these direct pathways to working with influencers for several years, like with brand-run ambassador programs, but the key difference now is that creators have become the new creatives, and what was once the exclusive domain of an agency is now influencer territory.”

With that said, a campaign based on a contest can be a slippery slope for creators, explained Danielle Wiley, founder of influencer marketing shop Sway Group. “At the end of the day you have people creating content for free,” said Wiley, adding that contests boost a brand’s views, engagement and site visits, especially when creators with big followings are involved. “It’s the creator economy paying them,” she said.

Doritos didn’t factor creators’ followers into its decision process for choosing the winner for this year’s “Crash the Super Bowl” contest, noted Wade, adding that the brand is aiming to “avoid transactional relationships with influencers and creators as it goes back to the authenticity of the contest.”

Marketers at Doritos and other brands are likely to continue to lean on influencers and creators more and more going forward.

“We’re watching influencers move from the marketing plan margins to the center of brand strategy,” said Murray Vazquez. “The old approach of retrofitting traditional advertising strategies into creator briefs is over. The savviest brands right now aren’t just adapting to the creator economy, they’re rebuilding their marketing around it. Great influencer marketing doesn’t interrupt the social conversation — it becomes part of it and results in genuine cultural relevance.”