Doritos ignites a social inferno

The new Doritos Inferno chips were set to arrive in Canada and the brand wanted to show its target of 16- to 24-year-old guys that the new flavour is one of the spiciest ever.

For this target, flames make everything awesome, and by giving them the ability to light their Facebook status on fire, Doritos and BBDO helped ignite a social conversation around the new flavour. Fans were invited to visit the Doritos Inferno microsite to set fire to their Facebook statuses (using real footage of flames) and then share it with friends.

People were driven to the site via promoted tweets, as well as rich banner ads, where they could directly type their fiery status. Radio and TV ads helped support the launch, with the brand targeting "hot" TV shows and replacing the "viewer discretion is advised" message with a warning to viewers that the content they were viewing was "wicked awesome hot" – similar to the new Doritos Inferno.

Inferno surpassed its sales target by 44% and the brand saw its market share grow by 2.1%. The campaign saw more than 50,000 statuses get torched and users spent an average of five minutes playing with the fire tool.