While social media sites have been present since the turn of the millennium, many companies are just now beginning to initiate marketing campaigns on them, which utilize these sites to their full capabilities. General Electric, Old Spice, and Chipotle are among the corporations that are effectively using social media site to their advantage. Today, I am going to look into the PepsiCo Inc., a company that’s marketing team is gaining great results through their use of Twitter and YouTube to promote the product of Doritos.
The first social media site that is used by PepsiCo to market Doritos is Twitter. On PepsiCo’s website, it has a tool that features all the times that a PepsiCo product is mentioned on Twitter. PepsiCo utilizes twitter to its utmost value by tweeting and re-tweeting numerous times. On its Twitter page, the company boasts more than 800 tweets. These tweets range from offering giveaways, to exciting people about upcoming events that Doritos is sponsoring. The key tool Doritos is using to increase public and company communications is the use of re-tweeting. This gives people the chance to process their enthusiasm for the brand they love. Also, it allows other people throughout the “twitterverse” to see posts about Doritos and potentially buy their product. According to a 2009 article by guardian.co.uk, the average twitter user has a following of around 123 people, thus Doritos’ strategy is working in creating buzz and followers. More than 20,000 people following @DoritosUSA on Twitter. While Doritos is doing great things on twitter, there is still room for improvement. The company should attempt to build on social conversations with their followers. They could pose questions to their followers that would give the company things to work on in the future. This would also give the company a chance to branch out to other people and find out why they choose not to eat Doritos. Ultimately, PepsiCo is utilizing the twitter account for Doritos very well.
The second site that PepsiCo utilizes very well in respect to social media is YouTube. According to Doritos YouTube channel, the product has had its own channel since November 2006. This means that the company was very early in using this social video site. Today, the Doritos YouTube channel has been immensely popular. The Doritos channel has 22,036 subscribers along with 73,930,054 million views on the videos that the company has posted. Much of this popularity is due to the companies Crash the Superbowl campaign, which is an excellent source of customer interaction with Doritos. PepsiCo decided to give people the chance to create their own Superbowl commercial by submitting homemade Dorito ads to their website. This allows people to connect and promote PepsiCo Inc. FOR the company. While this media campaign is a hit, the company needs to post more videos on their YouTube channel. Without activity or interesting videos, the PepsiCo Inc. could lose all the progresses that they helped build over the years. The best thing the company could do would be to repost fan videos applauding the company. This would showcase a buyer’s opinion of the company, instead of the typical persuasion on part by the company.
While PepsiCo seems to have many of the social media sites covered for the Doritos marketing campaign, there are many new sites that PepsiCo should consider joining. The first social media site that Doritos should use is Pinterest. Pinterest is a social media site in which users post photos of things that the users find interesting. The interaction between users lies in “re-pinning” photos to your profile or liking other user’s photos. Also, the majority of users that have Pinterest accounts are women, which could open up more marketing opportunities. Doritos would be a prime candidate to have a positive influence on Pinterest because of the ease of creating photo campaigns. Doritos could urge followers to post pictures of themselves with Doritos to increase the interaction between PepsiCo and the social media community. The second social media site that PepsiCo should consider using is Instagram. Instagram is also a photo sharing media site that would help the PepsiCo brand as a whole. The ease of taking pictures with Doritos and the creativity of people that are producing interesting pictures could help spread brand awareness. In addition to this, Instagram is accessible via mobile device. All these factors combined would allow Doritos and PepsiCo to create an even more successful marketing campaign. Instagram and Pinterest are two companies that would be great opportunities for PepsiCo and subsequently Doritos.
In conclusion, the use of social media sites like Twitter and YouTube has led to great dividends for PepsiCo and ultimately Doritos. While companies’ using social media is a newer trend in marketing, failure by companies to join this new marketing medium could lead to a disastrous future.
"Average Twitter user has 126 followers, and only 20% of users go via website." Arthur, Charles. 29 June 2009. http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/jun/29/twitter-users-average-api-traffic.
Picture from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doritos