Big Brother 2.0

It might just be paranoia, but it seems eerily coincidental that facebook is catering its advertisements toward my stated interests and other demographic factors that I have listed on my profile.

I logged onto my account over the weekend to find the advertisements on the right hand of the screen to be of interest to me. This can’t be a coincidence. Ads for vacations, entertainment news and college programs recruiting students in my field of study, among others, seemed to be popping up every time I refreshed my page. I have also been searching for apartments recently, and conveniently, links to rental agencies are showing up all over the place.


What’s even more daunting, is that facebook, along with my mother, seem to want me to meet that ‘perfect someone’. It is likely a factor of my age, which is listed on my profile, but ads for lavalife and the like appear on my profile all the time. I already have my mother nagging me about my dating life, and I would prefer it if facebook would stop doing the same.


While this reeks of a giant facebook conspiracy, it is actually a brilliant marketing strategy on behalf of the organizations utilizing this social media site for advertising purposes. Facebook, addictive my nature, is a perfect place to reach a desired target audience by subliminally placing ads on an individual’s account. It is rare these days to come across a person who does not use this social networking site, presenting the perfect opportunity and venue for advertisements.

With the economy in the state it is in, commercials and billboards are not a priority for most marketing departments. Instead, organizations are seemingly looking towards public relations efforts and cheaper alternatives.

I’m not sure how much a facebook ad costs, but if I had to guess, it is probably significantly less expensive than securing ad space during prime time television.

As ingenious as this opportunity may be for those in the business world, I can’t help but feel that someone is on the other side of my computer screen watching my every online move. It seems weird to me that one day I am searching for cheap vacations and the next day ads of this nature are appearing on my facebook profile and my hotmail account is filled with “AMAZING TRAVEL OPPORTUNITIES!”

Can we cruise the Internet anonymously without being bombarded my last night’s click of the mouse? I’m starting to think not.

Munchie Maharishi

Remember those tasty cheese-flavoured corn chips we all loved as kids?

Well, Doritos has been holding a contest to name their newest flavour of chips. The best part about this campaign: they are using social media to facilitate the competition.

Many marketers are dabbling in social media marketing techniques, and Doritos is doing a fantastic job.

For this campaign, Doritos is calling upon Canadians ages 13 and up to produce a 30 second commercial that is inspired by the new chip flavour. Contestants are asked to name the unidentified chip flavour and make a commercial. The winner of the contest will receive $25,000 and one percent of future net sales of the new chip flavour. Not only that, but the winner of the competition will be crowned "Doritos Guru".

Contestants had the option of posting their video directly to the site, through YouTube or through facebook, which adds a whole new dimension to the social media marketing initiative.

Personally, I think this campaign is genius!

What's great about the company's use of social media is that they have created this campaign using already existing social media sites, making it even easier to enter the competition and create brand buzz. The fact that people can post their entries on YouTube or through facebook makes good use of these credible and widely used social media sites. Not only that, but it allows people to follow the competition through various sites that link directly to the Doritos Guru competition.

Doritos is also using facebook connect, which mirrors contestants Doritos Guru profile with their facebook profile. This enables the contestants to vote, comment and submit contest videos via facebook. This gives the Doritos brand great exposure through facebook, while encouraging people to create a Doritos Guru profile. This is also a great way to monitor the groundswell and track visitors to the site.

Another great thing about this campaign is that social media users are the ones who determine the winner of the competition. People, just like you and me, get to vote on their favourite YouTube powered Doritos Guru video.

To me, it's obvious that Doritos had its target audience in mind when creating this campaign. I would guess that the target audience of the chip brand is the 13-25 age group. What better way to reach this Internet-savvy, social media-using cohort than through the Internet with a social media campaign?

Check out this video explaining the competition. This video has had over 18,000 hits and numerous video responses.

The YouTube video submissions for this competition are hilarious and have been creating quite the buzz. People are posting video responses to the commercials, thus creating their own Doritos Guru commercial. This is great exposure for the competition and the brand itself.

Currently, the top 5 videos (Cheesy Enchilada, Angry Ranch, Chipacabra, L'Interrogatoire and Scream Cheese) have been posted on http://www.doritosguru.ca/.

It's up to us to determine the winner, so sit back with a bag of Doritos, watch the videos and vote!