The Business Beat #

If you were one of the kazillion viewers of the Super Bowl and watched the ads, you saw some user-generated content. The Doritos Challenge asked consumers to send in their own amateur video commercial for a chance to be aired during the game. Doritos received 1000 videos. #

This was no give-away. The Doritos Challenge was a carefully crafted marketing campaign designed to generate a social networking site. To say it worked is like saying water is wet. #

The Doritos challenge attracted 2 million hits on the contest microsite, 750,000 unique users, and 2 million total video views. McDonell called the comments section of the “Crash the Super Bowl” site “social networking at its best”–saying the technology enabled competitors to talk to one another and wish each other well, and invited visitors to comment on the entries. The contest racked up a lot of buzz: One billion impressions, which equates to $36 million in paid media, according to McDonell’s presentation. #

So what do Doritos and social networking have to do with you? Plenty if you listened to the CMA/CICM speakers from The New York Times, The Washington Post and Gannett, who said developing communities was critical for news organizations including college media. Readers/viewers want to be engaged, want a voice and want to interact with others online. Those are keys to a “sticky” site, the holy grail of the Web. It’s all about building relationships. #

Here’s the winning entry. #

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