Branded Entertainment in the United States is an exciting and constantly evolving form of marketing that has recently emerged in its modern version as a popular form of integrated advertising. It's primary goal is meant to involve the consumer into actively participating with a campaign and help shape the outcome of a product, which is exactly what we did with the Lay’s Do Us A Flavor campaign.

Combining audience participation with a lucrative monetary prize and having their name on the newest Lay’s potato chip flavor for the winner, our campaign is often cited as a tentpole example of the medium at its best because of multiple collaborative facets used in the campaign that link directly back to customer participation.

Currently many branded entertainment campaigns allow for some type of interactive touchpoint, such as receiving responses on Twitter or Facebook, but no other campaign has gone to the lengths that Do Us a Flavor has in terms of using submissions to help shape the entire entertaining campaign.

Using our creative newsroom, we shaped Lay’s bags into a variety of quintessential summer monuments and posted the content on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest. We started a conversation with fans and inspired them to post their own summer moments with Lay’s at the core.

A responsive media strategy utilized page-post amplification within Facebook and promoted posts within Twitter to boost our most beloved posts and increase reach and impact among the millennial audience.

Then, to celebrate the bittersweet end of the season (and the campaign), we compiled our creations into a video to tell the story of a perfect, endless summer day and the lifetime of memories Lay’s 75 & Sunny created.

With media support, 'Wouldn’t It Be Yummy?' received over 6 million views on YouTube within the first month of the campaign, driving awareness of Lay’s® Do Us A Flavor™. By the end of the submission phase, it had over 12 million views on YouTube.

1 out of 4 comments on the YouTube video said they loved the commercial and couldn’t get it out of their head.

Beyond 'Wouldn’t It Be Yummy?', our insta-jingles were a hit. All 1:1 insta-jingle custom videos, published on YouTube and shared via Twitter, had a 100% retweet rate. Chrissy Tiegan, retweeted the insta-jingle inspired by her submission, 'Bucket of Tears', to her 300,000 followers along with this glowing review: “Oh my effing g…”

Overall, Twitter proved to be an effective branding vehicle for the campaign, with an 8.05% engagement rate. The series of insta-jingles we’re re-tweeted to reach a total audience of 3 million.

With an integrated effort, the goal of doubling submissions from 2012 was attained in less than 4 weeks, then tripled before the submission period ended, drawing in over 14 million submissions.*

*Lay’s® Do Us A Flavor™ submissions were a result of an integrated effort with our partners.