Doritos is the number one snack for gamers. Unfortunately, our iconic crunch, amplified by a microphone, can really annoy gamers. Squads complain. Friends rage quit. A warning about a ‘snipe’ gets munched over. Games and lives can be lost in a single ‘crunch’.

Doritos and gaming have some compatibility issues and that’s on us. We had to come up with a solution that allowed gamers to have best possible snacking and gaming experience.

So, we used cutting edge audio technology to solve the crunch problem and created ‘Doritos Silent’, the world’s first AI-augmented snack with Crunch Cancellation software.

Globally, both gaming and snacking continue to grow and, in the UK alone, gaming occasions involving snacking has risen by over 40% in the last two years. And the number one snack brand of choice for gamers is Doritos. Gamers, contrary to the ‘loner’ cliché, are a social bunch. In fact, 74% of gamers claim that socialising is their main motivation to log on, hence the huge popularity of online multiplayer games.

Trouble is, with everyone playing with their mates and eating Doritos in the microphone, squads get distracted by the brand’s iconic crunch. Friends get annoyed with each other. A warning about an impending ‘snipe’ gets crunched over. Some of them might even lose the game because of the incessant munching and rage quit.

Snacking and gaming should be the perfect marriage, but this relationship has problems.

Forums are full of complaints about loud snacking. In fact, two out of three gamers ranked crisps as the worst noise they could hear. And snacking irritation is a global issue. In the UK, 46% of gamers dislike the sound of others eating. And in the US, 30% of gamers say that other players crunching limits their ability to play well.

Doritos is deeply embedded with gamers, so we were perfectly placed to tackle this crunchy problem. And as a brand, we didn’t want to shy away from helping to solve an issue that was caused, ironically, by our popularity amongst the gaming community.

Doritos is the number one snack brand for gamers worldwide. Which is a privilege. But there’s a problem. Our much-loved crunch disrupts and annoys other gamers subjected to the noise in their microphone. 29% of gamers claim that loud snacking impacts their performance. So, we decided to pivot and turn this intrinsic snacking gripe into a marketing opportunity.

Doritos believes in being bold, so we shined a spotlight on our key selling point, our iconic crunch, and used it to start a conversation about a big gaming bugbear. In essence, we turned our one weakness into a strength. By creating technology that solved a category problem, we not only appealed to gamers, but we also secured more loyalty and credibility within the gaming community.

Gaming sessions last, on average, three to six hours. 86% of gamers love to snack while they play, and Doritos is their favourite snack. Our brand strategy is to be an ally to gamers. But we needed to find a way to credibly do that, even when our crunchy product was the problem.

Given our audience and their beloved PCs, it was natural that tech was the solution. The crunch-cancellation software also needed to be easy to install – speed, small download sizes and a seamless gaming experience were critical to a successful roll out.

The campaign needed to deliver on the brand promise of bold expression and resonate with the gaming community in a way that made them feel ‘listened to’. Following a provocative tease campaign, we needed to reinforce our credibility with gamers, we partnered with Twitch, GamingBible and gaming journalists to spread the word about our innovation.

Gamers love to snack. And Doritos is their number one choice. But our bold crunch and gaming don’t mix. The sound annoys players on their headphones and disrupts the game. Our solution?

Doritos Silent. Same Crunch. No sound.

Doritos Silent is the world’s first AI augmented snack that removes every Doritos crunch from every game.

To completely silence the Doritos crunch for anyone on the other side of the microphone, PC Gamers simply download the Crunch Cancellation Software from Doritos.co.uk/silent

Trained on over 5,000 Doritos crunch noises, the AI tech separates the audio of someone’s voice from the distinctive crunch of a Dorito, then cancels out all that munching, all in real-time.

Gamers can now finally enjoy the same delicious crunch, without making a sound. So, no more rage quits, no more distraction. Just gaming and snacking, the way it was meant to be.

In the first week, we launched our tease phase, using an arresting Doritos ‘chip in an ear’ visual as a metaphor for our Doritos Silent Crunch. This campaign rolled out in four high-footfall OOH locations. Our assets wrapped a commuter press title and were pushed out on social. Our seemingly ‘impossible’ product created a media frenzy with a national breakfast show discussing the campaign for nearly five minutes.

In the first few weeks, we revealed Doritos Crunch Cancellation software and saw thousands of downloads from our Doritos.co.uk/silent site. Using Twitch streamers and other gaming creators to demo the tech on their live streams, we showed that our tech indisputably worked, generating positive organic reviews across the gaming community. After launching in the UK, the campaign was rolled out to the US, Spain, Brazil and other markets.

The buzz generated by the campaign enjoyed 3.2bn earned reach, our biggest global Doritos gaming campaign ever. It received over 250 pieces of coverage, created a +76% uplift in on-target brand impressions and had over 200K organic social engagements. Doritos also recorded a +$50m sales growth.

And the results amongst the gaming community were equally impressive. Interest in the Crunch Cancellation software drove more than 1.8m website hits to find out more and generated over 15K downloads in the first few weeks. And our Twitch Doritos emote was spammed more than 5.3m times!

The campaign drove unprecedented talkability and global PR for the brand, driving commercial success and top of mind awareness. So not only did we enhance the gaming and snacking experience, but we also boldly silenced our biggest asset and by doing so, solved a pain point for consumers that succeeded in making our iconic crunch even louder.

To create the key visual for the campaign, each Dorito chip was handmade out of clay, painted, and then inserted into the ears of different models. But the chips kept falling out. After much trial and error, three bespoke prosthetics were constructed to allow for the safe and secure insertion of a Dorito into the ear canals.

Traditional selective noise suppression works by learning the sounds of a human voice and filtering out everything else. However, this technology misregisters the sound of a Doritos crunch and lets it cut through.

To solve the problem, we spent over six months working with sound engineers to construct an AI that was trained by listening to over five thousand Doritos crunch noises. The technology used three separate AI models working simultaneously, in real time, allowing a gamer to only hear a fellow gamer’s voice input, without a single Doritos crunch being detected.