Doritos introduced a Nacho Cheese­–infused spirit to give Gen Z a fresh twist on its flagship flavor. However, we needed to release it in a way that drove word of mouth and created hype that traditional advertising couldn’t deliver.

So we created a campaign that could win where Gen Z conversations happen: on TikTok. We removed the Nacho Cheese flavor from our chips to drive excitement for its return and sent the chips to fans and influencers. These bags of No Nacho Cheese helped the spirit sell out in under six hours, drove over 9B PR impressions and more.

In America, Doritos Nacho Cheese has been the brand’s #1-selling flavor for over 50 years. So to take away the Nacho Cheese flavor from our chips in service of promoting the Nacho Cheese–infused spirit was pretty bold. But we had to be bold. Getting noticed by Gen Z isn’t easy, and the spirit category in America is flooded with brands pouring out one snack-infused creation after another. Think Velveeta, OREO, even Arby’s with their fry-flavored booze, to name a few. We couldn’t simply release our spirit into an already-crowded landscape and expect attention. We needed to earn it.

The Doritos Nacho Cheese flavor is iconic. It has made its way into a variety of products: dips, jerky and more. In 2023, Doritos was looking for another unexpected use for Nacho Cheese. Coincidentally, flavor company Empirical came to Doritos with a new angle on its flagship flavor: a Nacho Cheese–infused spirit. It was the perfect opportunity to excite our Gen Z audience, which was just reaching drinking age.

But Doritos and Empirical faced a challenge launching this drink. Amid a market flooded with snack-flavored spirits, theirs risked appearing as just another artificially flavored one. But it wasn’t. Unlike competitors, the spirit was genuinely infused with Nacho Cheese flavor via a careful distillation process.

Our objective? Generate excitement for the spirit’s launch, despite similar ventures from other brands, and prove to Gen Z that the spirit was truly infused with Nacho Cheese.

To tease the release of the spirit and prove that it was authentically flavored with the Nacho Cheese from our chips, we had a comically simple creative idea: remove the Nacho Cheese flavor from our chips. Yep. For the first time in 50 years, we temporarily ruined our #1-selling product to launch a new product. Titled “No Nacho Cheese,” these chips were stripped of their signature flavor, and their packaging was stripped of half its typical fire-red color to hint that things weren’t normal within. These visually striking and culinarily underwhelming chips would become the perfect fodder for Gen Z influencers to review and share online, helping to spread the question “Where did the flavor go?” and drive anticipation for the big reveal.

A mixture of qualitative audience workshops and quantitative surveys showed us that our Gen Z audience was hungrier than ever for new experiences, amplified by a chunk of their formative years spent in lockdown. This posed an interesting challenge in launching a product with a classic Doritos flavor.

How do you encourage consumers to spice up their relationship with a flavor they've loved for years? Absence makes the heart grow fonder.

We knew we could make a bigger impact by taking away something they love than by introducing something totally new - classic loss aversion. So our strategy crystallized: We would temporarily remove the flavor from our top-selling chip, then give it back in a whole new form. This would get our audience hyped to see where the flavor was going, all while building credibility that our spirit was authentically made with real Nacho Cheese flavor from the chips.

A week before the spirit dropped, we sent limited-edition bags of No Nacho Cheese to influencers in the worlds of gaming, fashion and food to closely align with the main interests of our Gen Z demographic. TikTok videos of our intentionally bland chips got their followers wondering where the flavor went.

We added fuel to the fire by acting mystified, asking, “Where did the Nacho Cheese flavor go?” across the Doritos social channels. Some fans had ideas. Others made threats to get us to bring the Nacho Cheese back. We then put people’s most outrageous guesses onto 20+ digital billboards around NYC to draw an even wider audience into the mystery.

As chatter about No Nacho Cheese spread on TikTok, Instagram and X, Gen Z’s curiosity was piqued, setting the stage for the unveiling of our cheesy spirit a week later at a launch party in NYC and online.

Minutes after revealing that the flavor was missing from our chips because we’d put it in our new product, the topic of the Empirical x Doritos Nacho Cheese Spirit was on everyone’s lips. We achieved over 13.1M social media impressions, 54,000+ social engagements (14,700 of them organic) and a 12.9% engagement rate (double the brand’s benchmark). The momentum extended beyond Gen Z. We received coverage on platforms like CNN and TODAY, propelling our campaign to 9.7B media impressions. Moreover, the spirit sold out in just 5.5 hours.

Ultimately, by dropping the flavor from our limited-edition chips, we helped create one of the most buzzworthy Doritos product drops ever and boosted relevance with Gen Z. Success extended to the broader brand, with a 3.7% increase in unit sales, a 3.8% volume (lbs.) lift for Nacho Cheese and a 28-point lift in unaided brand awareness.