Early in 2010, Doritos announced their Viralocity campaign to Canadians far and wide. The concept was simple — come up with a name for their new flavour and shoot a video to accompany it. Post it online, compete for points and win a cash prize.

“We entered on a whim — we just saw the commercial over and over and thought, ‘Hey, why don't we do it?'” said Fanshawe marketing students Adam Armit and Joel Popoff.

Their entry “Provocative Pepper,” placed fouteenth overall, garnering over 350,000 unique views online. With limited resources, Armit and Popoff decided to write and film their entry within their own dorm room in Peregrine House.

“All right, so I just got home, and my roommate is making some really weird noises,” Armit tells the camera in the video. He opens the door, bursts in on Popoff, and you'll have to go see the video to know what happens next.

Their video attracted viewers in 126 different countries and was shared online close to 900 times. For the contest, points were awarded to the video for views, shares, feedback and more. Additionally, point bonuses for the different countries and various achievements along the way — like most unique views and external embeds early in March — pushed them further ahead.

As marketing students, they said the true value of the campaign is that it not only engaged the target market in its advertising, but also built and affirmed a brand loyalty among the contest's 1,300 entrants.

“Doritos is kind of leading the way with these new campaigns,” said Armit, commenting on the concept of using the Internet and social media in collaborative marketing. “It's something that is cheap to do, it's revolutionary, and it really catches the attention of your target market because that's the media that they're constantly using.”

“The Internet is the way of the future,” agreed Popoff. “Traditional ways of media, such as a radio or a newspaper or TVs, they just don't cut it anymore. The coverage you can obtain from the Internet is unbelievable, it's everyone connected at once, and when people are sharing, sharing and sharing, you'll see all these videos go viral.”

Armit added that being in school for marketing had its advantages.

“We're able to see the inside, and to understand the marketing value better than most people,” he said. “I mean, we go to school for marketing, and we learned probably more from the Doritos contest then we did at school, and we were able to pass that along to people in our classes and our teachers as well.”

After gaining so much experience from the contest, the pair are looking to more projects together in the future.

“We plan on continuing to do stuff together in the future,” said Armit. “We've been roommates since we went to school two years ago, and from there it just kind of evolved to working on projects and stuff like this together. It's something we definitely want to keep on doing, and who knows … if Doritos does another one, we'll probably be in that one as well.”

In the meantime, you can check out their video “Provocative Pepper” by heading to DoritosViralocity.ca and browsing in the gallery of entries provided.