On August 24, 79 AD, Italy’s Mount Vesuvius erupted. The volcano spewed ash and volcanic gasses 21 miles into the air. Though the precise death toll remains unknown, more than 1,000 people are believed to have perished as the volcano’s molten lava swept down the mountainside, destroying Pompeii, three other Roman cities, and a number of settlements. As he sailed from the docks of Pompeii in a futile attempt to rescue others from the inferno, the great Roman philosopher Pliny the Elder pronounced these famous last words: “Audaces fortuna iuvat!” –Latin for “Fortune favors the bold.”

As I look around, I see a decided lack of boldness in today’s marketing. In a way, it’s understandable. We live in nervous times. But my use of the word “decided” wasn’t accidental. In these nervous times, most marketers have either decided to a) keep running the same bland ads that go unnoticed, or b) to “freshen” their existing marketing in a way that still won’t get them much attention but checks the box that at least they’re doing something. Marian Salzman’s 2019 article for Forbes is even truer today. “Success in marketing is about standing out from the crowd, making a mark and connecting memorably,” she wrote. “What’s different now is that the crowd is much bigger and far noisier.”     

The choice is clear. You either take a Febreze “low risk/low reward” approach, or you admit that life is short (and so is the marketing cycle) and go “high risk/high reward”. The latter is the chutzpah behind what Doritos is doing. This is a brand that understands that if you want the rewards (increased sales volume), you need to take some risks in your marketing to get there.

Case in point: Doritos’ “The New Kid” TV spot that ran in this year’s back-to-school window. This spot demonstrates superb storytelling and is laugh-out-loud funny—the product of Goodby Silverstein & Partners’ creatives and director Brad Bosley. This is a salty snack product that originated back in the early 1960s at a Frito Lay-owned Disneyland restaurant called Casa Del Frito. Today, Doritos leads the tortilla and tostada chip category with $3.7 billion in annual sales.Yes, they’re leading the category—and yes, they’re still taking risks.

I give a lot of the credit for the success of “The New Kid” to Brad Bosely. In comedy, having a skilled director is key to getting the laughs. When you only have 30 seconds, comic timing is critical. Bosley has done other work for Doritos, including a spot called “I Want Sumo Doritos” in which an enormous sumo wrestler intimidates a little kid into giving up his bag of Doritos. Bosley has also won awards for directing “Got Milk?” and GoDaddy commercials. His “Sumo” spot is one of the most popular branded-content videos on YouTube, having racked up more than 1.5 billion views.

Part of what’s fun about “The New Kid” is that you think you know exactly where this spot is going. It’s a classic back-to-school set up: a mom seeing her young son off on the bus for his first day of school. She thrusts a bag of Doritos in his hands and, in a slightly exasperated tone, tells him, “Try to make friends.” Already I’m interested, because Mom’s tone suggests that she believes the kid won’t make any friends—Doritos or no Doritos. It’s so refreshing compared to all those honey-soaked parent/kid relationships we usually see in TV commercials.

The bus is pandemonium, kids creating all sorts of mayhem. Even the bus driver who greets our hero kid as he boards looks a little sketchy. The kid takes a seat and eyes a cute girl across the aisle. (BTW, I still think I know where this is going.) He offers her a Doritos tortilla chip and suddenly one of the mayhem kids shouts, “The new kid’s handing out Doritos!” In a flash, the kids are dog-piling on the boy with the bag of Doritos. Then here’s where it gets interesting. We see that among the kids queuing for a Dorito is the bus driver. There’s this great moment where everybody’s like, “Holy nacho cheese, if he’s back here, who’s driving the friggin’ bus?!” That take is quickly followed by a shot of the driverless bus careening down the road, which quickly cuts to a cam card with the Doritos logo and tagline “For The Bold” as we hear the sound of the bus crashing. There’s also an unexpected encore at the end of the spot. The bus drops the kid back at home after the school day. Now the kid is wearing a whiplash collar and a black patch over one eye. This time he thrusts the Doritos bag back into Mom’s hands and tells her in a surly tone, “You make friends.”     

    I can think of at least eight ways the client could have killed this concept, ranging from “What does this say about how the brand feels about school safety?” to “Kids’ relationships with their parents post-COVID are stressed as it is. Do we really want to encourage that?” Ironically, I’m willing to bet that the viewers who laughed the hardest (and probably consume the most Doritos) are the kids!  

If we’re always concerned about doing something wrong, we’ll never get it right. Note to advertisers: Consumers don’t want your Utopian version of life in America. What gets their attention is when you dare to be real, when you’re not afraid to make it a little twisted because hey, that’s real life. Bold or boring? It’s your choice. 

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