NEW YORK: Ten years after its first, ground-breaking Crash the Super Bowl ad, Doritos is rethinking the crowdsourcing of ideas and content but the snack food brand has no intention of abandoning this approach.

Ram Krishnan, chief marketing officer at Frito-Lay North America, highlighted the generational shift that had taken place since the brand initially challenged consumers to create a 30-second spot that embodied the Doritos snacking experience.

That campaign was aimed at regaining relevance with a target-16-24 year old Gen Y audience for whom MySpace was still a popular site and who jumped at the offer of what Krishnan described as a "stage for the consumers to shine".

The current cohort of 16-24 year olds, however, is rather more proactive. "They themselves are earning success by putting out their own YouTube channel and creating content for that," he told Advertising Age.

"The role of the brand and the value that we add with this consumer has changed."

Accordingly, this year is the final time that Doritos plans to Crash the Super Bowl. But the opportunity for amateurs to pitch ideas is not being ended but rather extended.

"What we are doing is creating a platform that they [pitch ideas] 365 days a year instead of making this big deal about this one moment of time that we did once a year," Krishnan explained.

Already the brand has signed up 5,000 users who have created 800 pieces of content based on 21 creative briefs.

The initial fears that this approach would totally bypass agencies have proved unfounded.

As Dawn Hudson, chief marketing officer at National Football League, pointed out: "You still need people to organise it."

"The agency world is as relevant as ever, if not arguably more relevant, as more crowdsourced individual ideas have come to pass," she added.

Data sourced from Advertising Age; additional content by Warc staff