The new life-of-the-party campaign resurrects the top-selling snack’s 1990s theme. “ ‘Tostitos Knows How to Party’ means we are returning to our roots,” said Janelle Anderson, the brand’s senior director for marketing. Tostitos, along with Lay’s, Cheetos, Doritos, Fritos and Ruffles, is a product of PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay division, based in Plano, Tex.
Tostitos returned to the ’90s theme after marketing research over the last year found that its customers wanted reasons to celebrate and have fun in economically lean times.
“We’ve always been about social and about connection,” Ms. Anderson said. “And, as the economy is changing, we are evolving, and wanted to strengthen our fun and uplifting image.”
Tostitos chose a zany character “to get the message across and make it authentic,” said Ms. Anderson. “We wanted something that was magnetic, fun and approachable.”
The brand’s new advertising agency, TBWA/Chiat/Day, part of the Omnicom Group, decided to “bring personality to the brand, and, in one of those rare cases, have the actual product be the actual spokesperson,” said Brett Craig, the group’s creative director for Tostitos.
Working with Legacy Effects, a Los Angeles special effects company, the agency developed the hand-manipulated puppet with movable parts and special effects to convey energy, said Mr. Craig.
The custom puppet appears in two 30-second commercials, the first of which is called “Life of the Football Party,” where its boasting grabs the attention of friends at a football-watching party. The second, “Inspired to Dip,” comically tracks the chip’s compatibility with dips.
Tostitos will present one spot during the Rose Bowl on Monday, then five commercials will be shown before and during the 41st Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, where Oklahoma State is playing Stanford at the University of Phoenix Stadium. Last year, Tostitos presented only three spots during the college football matchup.
Its ads also will be shown on cable channels, including Bravo, Lifetime and Food Network, for 10 months, and on local stations and ESPN during the football season. Last year, Tostitos spent $34.5 million on advertising, Kantar Media research found. The brand spent $26.8 million for the first nine months of this year compared to $29.6 million for the same period in 2010, according to Kantar Media.
Tostitos plans to ramp up its spending in 2012, Ms. Anderson said. She did not provide specifics except to say that the brand would nearly double its digital buy.
The energetic chip character will be on the Tostitos Facebook page as well as in banner ads, she said, but noted that “television is still the foundation of our campaign.”
“This is a competitive market, with chips alone being about $2 billion,” she said. Shipments of tortilla chips and similar corn products like curls reached $5.3 billion in 2007, according to United States Census Bureau figures. Dips are a separate category.
Marketers first focused Tostitos, introduced in 1981, around the idea of escape. “It was a trendy new Mexican food that, over the years, became mainstream,” Ms. Anderson said.
Since then, Tostitos has expanded to about a dozen varieties, like Fire-Roasted Chipotle and Hint of Lime, and varied its marketing approach. After the social connections theme in the ’90s, the brand introduced its Scoops chips in 2000, and shifted its focus to everyday social occasions and then to highlighting the ingredients in its chips.
In particular, the brand emphasized that its ingredients — corn, oil and salt — were natural, as consumers became more focused on the content and calories of packaged snacks.
While Tostitos sales have slipped in recent years, the Tostitos Natural variety had the highest sales gains last year of PepsiCo’s brands, according to Mintel Group’s March 2011 salty snacks report. When final sales figures are tallied for this year, sales of tortilla chips over all are expected to pick up and continue to grow to a $6 billion market in 2015, according to Mintel.
Tostitos, which switched advertising agencies last summer, has moved away from its earlier theme that technology brings people together. During the Fiesta Bowl’s halftime last January, the brand sponsored surprise reunions between returning soldiers and their families.
This month, Tostitos introduced its latest campaign with an event, “Tostitos Fiesta in the Square,” which converted an area in New York’s Times Square to a regulation-size football end zone and invited fans to a field goal kicking contest.
The singer and television personality Nick Lachey and football notables like Jim Kelly, the former Buffalo Bills quarterback who is in the Hall of Fame, were in the event, which set a world record with 181 field goals kicked in six hours.
As a result, Tostitos pledged a $200,000 donation to the charity Big Brothers Big Sisters and started an online drive for fans to donate to the charity on facebook.com/Tostitos or bbbs.org/Tostitos until Jan. 31.
Highlights from the event will be shown at halftime at the Fiesta Bowl, and Tostitos plans to give the charity a check for $200,000 along with a matching sum, up to $25,000, for any online donations.
Tostitos has been associated with gatherings to watch televised sports, with sales surging around football and summer seasons, and wants to expand its consumer base to make its chips a must-have at small and large gatherings, said Ms. Anderson.
“The majority of our customers purchase Tostitos between five and 10 times a year,” she noted, with a spike in the first two months of the year, then around Memorial Day to Labor Day.
The adoption of a party-theme campaign, she said, “is a return to our heritage.”
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: December 29, 2011
An earlier version of this article mistakenly said the Rose Bowl would be played New Year’s Day. It will be played Monday.
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