Dancing the night away at The Planetarium: Doritos' Bring Slow Dancing Back

Some things can’t be produced. While many creative producers look to create and then stage-manage consumer “experiences”, one Buenos Aires-based agency opted to step back and join in the fun they’d helped create.

Since entering the Argentine market in 2006, PepsiCo brand Doritos has proved a popular snack among the nation’s youth. To build even more cred for the corn chip, BBDO, Argentina spent five months researching their “millennial” target demo and discovered that social networking and the prevalence of hard electro music in nightclubs was discouraging physical intimacy.

In response, the agency devised Bring Slow Dancing Back, a campaign to encourage radio, club and house party DJs to include more love ballads on their playlists. It launched in February, 2008 with five TV spots, promotional condoms, and groups on Facebook and other social media with the ultimate goal of driving traffic to an online petition at quevuelvanloslentos.com.

A month later, more than 30 similar Facebook groups popped up, slow jams infiltrated radio airplay and Doritos’ petition received 500,000 signatures. Most exciting for BBDO, the movement manifested in the real world when two people organized a slow dance flash mob outside the twinkling Planetarium in Buenos Aires’ trendy Palermo district.

At that point, interactive creative director Fernando Barbella thought it best not to intervene. “We sat down with the client and said, ‘What are we going to do with this?’ and we decided to just let things happen,” he says. “We joined the groups, we joined the conversation and we also invited other people. We were not the agency: we were playing the role of real consumers.”

“At one point we even thought, why don’t we provide music to these guys?” adds Natalia Rodoni, the agency’s head of PR. “Maybe they’ll need equipment or a great DJ? But we said no – if we do that people will not believe it’s real. The people’s dance at The Planetarium had no high-tech music and equipment; it was just a couple of guys with speakers.”

Instead, the agency intensified Doritos’ existing online, TV and outdoor advertising in the lead up to the March 13 Planetarium party and sent press kits to media outlets to remind reporters of Doritos involvement in starting the movement. The flash mob attracted more than 4,000 slow dancers, including several TV reporters and BBDO staffers.

“Instead of producing a branded event like Doritos sponsoring some kind of concert with new musicians, the big event at The Planetarium was made by the people for the people with no brand presence in the place,” adds Barbella. “The only thing that linked it to the campaign was the news that night.”

BBDO Argentina> www.bbdo.com
Bring Slow Dancing Back> quevuelvanloslentos.com