Just as their silicon counterparts double in processing power every 18 months, Doritos double in deliciousness. Or maybe the rate of innovation is even faster than that. Indeed, wasn’t it just a short while ago that the flavor engineers at Frito-Lay, Inc. introduced the Pentium processor of corn-based snackability with their Blazin’ Buffalo Wings product? Now, they’ve raised the bar again with a mysterious new treat known only as Doritos X-13D.
Rip open the noirish, glossy black bag these chips come in and inhale their complex, tightly woven bouquet. Officially, the flavor that the X-13D chips simulate is a secret, and the gimmick is that you, the customer, are supposed to give this new product an appropriate name, but as you place a chip on your tongue and its magic flavor crystals parade across your taste buds, the intrigue quickly dissolves. Mustard, ketchup, the sour tang of day-old pickles? Salty, fried beef fat with a finish of molten synthetic cheese? These chips are obviously designed to taste like Michael Moore!
Or possibly a Big Mac, one or the other. Let’s go with the latter and declare this a culinary miracle worthy of a Nobel Prize: A bag of X-13D chips give you the same flavor experience as McDonald’s signature artery-clogger for less than one-third of the price and only 71 percent of the calories. But instead of granting X-13D’s alchemists the privilege of naming their invention themselves, or at least farming out the task to a fancy ad agency of the alchemists’ choosing, the marketing department has decided to let customers share in the glory.
Did Henry Ford ask potential buyers to name his car company after he invented the Model T? Does Donald Trump believe some obese video-game zombie in Nebraska has the perfect appellation for his next luxury condo project? And do our snack foods really need to be more entertaining? Study any random 20 waistlines in America; it’s pretty clear what America finds most entertaining, and the answer isn’t yoga or triathlons, or even sex, gambling or week-long coke binges. It’s eating bag after bag after bag of fried corn enhanced with sodium diacetate and autolyzed yeast extract, and while a six-pack and a Netflix subscription can complement the experience, they’re not really necessary. Doritos are a turn-key entertainment solution; they don’t even require dip!
Still, you have to respect the marketing department’s commitment to the bottom line. Why give some self-appointed naming guru six figures to dub your product if eager consumers are essentially willing to pay you for the privilege of doing just that?
Until the online revolution, only the fake-poetry-contest industry enthusiastically embraced such reverse economics. Recognizing how hard it is to sell good poetry to the masses, operations like the National Library of Poets sell the masses to themselves, holding contests in which any aspiring Shakespeare willing to shell out $60 for an anthology of “winning” poems automatically becomes a semifinalist and thus earns a place in the book.
In the old days, such tactics were regarded as sleazy; now, entities as disparate as YouTube and the New Yorker practice a form of such content acquisition, soliciting contributions from volunteer creators and using their work to reap profits for themselves. What’s surprising about so many of these exercises is how good the contributions often are. A 22-minute compendium of the best amateur YouTube clips each week could easily out-funny all but a few network sitcoms; the cartoons that result from the New Yorker’s weekly caption contest are pretty much indistinguishable from those that are manufactured entirely by professional cartoonists.
And when millions of volunteer content creators start working collaboratively instead of in parallel fashion, the results go from good to spectacular. Is there a single A&R person working today who, over the last five years, boasts a better track record than the fans of American Idol? While they may not know much about music, they know what they like. And they like having a hand in the action so much that they are willing to pay to vote for their favorites, then pay again when their favorites’ albums appear.
Huge corporations and scrappy start-ups alike now capitalize on this behavior, but when will the first independently operating celebrity see the light? Imagine if, say, Lindsay Lohan started allowing fans to vote on every aspect of her life and thus control her destiny. Rehab or relapse? Announce her intention to design a line of luxury handbags, or bitch-slap a pesky paparazzo with her Hummer? Flash some ass cheek at the People’s Choice Awards, or adopt an Indonesian orphan? The voting process would net her millions, and once again, our celebrities would be more entertaining than snack foods.