Plano-based Frito-Lay is crowd-sourcing its development of new flavors of Lay’s potato chips. There’s an app on the brand’s Facebook page in which actress Eva Longoria invites you to invent your own flavor and to vote on which flavors you’d eat.
The New York Times reports on this and other social media-based marketing/market research efforts by companies like Frito-Lay and Walmart:
Visitors to the new Lay’s Facebook app are asked to suggest new flavors and click an “I’d Eat That” button to register their preferences. So far, the results show that a beer-battered onion-ring flavor is popular in California and Ohio, while a churros flavor is a hit in New York.
“It’s a new way of getting consumer research,” said Ann Mukherjee, chief marketing officer of Frito-Lay North America. “We’re going to get a ton of new ideas.”
Frito-Lay plans to produce three of the flavors generated by its contest, and to award a $1 million prize to the creator of one of those flavors.
Frito-Lay has already run the contest overseas, resulting in chip flavors like hot and spicy crab in Thailand and pickled cucumber in Serbia.
