What Doritos could learn from Elon Musk's spontaneity

Indra Nooyi, the head of Doritos parent company PepsiCo, is regarded as one of the best CEOs in the world. This is, after all, why she was chosen to appear in the now regrettable edition of online radio show Freakonomics, during which she said Doritos was looking into developing a special line of quiet chips for self-conscious ladies who shudder at thought of a public crunch.

On face value, the insight made sense. It's easy to imagine the research team at PepsiCo running to their CEO with a eureka moment that was going to lead to a whole new profitable line. Nooyi, trusting the research, decided to share the findings with Freakonomics host Steven Dubner to show the company wasn't sitting still, that it was listening to consumers and that it was giving them exactly what they want. This, after all, is what we are so often told brands should do: "give consumers what they want and your business will thrive" the advice regularly goes.

Advertising executive Damon Stapleton, chief creative officer at DDB, says this might be true in theory but it rarely plays out in practice.

"This is a bit controversial, but we sometimes get too obsessed with what consumers want," he told the Herald.

Stapleton points to the disparate responses offered to two significant events this week indicated the difference between doing what consumers want and doing what's right for a brand.

While Doritos languished with an onslaught of criticism for its research-based concept, Elon Musk's nonsensical scheme to send a red Tesla into space with a David Bowie backtrack was met with the type of adulation researchers have spent decades trying to find a formula for. Musk didn't ask Tesla consumers whether they'd like a red car sent to the red planet; he just did it.

"Musk created the best outdoor ad of a time, because he knows what's right for his brand. He leads, he doesn't follow," Stapleton said.

View from SpaceX Launch Control. Apparently, there is a car in orbit around Earth. pic.twitter.com/QljN2VnL1O

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 6, 2018

This isn't the first time PepsiCo has developed something that looks great on paper but falls dismally short of earning the right response from the audience. The company's high-budget ad from last year featuring Kendall Jenner ticked all the boxes: it had an influencer, it had a diverse cast, it had a topical theme, it had an anthem, it had a social cause and, hell, it even had a cello player. And yet, the ad was slammed almost as hard as lady chips.

"They were working to a formula. A series of modern cliches which seem strangely dated," Stapleton has previously written on the subject.

This is not to say business owners and creative types should blindly bludgeon their way through the world trying things just because they feel right. Research has a place but it shouldn't be leant on like some type of ointment for the uncertainty of creativity, Stapleton said.

Creativity is often about evoking emotion, Stapleton said, and it's difficult to create a formula for what moves people. Humans are complex and their motivations aren't always clear.

This sentiment is given added weight by the replication crisis in psychological research, which exposed that the results recorded in more than half of 100 influential research papers could not be replicated. Even under lab conditions, it's difficult to determine why people respond in the ways they do.

You can't blame advertising and marketing types for looking for formulae that provide a shortcut to solving the conundrum that is creativity. This is an industry that has been beaten for decades with the accusation that it's little more than the colouring-in department. There is a greater demand for accountability and for evidence that something will work than ever before. And at a time when budgets are being squeezed, there's also an aversion to risk, with business owners unwilling to bet on untested concepts and ideas.

The problem, however, is the riskier, uncharted territory is often where the "interesting" space lies. And sometimes, you just need to launch a Tesla straight at it to see what happens.