Brand & Advertising / Music / Animation
Doritos: Ketchup Kiss
An original 1980s-inspired power ballad and animated music video celebrating Canada's much-loved and occasionally elusive Ketchup Doritos.
- Client / Collaborator
- Doritos / PepsiCo Foods Canada
- Role
- Creative Director / Executive Producer
- Year
- 2021
- Agency
- BBDO Toronto
- Creative Production
- Mr Anderson Limited
- Markets
- Canada / United States / Online Worldwide
- Creative collaborators
- James Knight — MusicDimitris Armenakis — Illustration and Animation
- Deliverables
- Original song, animated music video and digital content created for a bespoke streaming platform and online campaign.
Watch the film
The Brief
Create original entertainment content for a bespoke streaming platform marking the return of Ketchup Doritos. The flavour has an unusually devoted following in Canada but traditionally appears for only a limited period. The brief presented an opportunity to speak to that audience through entertainment rather than conventional product advertising. The content needed to appeal to a Gen Z YouTube audience with an appetite for playful, unexpected and artistically distinctive work.
The Idea
Treat the relationship between the audience and Ketchup Doritos as a great lost romance. Ketchup Kiss is a deliberately overblown 1980s-inspired power ballad about desire, separation and the hope of being reunited with a much-loved, ketchup-flavoured friend. By taking an apparently ridiculous emotional premise completely seriously, the song turns the annual disappearance and return of the product into a dramatic romantic narrative. The result sits somewhere between a love song, an animated music video and a surreal product tribute.
The Creative Approach
Rather than begin with a conventional advertising script, I approached the project as an original music commission. Working with music producer James Knight, I developed and wrote Ketchup Kiss as a nostalgic ballad that expressed the desire, infatuation and considerable joy associated with the flavour. The visual world needed to match the excess and sincerity of the song. It drew on the energy of classic MTV-era animation, underground illustration, pop art and expressive hand-drawn character design. Animation director and illustrator Dimitris Armenakis translated the song into a vivid and eccentric animated world. His distinctive characters, bold colours and restless movement captured the strange combination of longing, comedy and snack-based romance at the heart of the idea.
My Contribution
I was Creative Director and Executive Producer, leading the project from the initial creative response through to final delivery.
- Developing the central creative concept
- Creating and writing the original song with James Knight
- Defining the visual and tonal direction of the music video
- Selecting and collaborating with animation director Dimitris Armenakis
- Leading the relationship with the agency producer and creative teams
- Managing the production budget and delivery timeline
- Coordinating the music, illustration and animation workflows
- Reviewing creative development throughout production
- Overseeing feedback, approvals and final delivery
The Production Challenge
The challenge was to create something genuinely entertaining and culturally relevant without allowing the product message to overwhelm the idea. The audience needed to enjoy the song and animation on their own terms. If the film felt like a conventional snack advertisement, the humour and emotional commitment of the concept would disappear. Music and animation also had to develop together. The timing, character performances and visual jokes depended closely on the structure and emotional shifts within the song. I created a connected workflow between the agency, music and animation teams so that decisions could be made across the whole piece rather than treating the soundtrack and visuals as separate production stages.
The Visual World
The film was developed for a Gen Z audience familiar with internet culture while carrying a nostalgic reference to the days when original music videos were events in their own right. The illustrative approach combined exaggerated cartoon characterisation with the bold marks, graphic energy and immediacy associated with artists such as Keith Haring and the more anarchic traditions of late twentieth-century animation. Dimitris Armenakis brought these influences into his own distinctive visual language, creating something strange, joyful and unmistakably suited to Ketchup Kiss.
The Result
Ketchup Kiss became an original piece of branded entertainment for Doritos' digital platform and online audience. The completed work gave the limited-edition flavour its own song, characters and animated world. Rather than simply announcing the product's return, it expressed the peculiar affection Canadian audiences have for it. The project was delivered through close collaboration between the client, BBDO Toronto, music and animation teams. It demonstrates how an original entertainment idea can turn a familiar product launch into something audiences might actively choose to watch.
Credits
- Client
- Doritos / PepsiCo Foods Canada
- Agency
- BBDO Toronto
- Creative Director / Executive Producer
- Ross Anderson
- Music
- Ross Anderson and James Knight
- Illustration / Animation Direction
- Dimitris Armenakis
When the ad is the entertainment
I develop original music, film and animation ideas that give audiences a reason to spend time with a brand.
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