Ruffles epically tries to out-epic the epic basketball thing with werewolves and other epic creatures

Fried starch medallion company Frito-Lay launched a social media campaign last month. I only heard about it yesterday, which should tell you about its reach and effectiveness. I just spent 20 minutes trying to figure it out, and I’m still fuzzy on some of the details, so I’m going to pull the trigger on this post to put myself out of my misery.

There are 32(?) creature/meme/gimmick-based teams. There is a “Werewolves” team.

If you buy some chips you can get a code to organize the teams into brackets, which is a mechanic piggy-backing on the current basketball thing.

The winning creatures for each seven-day round are determined through votes registered on Twitter with hashtags (like #VoteWerewolves). I know from experience at a previous job that this is a bad idea thought up by overtired social media managers to “increase engagement”. It won’t. It just creates a lot of hashtag spam.

I have no idea if some of the creatures that didn’t win get eliminated every round. I think that’s what happens with brackets, but there’s no indication of this on the web site. Just buy some chips to find out, maybe? If it’s important to you.

If you guessed the winning creature for that round, I think you win something? There’s a picture of an Xbox. And a TV. I can’t feel my face.

Most importantly, this campaign is completely drenched in the Social Media Secret Sauce of 2012: everything is very epic.

Anyway, that’s all I have for you on this particular subject. The last round is over in six days. If you like potato chips from the Frito-Lay people or deciding the victor in the epic battle between LEPRECHAUNS and OLD BRITISH POLICEMEN, go. Get out of here.