Social Media Face Off: Doritos vs. Cheetos

Both have cheesy goodness. Both have a satisfying crunch. Both are produced by Frito-Lay. But only one can win in this week’s Social Media Face Off. Which one of these snack foods is best in social—Doritos or Cheetos?

In order to compare the brands in social media, we set up search streams for each in the uberVU platform, including all brand variations like Hot Cheetos and Doritos Cool Ranch. We’ve compared the results from the past two weeks to determine our winner.

Let’s see which brand satisfying the most cravings in social.

Round One: Mentions

The snack brands are pretty close when it comes to the total number of mentions. Doritos wins with 204,806 topping the 159,503 mentions of Cheetos.

Winner: Doritos

Round Two: Sentiment

Let’s see how the snacks stack up when it comes to the sentiment behind those mentions. The brands had the same negativity score of 10% and decent positivity scores. Cheetos takes the win with 32% of its mentions registering as positive, edging out the 24% posted by Doritos.

Winner: Cheetos

Round Three: Conversation Mapping

The conversation maps in the uberVU platform show the most-talked about topics for a particular keyword or company name. Both snack brands’ conversation maps contain product-related words and phrases like “cheese”, “eat”, “ate”, “nacho” and “bag.” “Love” also ranks on both maps, which is great news for any brand, cheese flavored or not. Where the maps differ is Doritos is gaining some traction for its marketing campaigns, while the hot topics on Cheetos map refer to the product itself. “I want hot Cheetos” and “craving” show just how much the social web loves its Cheetos.

Doritos’ annual contest, “Crash the Super Bowl, which invites people to create their own own Doritos ad for a shot at it airing during the big game ranks on the map with “Superbowl” and “vote.” You can also see the brand’s partnerships appear—”Doritos Locos” are the taco shells made with Doritos that are available at Taco Bell and “Triple Dip” is a special nacho dish also made with the brand’s chips that’s available at Pizza Hut.

Doritos is successfully creating buzz around its promotions and partnerships and Cheetos has organic buzz around its products—the social web really, really loves Hot Cheetos. The bottom line is both brands are gaining great exposure in social.

Winner: It’s a tie

Round Four: Engagement

With the score all tied up we turn to engagement to determine our winner. To find out which snack brand is driving the most engagement across Facebook and Twitter we’ve compared the number of RTs, Likes and Shares. Doritos and Cheetos are extremely close with RTs, but then Doritos surges ahead with Likes and Shares.

Winner: Doritos

Overall Winner: Doritos

With wins in overall mentions and engagement, we declare the winner of this Social Media Face Off to be Doritos. Get to snacking.

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