Frito Lay Canada is following in the consumer-generated footsteps of its American corporate sibling by giving customers a new Canadian product to name and market.

Starting Monday, a new flavour of Doritos will appear on store shelves packaged in white single-serving bags featuring the Doritos logo, a black dollar sign and the words “Unidentified Flavour.”

The back of the package reads, “Doritos brand needs a new guru and the job is worth big bucks! Want it? Just name this flavour and send us a guru worthy advertising idea. For the whole story visit DoritosGuru.ca.”

Contestants can submit their flavour and marketing ideas to the site (which simultaneously updates contest pages on Facebook.com and YouTube.com), where visitors will vote for the five best concepts.

“There’s an opportunity here to remove the veil of advertising and development,” said Tony Matta, vice-president, marketing for Frito Lay Canada. “What better way to do that than to launch a flavour without a name or any thought to advertising?”

Matta wanted a campaign that would be “transparent,” which appeals to the teenage target because they value honesty in marketing. “A lot of brands ask consumers to engage with them, but always on their terms,” Matta said.

The winning name will earn its creator $25,000 and 1% of the product’s net sales for as long as it’s in market.

The Guru campaign was jointly created by a group of Frito’s agencies of record, which have been meeting—often on weekends—since the summer.

BBDO Toronto handled core creative duties, and partnered with promotional agency Capital C to design the packaging. Capital C also designed the retail displays. Proximity Canada oversaw the digital aspects of the campaign—most notably a back-end interface between DoritosGuru.ca, Facebook.com and YouTube.com. Public and media relations will be handled by Fleishman-Hillard, while OMD Canada oversees all media duties.

Both CTV-owned MuchMusic and Astral Media’s MusiquePlus will cover the campaign on an ongoing basis, with on-air personalities reviewing the user-submitted videos and offering tips on how to make better ads.

“We had to use television differently,” said Daniele Boem, group director of strategy at OMD. “We know our teens are multi-taskers and they still watch TV, but they’re selective in what they watch.”

The co-operation between the various media outlets, especially the television stations, has been surprising, added Boem.

“We’re at a point now where MuchMusic and MusiquePlus are talking to each other, with us in the middle. That’s unheard of. That’s how big and integrated this program is.”

The contest winner will be chosen by a panel of celebrity judges, including Toronto Raptor Chris Bosh and Nova Scotia band The Trews, and announced live on a fully sponsored and commercial-free episode of MuchMusic’s Much on Demand May 1.

OMD also arranged to make use of a new ad unit on YouTube.com—a home page takeover—that creates a screen-wide ad on the site’s landing page. The first takeover will appear Feb. 19.

The new campaign was teased during the Canadian broadcast of the Super Bowl with a low-budget BBDO ad featuring two toys talking about making a Doritos commercial. When one toy asked the other why he’d bother watching the ad, the music becomes tense, signalling a confrontation.

In the end, the tension was diffused by a non sequitur sight gag, which BBDO’s Ian MacKellar calls the “What the F***” moment.

“We wanted the consumers to say ‘WTF?’” said MacKellar, the agency’s executive creative director. “There’s a moment of great interest there.”

BBDO will populate the campaign’s site with a handful of other oddball ads, hoping to encourage armchair directors to create their own.

In the U.S., Doritos has been using consumer-generated content to fill part of its Super Bowl inventory for two years. For this year’s game, it held an online contest where visitors to CrashTheSuperbowl.com voted on user-created ads. The winning submission, Free Doritos, has been noted as one of the Super Bowl’s best ads on several industry blogs and in publications such as USA Today. It has more than 2 million views on YouTube.