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As users pay less and less attention to standalone ads, major brands are looking for ways to “go around” them through experiences, games, and popular culture to sustain long-term interest. Two new stories from Chipotle and Doritos show that content marketing is no longer just content on owned channels, but is becoming part of the brand experience ecosystem.
- Key points:
- Chipotle connects its loyalty program with the game PGA Tour 2K25 to boost engagement and encourage rewards redemption.
- Doritos leverages its partnership with Formula 1 to create global reach and year-round presence instead of only spiking during short campaigns.
- Both cases show that content marketing is shifting toward a model tied to experience, community, and real consumer behavior.
- For Vietnamese marketers, the lesson lies in choosing the right “content context” rather than simply publishing more articles or videos.
Chipotle uses gaming to bring its rewards program closer to customers
According to Marketing Dive, Chipotle is boosting its loyalty program by integrating it with PGA Tour 2K25. This approach turns a program that usually appears only as a promotion into an entertainment-driven experience, helping the brand reach users where they are spending their time: in a gaming environment.
The notable point in this case is not the game itself, but the mindset of connecting content with behavior. When brand rewards are paired with an interactive entertainment experience, the value of the program is not just earning points or redeeming offers, but also creating a reason to come back again and again. This is closer to modern content marketing: content does not stand alone, but is “packaged” into an experience that is meaningful to users.
For F&B, retail, or membership-service brands, this approach suggests an important principle: instead of only telling the brand story on a fan page or website, find ways to place the brand in a context where consumers want to actively engage. That could be gaming, digital platforms, community activities, or reward missions with an entertainment angle.
Source: Marketing Dive, “Chipotle drives rewards program with ‘PGA Tour 2K25’ integration”.
Doritos expands reach through Formula 1: from short campaigns to year-round presence
In the second story, Marketing Dive reports that Doritos is leveraging its partnership with Formula 1 to create global scale and maintain a year-round presence. This is a notable direction because many brands only use sports sponsorship as a short-term communications burst. By contrast, Formula 1 is a cross-border, highly loyal audience environment with a long event calendar, making it a strong fit for building a continuous content stream.
For Doritos, the value of the partnership is not just putting a logo on a race series. More importantly, the brand gets to stand inside a vibrant cultural community where content can be developed across multiple layers: from social content and fan collaborations to event activations and season-based creative packages. In other words, the partnership becomes the “skeleton” for the brand to develop content in step with the target community’s rhythm.
This is an important lesson for marketing teams looking to build “always-on content” but running out of ideas. If a brand only produces disconnected posts, it is very hard to hold attention. But if it has a broad enough topic ecosystem — such as sports, music, gaming, or lifestyle — content has a foundation to grow more sustainably. Doritos shows that the power of a good partnership is turning a campaign into a long-term content platform.
Source: Marketing Dive, “How Doritos gets global, year-round scale with Formula 1 partnership”.
A perspective for the Vietnamese market
These two cases show that content marketing is moving closer to a “brand experience” model rather than just “content production.” For Vietnamese businesses, this is especially useful in highly competitive sectors such as F&B, retail, fast-moving consumer goods, entertainment, and e-commerce.
Instead of asking only “what more content should we produce,” marketers should ask “where will users experience this content, and why would they want to engage with it.” A campaign may be more effective if it is tied to gaming, sports events, fan communities, or an entertainment-based points system. At the same time, the key is to maintain continuity, avoiding a short-lived spike followed by a quick fade.
For the Vietnamese market, the practical lesson is to choose the right context, the right community, and the right participation mechanism. When a brand creates a reason for users to come back on their own, content marketing truly moves from “publishing” to “activating behavior.”
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References
- Chipotle drives rewards program with ‘PGA Tour 2K25’ integration
- How Doritos gets global, year-round scale with Formula 1 partnership
