PepsiCo and Britvic have teamed up to develop new Doritos and Pepsi Max lines that are designed to be sold together.

The Fire and Ice initiative will involve the launch of a spicy Jalapeño Fire Doritos alongside a cooling lime Pepsi Max, Citrus Freeze.

Backed by multimillion pound marketing support, the launches later this month are designed to ­encourage shoppers to buy crisps and drinks together. Although crisps and snacks are consumed with soft drinks 57% of the time, they are bought together in only 13% of cases, said Britvic marketing head Noel Clarke, citing Kantar data [52w/e 8 February 2011].

“Retailers are already doing meal deals and connecting products, but we’re integrating flavour-matching with huge through-the-line support to drive penetration and trial in a normally quiet period,” he said.

Sales of Pepsi total £323m in the UK and Pepsi Max has been the brand’s fastest-growing variant over the past year, up 15.2% by value to £145m [Nielsen 52w/e 6 August 2011]. Sales of Doritos have grown 17% to £134m over the same ­period.

Doritos Jalapeño Fire flavour will be available in a permanent take-home format (rsp: £2.37/250g) and limited-edition 175g (rsp: £1.77) and 40g formats (rsp: 45p), while the limited-edition Pepsi Max Citrus Freeze will be available in two-litre (rsp: £1.89) and 600ml (rsp: £1.05) formats for about three months from the end of September.

An on-pack promotion will run across all Doritos and Pepsi Max products, ­offering consumers the chance to enter a prize draw to win a trip to Las Vegas or Iceland.

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