Lay’s chips came out with the brilliant campaign idea to incorporate audience participation in order to drum up business. Lay’s had costumers submit new flavor ideas that they wanted with the chance to win $1 million dollars. The idea started with the UK but boomed through America reaching record numbers with submissions and sales.
PepsiCo had a few different goals in mind when they launched the “Do Us A Flavor” campaign. Their ultimate goal, however, was to create social media buzz among the 18-34 age demographic. To broaden their audience, the company wanted to reach a new age group of people, millennials. In order to do that, they made their submissions through Facebook and created a buzz throughout the younger age groups about their brand and the new flavors of chips.
It was launched through Facebook’s website where contestants could create a chip name, ingredients and a short description of the product they came up with. The contest was fully rounded to include audience participation, a cash prize and friendly competition which most people thrive off of. They even changed the “like” button to “I’d eat that” so people could vote for the best flavors. Lay’s even got celebrities like Nich Lache to get market their products.
Lay’s goal was to broaden their audience to Millenials by incorporating social media platforms like Facebook, Youtube, Instagram, and Twitter. By doing this, their product showed up on those platforms and encouraged people to talk about the competition. This worked tremendously well and facebook was able to receive 3 million submissions and 22.5 million Facebook page visits, they had an overall sales uplift of +12 %. By 2015, Lay’s had a net worth of $3.5 billion dollars after their lift in sales (Shultz). Lay’s was the talk of the town!
Facebook allowed the creativity to flow within the younger generations and families. My group and I read a story about the first winning family and how they chose their flavor based on their kid’s likes. Every time they went to a restaurant they would always ask for cheesy garlic bread and that’s the flavor the mom submitted. That family won the million-dollar prize and they were ecstatic. That heartwarming story brought an emotional connection to the campaign as well.
This campaign had friends, family, and just about everyone talking about Lay’s chips. This technique was so out there and unheard of that everyone freaked out. Who would have thought that having the thew audience do the work for them would have worked out so well? I sure didn’t! People could be anywhere and think of an idea of a chip flavor. People also had the choice of submitting their flavor on a certain type of chip. Whether it be kettle-cooked, wavy or regular that changes the whole game.
Lay’s chips made a boom throughout the industry and the campaign began to grow bigger and bigger. More submissions were coming in every year and the bigger the campaign got the bigger the prize got. By 2014 they had three winners. The runners up would receive half a million dollars whereas the winner would get the initial million.
What a crazy idea that completely took Lay’s chips to a whole new level. Lay’s was really able to give their audience a voice, which people love. Competitors should take notes from the Lay’s chips marketing team!
