Flavour Fusion

Background

Pringles crisps are so well-known for their fun brand personality, high quality product, unique packaging and good flavour range, that they were one of the first FMCG brands in Australia to reach 1 million fans on Facebook. However, Pringles crisps are more expensive than most brands of crisps, adversely affecting their market share. Pringles needed to tap into their fan-base to encourage purchase, preferably multiple purchases, and trial across the range of flavours.

Idea

Any single Pringle is a flavour sensation. So what happens when you eat two different Pringles at the same time?

They called it a Flavour Fusion.

They gave their fans the notion that combining any two of the seven different Pringles flavours can create a whole new flavour – 21 combinations in total.

But what are these mythical flavours?

In reality, all 21 combinations just tasted like a combination of Pringles. After extensive trialing, it turned out that everybody has a different opinion as to what each combination tasted like. So they let the fans decide.

On Facebook, they invited fans to use the Flavour Fusion app to combine two Pringles flavours and tell them what they thought the combination tasted like. Of course, they had to let their tastebuds decide by buying Pringles and trying different combinations for themselves.

After four weeks, they selected the best flavour name suggestion for each of the 21 combinations. For example, Hot & Spicy mixed with Salt & Vinegar became ‘Chili Pickling’, while BBQ combined with Cheddar became ‘Grill-da-cheese’.

Next, they challenged these 21 participants to make their Flavour Fusion the most popular. They were given a small cash prize to kick off their marketing campaign, a personalised URL to drive traffic to their flavour, and four weeks to get the most votes.

At the end of the campaign, the person who attracted the most votes won $10,000 and a one-year supply of their favourite Pringles.

Relevance

Hosting the campaign within Facebook, directly reached the 1 million fans who claimed to be loyal to the brand, but weren’t necessarily purchasing.

This idea not only encouraged fans to re-investigate their favourite crisp, but to purchase more than one flavour at a time to try it for themselves, thus increasing the volume of sales.

And the promotional mechanic created 21 evangelists who dedicated four weeks of monumental effort toward promoting the Pringles brand, telling the product story about flavour, and encouraging purchase.

Results

The launch video ranked No4 on the Viral Video Chart in the food category.

Over 17,000 visitors to www.FlavourFusion.com

Nearly 19,000 flavour names suggested in four weeks.

21 evangelists selected to become their own media channel and released upon consumers.

They blogged, tweeted, and Facebooked. Some begged for votes. Others tried to buy votes. Some created websites. Others made online videos. One secured airtime on a radio station to promote their Fusion Flavour and offered to donate a share of the prize to GuideDogs Australia.

Increase of 230,000 Facebook fans, propelling Pringles to be Australia’s No.1 FMCG brand on Facebook.

And apparently, when you combine Original and BBQ Pringles, you get Bushtucker flavour. Yummo!