Who: Frito-Lay Canada, with Rethink for creative, strategy and PR; Tantrum Studio for production (Mark Zibert directing) and OMD for media.
What: “Share More Joy,” a national campaign from PepsiCo's chips and snacks business that aims to position its savoury snacks as a solid alternative to cookies and other sweets more commonly associated with the holiday season. The campaign includes a charitable component attached to the Miss Vickies brand.
What: “Share More Joy,” a national campaign from PepsiCo's chips and snacks business that aims to position its savoury snacks as a solid alternative to cookies and other sweets more commonly associated with the holiday season. The campaign includes a charitable component attached to the Miss Vickies brand.
When & Where: The campaign launched last week with newspaper ads in The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Vancouver Sun, and Montreal Gazette. It's anchored by a 60-second hero spot supported by a broadcast buy that includes lower-third placements on the Food Network, The Hallmark Movie Marathon on W Network, and coverage of this year's Santa Claus Parade. Digital, social, and OOH round out the effort.
Why: Basically, Frito-Lay is trying to break the stranglehold that sweets have on the season. According to research commissioned by Frito-Lay Canada through the Angus Reid Forum, more than two-thirds (68%) of Canadians want something other than the standard sweet holiday snacks, while more than a third of respondents specifically said they’d prefer something savoury.
The brand has taken that data and personified the preference with Santa Claus, who each year is inundated with cookies left by families for him to eat during his visit.
How: The newspaper ads were styled as an open letter from Santa Claus, asking Canadians to shake up the traditional cookies they leave him by setting out something savoury instead.
In the hero spot, Santa’s night starts with one cookie, but in a sequence scored by a frantic rendition of “In the Hall of the Mountain King,” soon finds himself struggling with the sheer glut of gingerbread men and butter cookie ornaments. Even a fortune cookie is left in the mix.
As he slips into a cookie-induced haze, a horror-inspired visual effects sequence depicts the cookies coming to life and quite literally mobbing the magical man, putting a humorous twist on sweets overkill many Canadians expressed in the Angus Reid data.
Wishful thinking from Miss Vickie's: Along with the chips-over-cookies campaign, Frito Lay is offering limited edition bags of Miss Vickie’s chips inspired by the childhood belief that folded chips are “wish chips.” The Miss Vickie’s All Wishes bags are filled with “wish chips,” and were available in limited quantities each day from Dec. 8 to 12 for a $5 donation to Make-A-Wish Canada.
Rethink, all that and a bag of chips: This is the first work from Rethink for the Frito-Lay brand. The agency quietly secured the remit for both the Lay's and Miss Vickies brands, as well as the broader Frito-Lay Canada Canada. Rethink partner and chief creative officer Mike Dubrick described it as one of the “most iconic brands on the planet.”
And we quote: "This campaign started with one simple idea: What if Santa wanted an alternative to cookies? That really inspired us to think creatively about how Santa could speak for every Canadian who finds themselves wishing for a bowl of chips over the traditionally sweet holiday season." — Jess Spaulding, chief marketing officer, PepsiCo Canada
