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PepsiCo?s Lay's chips tears into personalization via mobile bag challenge

PepsiCo?s Frito-Lay division is leveraging an interactive tool and personalized packaging heading into the Memorial Day holiday by letting consumers on mobile create custom digital bags of Lay?s potato chips featuring photos of favorite summer moments.

Through July 4, Lay's Summer Days campaign will reward thousands of winners with real-life customized bags of Lay's Classic potato chips featuring their photos. As marketers increasingly rely on consumers to create small, sharable pieces of content, Lay?s campaign points to the importance of crowdsourcing input to solve challenges.

?We know that summer and the moments created during summer are ones that consumers treasure,? said Tina Mahal, senior director of marketing, Frito-Lay. ?Summer is that time of year when you might take a half-day Friday, go on a road trip, take a vacation, etcetera. Lifelong memories are created.
 
?We know that food is a big part of those memories ? often Lay?s potato chips,? she said.  ?We want to help enhance and capture these moments and have a two-way conversation with our consumers along the way.?

Summer photo
With the interactive Summer Bag Creator tool available at www.lays.com, fans can upload a summer photo, caption it and receive a digital version of a Lay's potato chip bag featuring their photo to share with family and friends on social media.  

Interactive bag-design tool.

The first 10,000 approved submissions will be incorporated into real-life Lay's potato chip bags and sent to consumers.

The initiative comes on the heels of Lay?s long-running Do Us A Flavor campaign on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook, which seeks to connect the brand to ever-growing social media activity on smartphones and tablets.

Do Us A Flavor is accessed primarily through a mobile-optimized microsite which lets users type in their flavor ideas or take a short quiz about their food preferences to create the perfect chip flavor.

Summer Days is the latest example of how Frito-Lay understands the importance of emotionally involving audiences in creative activity to drive engagement and sales.

In April, Frito-Lay's Doritos raised the marketing stakes by hosting a chance-based game show on live-streaming service Periscope and a team game on Twitter to promote its Roulette chips and connect with a younger male demographic. 

The campaign spanned multiple social media channels, with the team game on Twitter, winner announcements on Vine, promo images on social accounts and video advertisements on YouTube. 

The challenge format of the campaign enticed the male demographic while social and mobile platforms reached out to younger consumers.

Summer Days is a fun way for PepsiCo to make its connection with fans more personal.

In the months ahead, Lay also will unveil a sun-activated bag that reveals special summer imagery when exposed to sunlight. The sun-activated bag will be available at major retailers nationwide leading up to the July 4 holiday weekend. 

Redeem codes
Consumers also will have the opportunity to redeem codes found on specially marked packages of Lay's potato chips to receive Lay's-branded swag which includes tote bags, flip-flops, water bottles, UV-activated tank tops and more. 

Consumers also can win other summer-themed prizes, including a convertible-style automobile and an all-inclusive summer getaway. 

Connecting PepsiCo to social media.

?Taking this campaign digital expands its reach dramatically as consumers are mobile,? said Karen Pattani-Hasen, agency relations director at Urban Airship. ?Allowing consumers to create digital bags of chips brings a new level of fun and engagement to the campaign.  

?Engaging consumers on their mobile devices brings spontaneity and extends the impact of the campaign,? she said. 

?Lays could close the sales loop by enabling consumers to download mobile coupons for their favorite chip flavors, using Urban Airship's Wallet Studio, which makes it easy to create, manage and track mobile coupons for Passbook and Google Wallet.?

Final Take
Michael Barris is staff reporter on Mobile Marketer, New York