Pringles had a problem; we were the ‘occasion’ crisp. The crisp you enjoyed with your mates or took to a party, limiting consumption moments. To change this, we harnessed the power of an everyday activity, whose audience love a snack to get more people, eating us more often. 

Gaming was the perfect vehicle, with 71% of gamers regularly snacking while playing. Crisps are gamers’ no. 1 snack of choice, making them a key area of opportunity for us, so we made them sit up and take notice. We knew we were their perfect snack – our non-greasy crisps are vital to maintaining optimum controller grip – but we needed them to know this too. 

Our mission: Align and associate Pringles with gaming authentically to become gamers’ no. 1 snack brand while being outspent 2:1 by our closest competitors.

1. Gamers are notoriously hard to engage, so we had to think like a gamer to win their favour.  We eschewed just telling them why they should love us and instead went big, creating Frank, a Pringles-loving zombie cowboy from the game ‘West of Dead’ to wreak havoc across gaming streams
2. To make Frank stand out and resonate in a world full of iconic characters, we onboarded Twitch, the world’s leading live-streaming service and home to millions of gamers.

Twitch are about bringing people together, making it the perfect platform to take Frank from 6ft under to stratospheric stardom! Our strategy was to create show-stopping content that crucially involved the audience by eliminating the barrier between the online and the real world.

For the first time, we wanted to break a character out of a game, out of a screen and into the room of streamer Leahviathan, whom we identified as the perfect talent to create a mini-drama rather than just a stream. Attracted by the pop of a Pringles can, Frank burst out of WoD - live on Leah’s stream. Those tuning in could interact and fall in love with Frank, teaching him how to game and competing in challenges to win prizes.

We worked with Twitch to bolster viewership via homepage activity ahead of the breakout without giving the game away. 

Leah’s stream began as usual: gaming, eating Pringles and chatting. The tone shifted when Frank started acting out of character. Suddenly, there was a loud thud as Frank broke through the screen and into her room, and the Twitch chat erupted! It was soon apparent that Frank wasn’t there to eat Leah but her Pringles. 

For 2 hours, the pair created bespoke, live content playing games and engaging the chat. This blurred the line between advertisement and entertainment, and Frank continued the experience by visiting seven other streamers across Europe. He then went on to star in Twitch Premium ads, capturing the attention of gamers daily for three months and finally, he returned to the game as a non-playable character, Pringles in hand!