#PlayWithPringles: Hitting 4 billion views on TikTok
#PlayWithPringles took TikTok by storm in 2020, generating big results and engaging fans worldwide. How did we do it? Senior Art Director Joshua Crossley and Senior Copywriter Stephanie Gane take a look.
Lockdown 2020. Never have any of us spent more time at home, staring at the same four walls. With the endless depressing news that surrounded us, we all needed some positivity to get us through, but the Zoom quizzes and baking banana bread attempts just weren’t cutting it any more.
This was the backdrop when Pringles tasked us with establishing the brand with a Gen Z audience. They wanted to do so in a way that embodied Pringles’ playful nature during a time when things were pretty miserable. Could we inspire Gen Z to see Pringles as a playful snack made for sharing? We dreamt of positioning Pringles as the next must have accessory for Gen Z’s social content. And what better way to do this than on TikTok.
Inspired by the ‘Genie in a Bottle’ TikTok trend, we launched #PlaywithPringles: a challenge that got people out of their PJs and into their finest clothes in style. You’d simply jump into the Pringles can as one thing and jump out as another, set it to our custom track and you’re in. And millions of people managed to do just that, with one guy even jumping out and dropping down onto one knee to pop the question. Now that’s what we call romance.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a TikTok campaign without creators bringing the hype. We enlisted 50 key influencers throughout France, Germany, UK, Italy, Spain and Russia to kickstart the work; each putting their own creative stamp on the challenge, ensuring maximum exposure.
The result? We set out to engage Gen Z and the results were unbelievable. We became the ultimate snack to be seen with, across multiple markets, thousands of living rooms and billions of phone screens among our target audience.
We set a fun and playful challenge and the community responded by creating an outstanding 2,025,154 videos on TikTok. Imagine, two million people buying a Pringles can, shooting their own content and then sharing it.
We smashed the engagement benchmarks with a tasty 13% average rate. But most importantly, with over 4.7 billion views of #PlaywithPringles, we injected the fun and playfulness of the Pringles brand into the homes and onto the screens of so many, at a time when they needed it the most.