Pringles Leverages Social Media to Boost Sales at Walmart

Kellogg Co. has found success in driving sales of Pringles at Walmart during the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s “March Madness” season with an annual “Flavor Slam” program that leverages digital influencers.Kevin Hoppe, Kellogg's senior manager of shopper marketing, joined Matt Silvestri, account director at lead agency The Integer Group, in discussing the program in March during a Shopper Marketing Summit presentation.Knowing that 20% of shoppers are involved in a March Madness party and that the season commands more spending power than the Super Bowl due to its duration, Kellogg wanted to make Pringles stand out among Walmart’s price-conscious shoppers.The manufacturer considered official sponsorships and media buys to be prohibitively expensive and instead leveraged Pringles’ strength in the social media space as well as the pre-existing popularity of Pringles “hacks” — such as turning the can into a hot dog cooker or a speaker amplifier for a phone. Kellogg was able to find a unique way to deliver ownable content and make the connection between Pringles and basketball by developing a backboard that would attach to the Pringles can and enable a simple basketball-like pingpong game. It was distributed exclusively at Walmart. The concept leveraged the distinctive can packaging and appealed to an already attentive audience.“With that, the Pringles Flavor Slam game was born: a product-focused experience that would allow our shoppers and fans the emotional excitement of hitting that last minute shot first hand,” Silvestri said.To bring the effort to life, the team needed to socialize it — or make it bigger. The manufacturer found a vast array of ping-pong trick videos online and engaged a group of five guys who were popular for uploading entertaining basketball trick shots: Dude Perfect.“This gave us a digital influencer that not only embodies the idea but also brought to life the playful nature of the brand, Silvestri said. "We were playing to their strengths, bringing their audience something entirely new, and none [of the content] would be positioned as any sort of overt brand advertisement. We hit the demographic that we know Pringles is. Dude Perfect hit against that core millennial consumer with an echo with younger kids."The effort was built around a trick-shot video starring Dude Perfect and supported with a related iPhone game. The social media investment drove the display the effort received in Walmart stores, where the exclusive collectible backboards were distributed on themed pallet displays. The backboards contained messaging encouraging users to create their own trick shots and upload them to social media with the #flavorslam hashtag.“Thousands of videos were submitted over the course of the first two years of the program [which is now in its third year],” Hoppe said. “We didn’t have a promotion per se, we had a hashtag and we asked people to do something for us. We didn’t tell them there were any contest rules or anything. In year one we actually surprised [a participant who shot a video a day for the promotion] with a pallet of Pringles. That’s easy for us to do but it was something that made him forever a brand advocate. In year two we stepped up and created flavor slam trophies, honoring some of our biggest winners.”In the first year, Pringles’ trick-shot video boasted 33.7 million views, the vast majority in completion; year two had 78.5 million views. And those views translated to sales: in the first year, the brand grew sales by 22% year-over-year at Walmart, with 90% of growth coming from base SKUs. “It took three months of selling [the program] internally just at Kellogg,” Silversti said. “At Walmart it also took some convincing to show them the opportunity. Our buyer understood what our brand is about and how social is important to our brand, and we had an ongoing dialogue with him.”“A simple formula was what drove success for us,” Hoppe concluded, listing three key pillars that made the program a winner:Be relevant: Stand out in a uniquely ownable way, don’t just follow the trends. Find the right time that works for the retailer, brand, customer, sales and other teams involved.Be accessible: Find that partner that will help tell the story the way you would want to hear. Make it easy to participate.Be simple: You don’t need to do many different things; find one simple idea. Put the brand in the hands of the consumer. If you’re telling a story, let them tell it back.

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