Pringles

The Objective

“Pop, Play, Eat” – when Pringles came to TikTok to generate mass brand awareness with a new audience of digital natives, it certainly encouraged playful engagement. Over a billion TikTok users engaged with Pringles, generating an unstoppable creative force truly reserved for the most viral moments. 

The Solution

To engage with the TikTok community and create a huge spike in brand awareness, Pringles crafted an exciting Branded Hashtag Challenge – called #PlayWithPringles – that sparked fun, creativity and joy, and ran it in three markets (Germany, Italy and France). It was very simple: users were asked to get creative with a Pringles can and film it. Judging by the number of "challenge page" views the concept received – over one billion – the campaign truly went viral, and quickly.

Simplicity is often the key to viral success, and TikTok users took to the challenge in the tens of thousands, producing all manners of unique and quirky user-generated content (UGC). Some common themes emerged, as fans "transformed" from one outfit to the next "inside" the can or used the "duet" function to pass the can to one another. In fact, the creative idea was predicated on the insight that fans were already playing with the iconic can organically, and this simply built upon it.

Pringles launched the challenge using popular TikTok Creators in each market, spearheading creative inspiration and using their influence as a catalyst for supercharging exposure. The concept was very easy to take part in, whilst also really fun to put an individual spin on, making the campaign a rocketship for community engagement.

For this campaign, Pringles ran additional TopView and One Day Max In-Feed Ads to ramp up exposure for its (already) organically booming challenge page. TopView ads take over the full screen upon opening the app and guarantee millions of views in a 24-hour period. In-Feed Ads offer a more integrated approach, seamlessly fitting into a user’s For You feed for maximum organic impact.

The Results

The campaign broke benchmarks – exposure, engagement and UGC all grew at an explosive rate. It generated more than one billion hashtag video views from over 343,000 UGC entries. It also drew in a whopping 13% average engagement rate between all markets, showing that the TikTok community not only connected with Pringles but also thrived off its playful energy. 

Miranda Prins, VP Pringles Europe, said: “Fun has always been at the core of everything we do at Pringles, and that’s exactly why this playful challenge has been so successful. It has been amazing to see the response to our challenge and even better to see the creative ways people are using our product for TikTok videos. We’re always looking at the latest trends to engage with our consumers and our partnership with TikTok is an exciting evolution within our digital marketing strategy.”