A smartphone and a box of Pringles: You do not need much to transform yourself into a legendary rock star. Right on time for the kick-off of the 2011 festivals season the popular potato chips brand Pringles found its artsy side and launched its own air guitar app. Similar to Apple’s GarageBand for the iPad, users can compose their own rock songs and try out 15 different virtual instruments.
New instruments can only be unlocked by scanning the barcode on the Pringles packaging – an interesting way to market a product in a playful way. There are also badges that can be shared with friends on Facebook, too. Once all the Pringles have found their way into your stomach, you may reuse the packaging as a loudspeaker. At least that is what another promotion campaign of Pringles is suggesting. The app gets promoted via a video showing a bunch of nerds playing music with their Pringles make-do, the Pringles Crunch Band:
‘Once you rock you can’t stop’:
And that’s how it works:
While the app is for free, it is only available in the UK and Sweden at the moment, because Pringles thinks the most suitable target group lives there: “Music has been used as a social channel connecting people with the Pringles brand in many of their previous campaigns. The reason for rolling it out again now is that Pringles’ target audience is Scandinavian youth; a demographic that loves and defines themselves by their music.” (M.A. Adolfson, Art Director der betreuenden Agentur CP+B). Pringles was sold in April by Procter&Gamble to its big competitor, US based Diamond Foods, for US$2.4 bn. The company has been active in social media since long and ranks 11th in the ranking of the sites with the biggest reach on Facebook, having more than 15 million fans there world-wide.
