Case Study: How Pringles leveraged AR filter-cricket combo for IPL 2020 campaign

#WaveItWithPringles AR filter campaign was brought to life to help Pringles connect with cricket fans during IPL 2020 as most of their consumers were confined to their homes.

During the IPL 2020 season, Kellogg's Pringles leveraged augmented reality to create an AR filter campaign using Pringle chips that represented 6 unique cricket fans and encouraged viewers to participate in the IPL 2020 frenzy and fill up the stadiums, virtually. Using facial gesture recognition, every time a user opened their mouth, the 6 Pringle characters raised their hands, doing the action of a Mexican wave against the pre-recorded sound of stadium cheers.

Category Introduction

Chips are one of the most commonly consumed snacks across the world. According to data analytics firm GlobalData, India’s potato chips/crisps market was worth US$2.59bn in 2017, growing at an annual rate of 18.7%, and is expected to further expand to a value of $5.5bn in 2022 

Brand Introduction

Pringles was originally developed in the United States of America by Procter & Gamble, in 1967. The brand was sold to Kellogg’s in 2012. Kellogg’s India introduced Pringles in the country in 2014. With a vast variety of international flavour options, Kellogg’s India has also introduced local flavours which meet the Indian taste palette.

Agency

Zoo Media (FoxyMoron, Phosphene, Pollen, and The Rabbit Hole)

Summary 

The #WaveItWithPringles campaign was a Pringles AR filter campaign, which was amplified with the help of a vast influencer marketing strategy, including collaborations with 200 nano-influencers and 18 micro-influencers 

Problem Statement/Objective

Cricket in India is more than a sport. IPL is widely followed by the country’s cricket fans. Every year, cricket fans look forward to attending the IPL matches in different cities of the country. Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, IPL 2020 was hosted in Dubai and not on home turf. Despite the stirring excitement and support among the fans, the key element of cheers from fans in the stadium was truant. The challenge was to find an innovative way to engage with cricket fans to bridge this gap.

Brief

To capitalise on the Indian Premier League and address the issue of the matches being played without fans in the stadium due to COVID-19. 

Creative Idea

Kellogg’s Pringles created a virtual Mexican Wave by capitalising on the AR Filter phenomenon and collaborates with over 200 influencers to bring cricket fans virtually to the IPL stadium.

Challenges

Cricket is a sport that is loved by all in India. In fact, for most viewers it represents quality time spent with their loved ones. Due to the pandemic and the subsequent lockdown, the biggest challenge was that people could not cheer for their teams or players. Furthermore, people could not interact or meet each other. 

Execution

Creating an interactive AR filter including the Pringles Chips cheering for the players: Kellogg’s Pringles created a personalised Augmented Reality (AR) filter. AR was a great way to get consumers and cricket fans together and cheer for their teams while experiencing the stadium experience. In this filter, the Pringles chips were strategically designed to represent 6 cricket fans, which were placed at the bottom of the filter.

Using facial gesture recognition, every time a user opened their mouth, the 6 Pringle characters raised their hands, doing the action of a Mexican Wave against the pre-recorded sound of stadium cheers. The animation in the filter and pre-promotion posts to promote the filter was executed by The Rabbit Hole.

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A post shared by Pringles India (@pringlesindia)

Collaborating with Macro and Nano Influencers to promote the filter: An influencer marketing strategy collaborating with over 200 nano influencers and 18 macro-influencers was executed; this included Jatin Sapru, Dhanashree Verma, Danish Sait, and Ayush Mehra. The Influencers encouraged all their fans to cheer for their favourite teams and bring the stadium energy via their Instagram stories. 

Results

The #WaveItWithPringles filter received 2.5 million impressions, 18.4K opens, 9.6K captures and 918 shares on Instagram.

Speaking on the collaborative effort amongst the various teams of Zoo Media, Pratik Gupta, Co-founder, Zoo Media & FoxyMoron said “With life coming to a complete standstill in 2020, we had to find innovative ways of engaging with the consumer for most of our brands. Towards the end of the year, cricket & the IPL seemed like the biggest festival that Indians were looking forward to. With Kellogg’s, we wanted the fans to feel connected and give them an immersive stadium-like experience."