Recently, Pepsico’s Lay’s launched its new Magic Masala flavor and drew criticism. The criticism was evident particularly in a viral video by Zervaan Bunshah, a creator with 121K followers on Instagram represented by Monk Entertainment. This viral video led to the revival of the original Lay’s Magic Masala flavor.
Viraj Sheth, the co-founder and CEO of Monk Entertainment, recently posted on X (formerly Twitter) to share the behind-the-scenes story of how a spontaneous collaboration between Lay's, and influencer Zervaan unfolded.
We did a cool thing.
— Viraj Sheth (@viraj_sheth) December 7, 2023
1. Lay’s launched their new Magic Masala flavour that everyone hated.
2. Zervaan, a creator we represent, made a video on it that went viral. I’m talking 7M views, 200k shares.
3. Bingo cashes in on the trend. They send a truck full of their product to… pic.twitter.com/MalFoQ9Tmi
The tale began with Lay’s introducing a new Magic Masala flavor that failed to resonate with consumers. Seizing this opportunity, on October 30, 2023, Zervaan crafted a video echoing the sentiments of disappointment. The video went viral with 7 million views and saw around 200,000 shares.
Noticing the trend, Bingo joined the conversation, offering to send a truck full of their product to Zervaan in response to the social media buzz.
Sheth said in his post, “But Zervaan still loves Lay’s. He just wants to bring back the old flavour, the OG Magic Masala.”
The Monk Entertainment team reached out to Lay's to collaborate on reintroducing the original flavor, and together they planned to announce it with Zervaan. For this, Zervaan was sent to the factory to ensure old flavour was coming back.
As part of this collaboration, Lay’s also got the creator’s picture on the packaging.
None of this was planned. Just super fast thinking and execution from all parties involved.
-Sheth said in his post.