The campaign was effectively designed to be a volume driver after the market share drop of Chipsy as mentioned previously. But this led us to create a movement much deeper than us being able to sell more potato chip packs.
The fact that Egypt was arguably one of the unhappiest countries in the world - whether it was because of the tough years of the revolution, or other issues such as healthcare and poverty - became the perfect trigger for us to give the country hope and more importantly, something to smile about.
Printing 90 unique Egyptian smiles on the packs with the message ‘Keep the Smile Alive’, gave the country a perfect tool they could use to share happiness and remind them to smile. The tricky and long process of printing 90 unique faces on packs helped us provide our consumers with a large variety of smiles to spread.
The Campaign
Being Egypt’s only global potato chip brand, Chipsy (Egypt’s Lay’s), began losing major market share as local competitors started offering more potato chips for a lot less. The simple solution was for Chipsy to create a promotion, right? But that’s when the real challenge surfaced, since research indicated what consumers wanted out of promotions were INSTANT AND GUARANTEED PRIZES!
But with Chipsy selling over 5 million packs a day, instant guaranteed prizes meant impossible budgets. So what could Chipsy offer that had value to consumers but cost nothing?
Looking around, Egypt was depressed, ranking 5th in the UN misery index - people needed hope, inspiration and, most of all, a smile. And we gave them that in the form of 90 unique Egyptian smiles printed on our packs! Instantly, the packs had emotional value, consumers got an instant win and could even pick their prizes, in this case their smile.
Creative Execution
We started our movement with a TVC starring Egypt’s funniest comedian that showed the domino effect of a smile, as they were passed on from opposing ends of the country, opposing football teams and even opposing celebrities, closing with a call to all Egyptians to keep the smile alive. On social media there was an influx of posts of people “wearing” and passing their Chipsy Smiles whether it was on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter using our popular hashtag. From a digital stand point; we developed an app where people could create customized Chipsy packs using their very own smiles. On-ground, we put real smiles on faces of the real unfortunate people of Egypt, by giving out “smile packages” that included food and healthcare products.
Our promotional campaign truly marks the most successful campaign by Chipsy yet, as we not only met our objectives but also exceeded many of them. From a market standpoint, we increased sales by 22%, a shift from -6% declining sales, to +16% sales during the campaign. As for the brand equity, several of our KPIs grew tremendously such as “offer something different” by +11, “worth what you pay for them” by +7 and “setting trends” by +8. Most importantly, our campaign became one of the most successful in the history of digital media in Egypt with over 91m impressions, 26m interactions and over 5 million video hits. Our app had over 60,000 people create their very own personalized smiles on Chipsy packs. In fact, during our first week of launch, over 15,000 Instagram photos were shared using the hashtag, and for a platform not popular in Egypt, it was remarkable.