Unchained in America

If you’ve driven through Michigan lately, you might have noticed a billboard along the side of the road that displays an unusual ad for Lay’s® Potato Chips that says, “Proudly Supporting Local Michigan Farmers.”

The message seems a contradiction in terms. Frito-Lay North America, which is the snack food unit of PepsiCo, brings in $12-billion in sales and buys much of its raw materials from industrial farms. Yet Lay’s Potato Chips is trying to convince consumers — that is, you and me — that it is actually part of the local food movement with its new “Lay’s Local” marketing campaign.

The “Lay’s Local” campaign is the second phase in Lay’s strategy to reposition its Lay’s Potato Chips brand of snack food. Lay’s launched the first phase, called “Happiness is Simple,” in early 2009. “Happiness is Simple” focused on people’s nostalgia for the simpler times that seemed to have existed before today’s complex economic problems developed. The campaign sought to make a connection between this nostalgia and Lay’s Potato Chips’ “place in Americana” and the potato chips’ “role in bringing people together for life’s simpler pleasures.”

Today people are not just interested in simpler times, but in eating food that is locally grown. As a result, the local food movement has become stronger and stronger. The marketing people at Frito-Lay aren’t slouches. They’ve seen how this movement is spreading and want their snack food to become part of it. As a result, they’ve devised a marketing campaign that appeals to our increasing desire to buy and eat foods that are locally grown.

Lay’s Marketing Campaign

On May 12, 2009, Lay’s announced the second phase in its repositioning strategy, the “Lay’s Local” marketing campaign, to persuade us that the potatoes used in Lay’s Potato Chips are locally grown and that the chips themselves are locally made. By connecting its potato chips to local communities, Lays hopes to make us think that the Lay’s Potato Chips brand of snack food is “closer to home than people might expect.” Lay’s also wants us to believe that when we buy a bag of Lay’s Potato Chips, we are investing in our local communities.

To add weight to it’s marketing pitch, the campaign emphasizes that Lay’s receives its potatoes from over 80 farms in 27 states. In 2008, these farmers grew over over 2.8 billion pounds of potatoes for Lay’s. In addition, the campaign stresses that Lay’s makes its chips at Frito-Lay plants in 18 states throughout the country, from East Coast to West Coast.

Lay’s also is trying to show its connection to local communities by participating in over 50 local-market events such as the Maine Potato Blossom Festival and the Hall of Fame Parade in Canton, Ohio.

The Chip Tracker

Any good marketing campaign tries to encourage its target audience to become actively involved so they’ll buy into the message. To encourage us potato chip eaters to become involved in “Lay’s Local,” Lay’s put a Chip Tracker on its home page. When you enter your

ZIP code and the first three digits from the product code on your bag of chips, the Chip Tracker tells you where the chips in the bag were made. “Chances are, it may be closer than you think.”

Unfortunately, the Chip Tracker doesn’t tell you the “local” farms the potatoes that were made into the chips in your bag came from.

Hiring Extra Help

This marketing campaign uses a wide range of advertising: national and regional TV ads, country-wide print ads, messages on the bags of potato chips, and 40,000 in-store displays that are customized for each state.

And Lay’s isn’t just relying on its own marketing people to convey their local food message, either. To help deliver the word, Lay’s is using four high-powered PR and marketing firms:

• For advertising and in-store marketing — Juniper Park, which believes that “positioning doesn’t matter if you haven’t taken a position first”
• For buying media — OMD, which believes “in the power of ideas to deliver compelling business results”
• For events — The Marketing Arm, which “builds brands by engaging consumers through emotionally-powerful platforms”
• For public relations — Ketchum, which “specializes in corporate and product positioning”

Obviously, this is an expensive campaign. In fact it’s the largest one that Lay’s has ever conducted. When asked how much the campaign cost, though, Dave Skena — who is Frito-Lay’s vice president of marketing — refused to say how much money had been budgeted for the campaign.

Local Farmers from Local Farms

The campaign, which started on May 18, features farmers from five “local” farms that supply Lay’s with potatoes for making chips:

• Brian and Gary Walther of Walther Farms in Three Rivers, Michigan
• Brian Kirschenmann of Kirschenmann Farms in Bakersfield, California
• Darrell McCrum of the Maine Potato Alliance in Mars Hill, Maine
• Jack Wallace, Sr. and Jack Wallace, Jr. of Jack Wallace Farms in Edinburg, Texas
• Steve Singleton of Singleton Farms in Hastings, Florida

The actual kick-off for the campaign began on May 12, when the farmers went to the New York Stock Exchange and rang the opening bell. Gee, how many local farmers have the financial or political clout to do that?

In Part 2, I’ll talk about what it means to buy local and how the “Lay’s Local” marketing campaign takes advantage of the ambiguity of that concept.

See also:

• The Truth about Frito-Lay’s “Lay’s Local” Marketing Campaign — Part2
• The Truth about Frito-Lay’s “Lay’s Local” Marketing Campaign — Part 3
• The Truth about Frito-Lay’s “Lay’s Local Marketing Campaign — Part 4: Frito-Lay’s Dirty Little Secret
• “Lay’s Local” Update — They Just Don’t Seem to Get It

Tags: Lay's Local, Lay's Potato Chips, local food movement, locally grown, potato chips, snack food

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 17th, 2009 at 2:58 pm and is filed under PR & Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.