Lay's Happiness Exhibit Makes Me Sad | Case Studies, Social Media

Lay’s Happiness Exhibit Makes Me Sad

By Joe Pulizzi | Published: May 27, 2010

I was sent a link to the Lay’s chips Happiness Exhibit today. After the experience, I’m sad.

Before I review, I do want to give Lay’s credit for experimenting with this. It’s easy for me to be critical of them from my office chair. They put themselves out there, and I like that.

That said, I have a couple concerns/questions.

First, I’m having trouble with the brand connection. What is the connection between eating chips and displaying photos around happiness? ”Wow, look at all the great pictures of brothers hugging and puppy dogs. I’m hungry for some chips now.”

I came away with wondering why this was a Lay’s project and not a Nikon or Kodak project. If you are going to develop a social media campaign, shouldn’t the product, or relation to the brand experience, be involved. Ford is a good example of this. Or Travelpod’s Traveler IQ test. Or even BK’s Subservient Chicken. At least they were trying to sell chicken.

That aside, I’m willing to give this a try. But before I get started, they ask me to link up with my Flickr account. Okay, I’m used to that. STOP. The message below startles me.

Access to my Flickr account. That’s okay. Do I give Lay’s permission to upload, edit and replace photos and videos in my account? Holy crap no. Can they interact with my friends? Stop, it’s hurting.

Honestly, I stopped there. It’s not that I don’t trust Lays (I don’t), but this stuff was written by the Facebook privacy team.

If they’re open to it, a few words of advice for the team at Lay’s:

Instead of directing people to a new site, maybe start out with where your customers are at…possibly Facebook. Create a Facebook Movement, and see where it goes from there. It’s easier to meet customers where they are instead of having to drag them to your new site. They could have also done this directly on Flickr and probably saved a hundred thousand dollars.
I think at the end of the day you want the campaign to what you actually do for your customers, or something of relevance to the brand. Do chips make someone happy? How about cheese? I like LEGOs, this could have been their project as well…but LEGO would have talked about being happy is building LEGOs with your family. Let’s upload pictures of our family playing with LEGOs and get featured in our magazine. Families could earn LEGO prizes (okay, I’ll stop).How about getting the family together for a DVD and some chips? How about experimental dipping sauces and Lay’s chips?

I think what Lay’s was trying to do is creating something remarkable…something worth talking about? Considering the barriers to entry and the missing brand connection, I’m thinking the Lay’s marketing department will call this the Sad Exhibit.

http://katherinefaith.typepad.com/blog/ Kate Wilson

I have less problem with the brand connection argument as I would contend that a food product like Lays is all about something that makes you feel good and therefore, happy since no one is ever going to argue that it’s a food product that benefits the healthy side of your life, just the happy side of your life. And tieing them into the happy moments of your life does make some sense, like family reunions, family picnics, the bag of Lays that you get out of the vending machine at the neighborhood pool during the summer, all happy thoughts…
I do have to agree that they have made it more difficult than it needs to be and have given all those with a “fear of the internet” just one more reason to be afraid to interact with a program.
But then again it doesn’t take much to make me want to eat chips.
http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

I hear you Kate (thanks for the comment)…but still seems like the long way around for me, and I think most people. I completely get your point about family reunions and picnics, but the pictures are walking on the beach and baby pictures for the most part. Can’t place the whole “chips” thing.
I guess the key thing is this – will this create such an engagement with Lay’s customers or prospects that they ultimate eat more, prefer more or talk more about the product. I’m not sold.
http://www.sdicorp.com/Resources/Blog/articleType/AuthorView/authorID/24/lkunz.aspx Larry

I completely agree with you, Joe. But at least you can feel happy that you stood up for yourself and held your ground against the intrusion.
Danielle

The site lost my attention due to the load time. I’m not going to sit around for 30 seconds between clicks just to look at photos of other people. I agree that they missed the mark – the expectation is to have fun but the reality is a disappointment!
http://www.understandandserve.com Jeremy Morris

This is exactly what’s wrong with ‘digital marketing’. Horrible. #fail
http://www.jeffmolander.com Jeff Molander

Kate and Joe…
Lays has failed to do more than “make a brand connection” and happiness is bunk. Here’s why: It’s not selling chips. Burger King used Facebook to drive customers into stores with its Whopper Sacrifice campaign. So why can’t Lay’s use “social media” to do same?
The fact is that “branding” and “engagement” are acceptable excuses for campaigns that are novel and geared toward memory, recall or preference — not behavior. Demand creation.
And IMHO, that makes “branding” via “social media” worthless as compared to what a brand can do with it — create behavior that aligns not with “brand” (the ghost) but customers’ behaviors (that ultimately create sales/leads).
http://blog.junta42.com Joe Pulizzi

Jeff…love your comment. The first question you ask in a content marketing strategy is “What’s different in 12 months?”…meaning, what’s the behavior you want people to take.
Even in this case, helping people get happy won’t sell chips…although it doesn’t make you happy.
http://www.arsenaultprojectsolutions.ca Nancy Arsenault

I agree with your Lay’s blog post. The best part of your message was that it led me to the Travel IQ site which did what Lay’s failed to to: engage me, have fun, prompted some ‘word of mouse promotion’ of the Travel IQ, it was free, and yes, I downloaded the widget because I work in the tourism industry.
As for Lays, I found it slow, not engaging, questioned the relevance – why would I want to share family photos with a potato chip company? And yes – while I’m an active online person, I am also a researcher and get very frustrated when I see an ‘engagement tool’ that to me appears to be a decoy to increasing their data base. Do give the Travel IQ a try though! Loved it.
http://www.webtopiamarketing.com Jan Schochet

Hey Joe,
I totally agree with what you wrote.
I didn’t go to the site. Not enough time today.
But I like Lay’s and I don’t equate it w/happy, in particular.
Why wouldn’t they do a thing on “Send us your best recipes that include our chips AND a photo of people enjoying your recipe” ?
THAT is happy!
That is engaging. People love to see their folks smiling faces. And . . . eating the food THEY made and . . . THEIR recipe on some website.
Oh well. They didn’t ask me.
Time for lunch.
Jan Ellyn