nosh nook #77 - tuesday, june 30, 2009

selling “junkless junk food” to the masses (link)
06.29.09 - the ny times - by stuart elliott

if you're a snack manufacturer & you're looking to succeed these days, the best way to do so is to put out healthy snacks, since the tide's clearly turned & folks are all up in arms about junk food. hell, you can't even get a super-sized meal at mcdonalds any more. one company who's trying to take advantage of this desire for healthy snacks is popchips, who i wrote about back in april. their chips aren't like any other chip on the market. they're not fried. they're not baked. they're friggin popped...& that equals healthiness, folks.

as stuart elliott reports for the ny times' media & advertising section, popchips has developed a $1.3 million dollar ad campaign designed to let consumers know that they have the healthy snack folks have been looking for. the campaign consists of "extensive outdoor advertising; a web site along with presences on facebook, twitter and youtube; an e-mail newsletter; ads on the video screens in taxi cabs; a sampling program with its own “mobile snack tour,” with a goal of giving away 500,000 bags of popchips; public relations by formula PR in new york; and an outreach to trend-setters that seeks to generate positive buzz." um, popchips? hello? i have a snack blog, am following you on twitter & am totally a trend-setter. hook me up. i'll "positive buzz" the hell out of your chips.

as a snacker, popchips CEO keith belling believes that "snacking is not a serious thing" & wants to "bring the fun back to snacking," so for the campaign, they reached out to san fran's pereira & o'dell, who have also developed a purple shoe for yahoo & a legos campaign entitled "go miniman go," or as it reads in the website's url--"go mini mango." mmm. mini mangos. with popchips, since pereira & o'dell are clearly advertising geniuses, they've developed slogans like "sandwich. meet your new b.f.f." & "snack. smile. repeat."  clever.  p.j. pereira, CEO of the company, is quoted as saying that the campaign "is meant to signal that popchips 'is a simple revolution in the chips world.'" like i said before...that revolution starts with me.  hook me up, popchips.  i have a lot of free time on my hands. don't make me stalk your popchips mobile truck when it comes to town.