Tag: CPG

Gillette Enters eSports With League of Legends IEM Championship Sponsorship

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Gillette becomes the latest CPG brand to tap into the increasingly popular eSports by announcing a global partnership with ESL, the world’s largest eSports company. As part of the partnership, the leading men’s grooming brand will serve as an official sponsor of the League of Legends IEM World Championship in Katowice, Poland later this month.

To offer eSports fans attending the championship, Gillette will set up an on-site design studio where they will have the opportunity to customize Gillette razor handles using 3D printing technology. Moreover, the brand will offer grooming services to all competitors throughout the opening weekend. The company will also host autograph session featuring xPeke, an eSports star player and Gillette’s newest Global Ambassador, who will also be featured in Gillette’s “Pursuit of Precision” content series.

What Brands Need To Do
By adding an eSports player to its roster of brand ambassadors typically filled by celebrity  athletes, Gillette joins a growing number of brands, including Audi, Snickers, and Coca-Cola, in recognizing the popularity and cultural legitimacy of eSports. As companies race to capture the young, male-skewing eSports audience, brands, especially those seeking global recognition, need to start leveraging the massive reach of eSports events and platforms via sponsorships and ads.

 

Source: Yahoo Finance

Tostitos’ Sensor-Laden Bag Can Tell If You’ve Been Drinking And Call You An Uber

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Tostitos, a Fritto-Lay brand, is created an interesting take on CPG packaging with a limited-edition “Party Safe” bag that comes with a sensor to detect mall traces of alcohol on a person’s breath. Created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners, this special Tostitos bag will display a red steering wheel, along with an Uber code. Equipped with near-field communication (NFC) technology, the bag also let customers tap the bag with their phone to request an Uber ride. If they do so during and after the Super Bowl game, they will also receive $10 off courtesy of Tostitos and Mothers Against Drunk Driving.

What Brands Need To Do
This is an interesting example in how CPG brands can experiment with packaging to deliver added value to customers. In a similar vein, last year we worked with Hershey’s and created a “Remixer” package for its TAKE5 snack bar. Powered by the haptics technology from Novalia, the package lets customers play DJ and create their own unique tracks with no app required.

If you want to learn more about how you can leverage new technologies such as biosensors, AR, and haptics to transform your product packaging into an informative or interactive customer experience, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]).

 

Source: AdWeek

Hasbro Launches Children’s Lifestyle Brand Led By Branded YouTube Series

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Toy maker Hasbro is launching a new children’s brand called Hanazuki. The new brand is based on and driven by the company’s first ever digital cartoon series that debuted this month on YouTube and the YouTube Kids app. The branded series, produced by Hasbro Studios in collaboration with Titmouse Studios, contains 27 11-minute-long episodes and follows the space adventure of Hanazuki and her friends inspired by whimsical characters originally created by two Amsterdam artists.

Hasbro plans to launch a Hanazuki digital app in April, with branded consumer product offerings to follow throughout the year. A toy line inspired by the series will launch this summer featuring over 175 collectible figures and plush items, as well as a wearable device that “enables kids to share their moods.”

What Brands Need To Do
Launching an entire new product line based on a new cartoon series is a pretty ballsy move for toymakers, who typically relies on licensing existing IPs that are proven popular with children to introduce new products. However, the advance in digital video distribution and shifting habit in media consumption have made it possible for a cartoon series on YouTube to attract a sizeable audience to launch a new franchise off. In fact, a recent eMarketer study shows that about half of the U.S. children and teens spend over 3 hours watching YouTube every week.

This example shows that it is time for brands to reconsider their content strategy in the face of shifting media consumption and fragmented audience attention and start take advantage of the zero-cost digital distribution channels like YouTube and Twitch to reach a global audience.

 

Source: PSFK & Hasbro YouTube

 

Cheetos Ventures Into Ecommerce With Branded Holiday Gifts

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
As part of its fashion-oriented holiday campaign, Cheetos has opened an online store to sell Chester Cheetah-themed holiday gifts, ranging from clothing and perfume to cosmetics and even jewelry. While some of the items in the catalog, such as the jewelry piece, charge premium prices, some on the lower end of the spectrum are already sold out, affirming the popularity of the Pepsi-owned snack brand among consumers.

What Brands Should Do
While admittedly rare, this is not the first time a Pepsi brand has branched out its CPG product category to grab consumer attention with branded products. Last year, the food and beverage giant sold Pepsi-branded smartphones to Chinese consumers as a marketing ploy. This week, Pepsi opened a kola-themed restaurant in New York City to broaden its brand expeirence. Similarly, with the new Cheetos-branded gifts, Pepsi is thinking outside the box and experimenting with a new way to transform their loyal fans into brand advocates, which should inspire brands to think of other ways that brands can permeate consumers’ daily life.

 

Source: Yahoo Finance

Header image courtesy of Cheeto’s YouTube video

Hasbro Creates Mobile App That Brings Play-Doh Creations To Life

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Hasbro launched an iOS app that can bring your Play-Doh creations to life on your smartphone. The company debuted the Play-Doh Touch app, which uses the phone’s camera to scan Play-Doh creations made with its Touch SHAPE TO LIFE STUDIO set and transforms them into animated game characters that kids can play with in the app.

What Brands Should Do
With this app and its accompanying Play-Doh set, Hasbro is taking an innovative approach to driving digital engagement and adding a new dimension to their physical products so as to cater to shifting consumer habits. More brands, especially those in the CPG and entertainment fields, can benefit from adopting a similar approach to leverage today’s mobile devices to enhance their products and marketing experiences.

 

Source: Engadget

Header image courtesy of Hasbro press release

Hershey’s TAKE5 Bar Delights With Interactive Packaging

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Hershey’s is experimenting with innovative packaging to provide customers with a delightfully interactive experience. Working with IPG Media Lab, ad agency Barkley, and haptics tech startup Novalia, the company created a limited-edition “Remixer” package for its TAKE5 snack bar that lets customers play DJ and create their own unique tracks with no app required. As part of its “Respect The Remix” campaign, the confectionery giant is hosting a sweepstakes on Twitter to give fans a chance to win Remixer-packaged TAKE5 bars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MXm902hdxtM

What Brands Should Do
Hershey’s is commendable for this innovative use of conductive ink technology in packaging, which adds some fun and interactivity to its product. Other CPG brands should take a cue and start exploring ways to apply new technologies such as haptic feedback or augmented reality to inject some extra value to their packaging.

If you would like to learn more about how your brand can use new technologies to add some interactive fun to your product packaging, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: MediaPost

Header image courtesy of Hershey’s YouTube Video

Trolli Creates Facebook Chatbot That Engages Users With Mini-Games

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Tuesday, candy brand Trolli launched a Facebook Messenger chatbot that aims to engage users with a series of interactive quizzes, GIFs, and real-life rewards. The personality quizzes will assign users to three different personas corresponding to three different Trolli flavors, which each come with their own branded content to further engage customers. The “crawler,” for example, gives users a digital pet to take care of and the “blast” will dispense memes and GIFs to amuse fans on a daily basis. The company is buying ads on Facebook and other social channels to promote the chatbot and will also reward participating consumers with free candy they can redeem through Trolli’s website.

What Brands Need To Do
Unlike many other Facebook chatbots brands have developed that focus on customer service or other utilities, this Trolli chatbot stands out for the way it aims to engage consumers with gamified conversations and real-life rewards. With more and more smartphone users adopting messaging apps as their primary communication channel, it is time for brands to consider developing chatbots in order to reach prospective customers.

The Lab has extensive knowledge about building chatbots. If you’re interested in reaching your audience on messaging apps and better serving them with a chatbot, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: AdWeek

Gillette Expands Razor Subscription Service

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Leading shaving razor brand Gillette is expanding its subscription service to the U.K. as it looks to foster long-term customer loyalty with its subscription business. Gillette first launched the service in June 2014 in the U.S. as a response to the market disruption caused by the likes of Dollar Shave Club and Harry’s. The Gillette Shave Club offers free shipping and includes a loyalty program that rewards consumers for purchases.

What Brands Need To Do
In recent years, selling subscription-based access to content, products, or services has quickly become an even more popular business model adopted by a number of brands in various industries. Gillette is just one of the CPG brands that has embraced this type of direct selling model, cultivating a more direct relationship with their customers. As consumers’ shopping habits evolve, more retail and CPG brands should consider trying out the subscription model to cultivate customer loyalty.

For more on how brands can better build relationships with consumers through multiple touchpoints and channels, check out the Boundless Retail section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Brand Channel

Amazon Expands Dash Buttons, Now Over 100 Brands

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon continues to expand its “push-to-reorder” Dash buttons to cover more brands and products. Earlier this week, the ecommerce giant debuted about 80 new Dash buttons, bringing the total number of branded Dash buttons to over 100. The new batch covers products beyond the household products category, such as food and beverage products like Starbucks, Red Bull, Slim Jim, and Orbit gum. Amazon says orders made from Dash buttons have increased by more than 75% in the last three months.

What Brands Need To Do
The Dash button is a great tool for brands to develop and maintain consumer loyalty by enabling convenient reordering. With the popularization of connected devices, we expect to see more automatic replenishment service like Amazon Dash pop up in the near future. For brands with CPG  products, it would be wise to work with Amazon to develop their own branded buttons to cultivate a long-term relationship with consumers.

For more on how retailers and CPG brands can better build relationships with consumers through multiple touchpoints and channels, check out the Boundless Retail section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Header image courtesy of  Amazon’s YouTube Video

Amazon Brings Automatic Reordering To More Connected Home Devices

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following Whirlpool’s announcement at CES to incorporate Amazon’s Dash Replenishment Service (DRS) into its smart appliances, Amazon has announced today that a slew of connected devices have gained automatic reordering capability via DRS. The line-up includes select models of Brother printers, a GE washing machine, and the Gmate SMART blood glucose monitor, which will be able to reorder printing ink, detergent, and testing strips and lancets, respectively, when supply runs low.

What Brands Need To Do
Automatic reordering is a great tool for developing and maintaining consumer loyalty. Amazon’s DRS makes it easier for CPG brands to forge win-win partnerships with manufacturers of smart appliances so as to cultivate a long-term relationship with consumers that encourages habitual re-purchase.

 

Source: TechCrunch