Case Study:
Takis: This campaign was an unmitigated disaster!
The Accelerated Read
In 2021 we launched popular Mexican crisp brand Takis. With a tiny launch budget vs. the noisy big competitor spenders we knew we had to do something bold to stand out. From research we found our Gen Z audiences were anti-government so we took an unusual political stance of agreeing with the government about HFSS and told our audience not to eat Takis through a 50 foot projection on the Houses of Parliament and supported via social media. This stance didn’t work; following huge coverage and social chatter the SOM grew 17x faster than our SOV should have delivered, plus 4x more bags were eaten than forecasted.
Challenge
Takis are a tortilla crisp (and a bloody spicy one at that)! While they’re a cult brand in America, no one in the UK had heard of them. Armed with a tiny launch budget of £200k, vs. category leaders spending £10m+, we were tasked with establishing the brand in the UK. We needed a bold and fiery media approach to deliver disproportionate fame and supercharge our share of market.
Solution
An HFSS cloud was looming. The government were actively campaigning for increased restrictions and warning people to avoid unhealthy food. But those messages were falling on deaf ears. Our audience research proved that Gen Z audiences were anti-government and had a healthy distrust of authority.
With this insight, you might have expected us to fight against the ban and encourage young people to eat Takis regardless. But we decided to do the unthinkable. We AGREED with the government.
What better place to make this bold political statement than the Houses of Parliament? We projected a 50-foot message onto the side of the very building where HFSS laws were being made. The direction was clear ‘Don’t Eat Takis’.
Imagery was uploaded and amplified on social media within seconds. This gave people the sense of watching a trending news item in real time, so much so that major news publications picked up on the story, delivering huge levels of organic PR and sparking a national conversation.
But we needed to push the message even further, so we worked with key social influencers to reinforce the point. Not only is Takis classified as HFSS, it’s also spicy enough to blow your head off. We asked our influential ‘haters’ to make sure their followers knew this. After each video, influencers reminded their millions of fans ‘Don’t eat Takis’.
With so much coverage and social chatter, there was no way that people would eat them now.
Results
Despite our best efforts, the campaign failed. Takis became a trending social topic across Instagram, Twitter and TikTok.
- SOM grew 17x faster than our SOV should have delivered People ate 4x more bags than forecast
- Worst of all, two of the biggest retailers in the UK agreed to stock the snack, directly because of the campaign
So, as we said, it was an unmitigated disaster. We turned an unknown crisp with a tiny budget into a national craze – despite our best efforts not to.