Tostitos Launches 'Lucky' Packaging in Time for Football Season

You can feel it in the air — fall is coming and it’s almost time for football. Your favorite team has gone through grueling training camp practices, spent long hours drawing up intricate plays and has paid its dues in the weight room. It’s time to put it all together out on the field. But as fans watching from home, there’s really not much we can do to help our team on Sundays. This year however, Tostitos is releasing “Lucky Bags” of tortilla chips to help fans bring a little bit of luck to their team via game day snacks.

The New England Patriots chip bag also features Super Bowl champion graphics. (PRNewsfoto/Frito-Lay North America)

The Lucky Bag campaign features team-specific packaging for a variety of NFL squads. The bags are decked out in team colors and include large graphics of each team’s helmet and jersey logo. The “lucky” aspect of the bag is that each package features a SnapChat code that provides fans with digital content about a tradition that is unique to each team, according to a press release.

As part of the campaign, Tostitos produced 30-second advertisements that highlight these traditions, which can be viewed on its website. In addition to the obvious ones like Pittsburgh’s Terrible Towel, Green Bay’s Lambeau Leap and Denver’s Mile High Salute, some of the ads feature players highlighting their teams’ lesser-known traditions. No matter who you root for, it’s hard to not laugh at the Baltimore Ravens ad, featuring quarterback Joe Flacco deeming the Baltimore bags “elite.”

Despite the superstitious nature of NFL fans, it’s hard to believe that consumers will actually believe buying a bag of chips packaged in their team colors will impact the action on the field. But from a marketing standpoint, the campaign seems poised to be a victory. Football fans are exceedingly loyal, so anyone stocking up on game day supplies will likely be attracted to team-branded packaging. Plus, the bags go beyond just placing the team logo on a typical Tostitos bag. The design features each team’s primary and secondary colors, multiple logos and a football-shaped clear plastic window, allowing consumers to view the product inside.

The Tostitos Lucky Bags feature team colors and multiple logos.(PRNewsfoto/Frito-Lay North America)

Additionally, the social media aspects of the campaign extend the brand experience through multimedia content, allowing both Tostitos and the affiliated teams to continue their communication with the consumer beyond the short lifecycle of a bag of chips. Plus, Tostitos can benefit from fans using the #LuckyBags hashtag to share images of their bags, leveraging social media for some additional publicity.

The one unfortunate aspect of the campaign is that the Tostitos website only shows packaging and advertisements for 19 of the NFL’s 32 teams. The press release does not confirm if the campaign extends to all NFL teams or if it just includes the 19 teams pictured. Hopefully each team will get its own variation of the Lucky Bag, but regardless, it will be interesting to see if Tostitos sales spike in the markets that do receive the bags during the season.

For package printers, finding ways to help your customers develop their own regionally-specific packaging could be a great way to help them connect to specific markets. Whether it means leveraging digital printing to produce short runs, or utilizing an internal design team to help create the varying designs, consumers appreciate when brands personalize the buying and usage experience.