From Junk Food to Good Food: Building Advocates to Change the Perception of Frito-Lay Snacks

Overview and Research:
In 2007, Frito-Lay enlisted the help of Zocalo Group/Ketchum, to help reinforce their motto “good food for the fun of it.” Frito-Lay is the company behind many popular chip brands such as; Lay’s, Fritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, Doritos and SunChips. In 2008, the company was 63-years-old and its products had a reputation of being junk food. (Public Relations Society of America)
According to A Tradition of Health and Wellness, Frito-Lay had made many efforts to make their products healthier. They made the switch to heart healthy oils in their products and voluntarily removed trans fat. They also feature detailing in their fat labeling and created portion-controlled packaging.
Along with making the actual products healthier, they created the motto, “good food for the fun of it.” Next they needed to help change the long-time opinions of the consumers. They needed consumers to change their perception of Frito-Lay chips from junk food, to better food.
With the help of Zocalo Group/Ketchum, they started researching the best way to accomplish changing the opinions of the consumers. They researched the market and examined other case studies to find that messages are considered more credible when coming from a third party, rather than the company itself. (Public Relations Society of America) Based on this information, the campaign was designed to target influencers and turn them into believers, and then let them advocate for Frito-Lay. (Public Relations Society of America)
Once the target audience had been established, a benchmark survey was then conducted. It showed that only 30% of influencers agreed that healthy snacks were offered by Frito-Lay and that less than one third of influencers knew that Frito-Lay products w...

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Frito-Lay’s blog called Snack Chat urged consumers to pass the word on the Frito-Lay products are now made without trans fat and are made with natural ingredients. (Snack Chat, 2008) I do not believe that this blog post is a part of the official campaign, but I thought that it was interesting to see that Frito-Lay did happen to be spreading the word to consumers themselves around the time of the campaign.
Overall, I feel that this campaign was successful at accomplishing what it intended to do. It did turn a good amount of influencers into believers. It utilized salient information to do this. The campaign message was motivational enough to accomplish this.
I am not sure how many consumers actually started viewing Frito-Lay products as a healthier snack, but if the influencers started preaching it, I am sure some consumers changed their viewpoints at least.