The Journey of One of PepsiCo’s Iconic Brands: The Research That Defined Fritos’ Appealing Human Truth

Acknowledgments: The authors express their deep appreciation to Shantanu Mulay and Bart La Count (PepsiCo Foods North America, Strategic Insights) for their valuable feedback on earlier drafts of the paper).

Behind every great brand, product or creative idea is a human truth that is universally true and connects with us in a meaningful way.¹

Introduction: The problem to solve

At PepsiCo, our mission is to create more smiles with every sip and bite, and we are fortunate to have a portfolio of iconic snack brands that bring joy to consumers across the US. One of those iconic brands is Fritos, which was born in 1932 when CE Doolin bought the patent for the original recipe, improvised, and sold.²

Fast forward 90 years and Fritos is now consumed by 36% of households annually. Despite the size of the business, there were clear opportunities for better performance. Internal brand tracking metrics noted the opportunity to improve Brand Performance measures, including making Fritos top of mind when it came to snacking moments. Advertising effectiveness metrics on the new ads for the brand saw the average performance on key measures such as Overall Liking. Syndicated data showed that the brand over-indexed with an aging cohort (ages 45-64).

With this background, the team embarked on a vision to:

1. Harness the brand’s 90-year history, which is its strength, and bring it out to the world in a contemporary manner; and
2. Create a distinct brand identity that is top-of-mind, meaningful, and desirable during consumption moments of get-togethers with close family and friends.

Methodology and results: Approach to problem-solving

To implement the vision, the Fritos Brand and Insights team went on a quest to uncover sharply defined and broadly appealing insights through a deep understanding of the ‘Frequent consumers’ of Fritos. Figure 1 provides an outline of the iterative learning approach. The uniqueness of the approach was the manner in which the team went ‘deep and wide’ throughout the learning journey and stitched together different pieces of information. The depth we got from the qualitative research was quantitatively validated during every step along the way, to identify a sharply defined and broadly appealing truth.

More importantly, internal stakeholders and external communication agency partners were brought along during the learning journey. Bringing these teams on the journey was critical for empathy and ownership in the process and outcome. This engagement was critical for driving new impactful work downstream.

1. Mining data from established sources

Prior to conducting primary research, the team mined the existing information through syndicated data, PepsiCo internal, and expert consultation. Deeper mining confirmed the initial assumptions. The Fritos brand over-indexed with older consumers and was extensively bought in the heartland states of America. Consumers in this region are tied by a culture, rooted in common values and lifestyles. Family and kin are the key motivators for them.

2. Preliminary understanding of the Fritos consumer

In order to go deeper into the values and lifestyles, preliminary qualitative research was conducted among frequent consumers of Fritos in this region (N=18). The value of work and integrity was the key to defining these consumers. For them, family and kin were so important, that they spoke of putting their loved ones before themselves. At the same time, although Fritos was a part of their backyard traditions, it was not considered a most-desired snack at a get-together.

3. Deep dive into their aspirations

In order to make the brand a truly aspirational one, we needed to understand better the aspirations of the younger Fritos consumers. We spoke to the Fritos super-users (those who bought and consumed Fritos at an above-average rate and had a strong love for the brand). Aspirations and their deeper meanings were understood by the Metaphor Elicitation technique.³ The participants (N=20) were asked to bring images that represented their thoughts and feelings about their aspirations to the conversation. These images served as a jumping-off point for a deeper discussion. The analysis of the images and the language used to describe them uncovered their deep aspirations. It was found that these consumers were explorers by nature, yet they never forgot where they came from.

Their aspirations fell into three brackets:

1. Spreading their wings and discovering who they are
2. Building their nest through hard work
3. Finding their flock through building honest relationships

4. Are these aspirations broadly appealing?

Although strong themes emerged from this method, we needed to make sure that these themes resonated with a broader audience. A survey among current Fritos consumers (N=100) found that the more popular themes were:

1. Spreading wings
2. Finding their flock

5. What is the insight behind the aspirations?

Although spreading wings and finding a flock are aspirational themes, they are not truly reflective of an insight. For Fritos to appeal in a truly meaningful manner, we also needed an understanding of the hindrances that came in the way of achieving the aspirations, and of the coping mechanism that helped them to resolve the tension between the aspiration and hindrance.

The uniqueness of the approach was that we took the probes beyond the tension (aspiration vs. hindrance), to a deeper level of understanding the coping strategies that the consumers used when they were torn between their aspirations and hindrances. This was based on the Psychoanalytic system⁴ of defense mechanisms. The understanding of the aspirations, hindrances, and coping mechanisms, took us to the true insight. We learned that while seeking to spread their wings and gain new experiences, the fear of failure held back the consumers, and hence they coped with the stressful situation by leaning on the strong childhood relationships that helped them to define who they were as human beings.

Also, in seeking to find their flock by establishing new, yet trustworthy relationships, consumers feared the lack of reciprocity for their investments in the relationships. They reconciled this tension by carefully observing the shared moments when people revealed who they really were.

6. What do these insights have to do with the Fritos brand?

Although we had two compelling insights about the Fritos consumers, we didn’t know:

1. Which insight was more relevant to the Fritos consumer?
2. Which insight was best associated with the Fritos brand experience?

We needed to understand the unconscious associations that Fritos consumers made with the brand.³ Results (N=200) indicated that the insight – strong roots and relationships developed in childhood – help the consumers to navigate any change that was more compelling to them. More importantly, they perceived Fritos as the wholesome snack that gave them the security of values that were built in childhood with family, friends, and community. The sturdiness of the chip and satisfying crunch indicated that Fritos is best positioned as a Stand Up Chip that is Down for Everything.

7. Can these learnings resonate beyond Fritos consumers?

Although the data was clear and compelling, we knew that we had tested it on a small subset of heavy Fritos users. In order to solve the business problem of making Fritos a more broadly appealing brand, we needed to know if the insights resonated with a wider audience or not. We tested if the insight resonated among the general population (N=100). The survey results indicated that the insights held true with Fritos consumers and beyond (90% Top-2 box agreement).

Conclusions: Implementing the learnings

The key insights influenced the development of the Fritos advertisements. Creative, based on a story of childhood friends engaging in a familiar banter, was developed. The deep bond between the two friends was evident through the exchange and non-verbal cues. This advertisement was tested on PepsiCo’s internal creative testing platform Ada. The measures of success revealed that the advertisement scored at a level comparable to the other larger Frito-Lay award-winning creative. The Fritos advertisement was able to achieve these astonishingly high scores simply on the basis of the compelling human truth.

The quest for a sharply-defined and broadly appealing human truth had been the key to understanding how we connect with our consumers. The uniqueness of this approach lay in understanding how to bind separate pieces of work together so that we effectively create empathy with key people, inside and outside the organization. The journey lies not only in discovering the truth but also in having internal stakeholders and creative agency partners fall in love with the consumer problem to solve. In doing so, it helps create PepsiCo’s well-loved brands that bring smiles with every sip and bite. In the end, this process is a learning journey without a true destination.

References

1. Arensen, Ruby. 2021. “How to find a human truth to power your brand”. ProQuo. Online. Accessed May 9, 2022.
2. Hesson, Athena. 2017. “Fritos Corn Chips History: How a Texan Changed Snack Food Forever”. Texas Hill Country News. Online. Accessed May 9, 2022.
3. Zaltman, Olson. ZMET. Online. Accessed May 9, 2022.
4. Cherry, Kendra. 2022. “Compensation and Defense Mechanisms” verywellmind. Online. Accessed May 9, 2022.
5. “Symbolics”. Sylver Consulting. Online. Accessed May 9, 2022.