Dive Brief:

• Lay's Potato Chips is out with its first packaging redesign since 2007, according to information provided to Marketing Dive. The design covers all of its flavor varieties, including newest addition Flamin' Hot Dill Pickle.
• The design features new food photography shot from an "Insta-worthy 'top down' angle," a smaller logo, less text and additional visual elements. The new look is accompanied by a relaunch of the brand's website that emphasizes the new design.
• The marketing support behind the new packaging also includes new TV and digital ads that will debut mid-October, out-of-home (OOH) billboards, including one at L.A. Live, and more. A video on YouTube highlights the design changes since the chips’ launch in 1932. 

Dive Insight:

The packaging refresh of Lay's entire product roster is the latest effort by the PepsiCo brand to appeal to younger consumers. Changing the bag design to feature an Instagram-inspired view of the chip inside the bag helps bring the packaging more in-line with how millennial and Gen Z consumers are used to visualizing food. And while it didn't go as far as dropping its logo entirely, as Doritos recently did, a smaller logo and less text could help attract consumers that are fatigued by traditional marketing.

The brand's recent efforts have sought to appeal to younger consumers with a focus on social media. Lay's in July brought back its limited-run "Smiles" packaging that features photos of real people's smiles on some of its packaging. The first eight-week run of this campaign in 2018 resulted in a daily posting on social media of 700 selfies with the Lay's bags, according to the brand, as well as more than 30,00+ tweets with the campaign hashtag, 10,000 Instagram posts and 2.8 million shares of a special Snapchat filter.

Similarly, Lay's last month put the fate of a potato character named Spud into the hands of its brand fans. More shares using the hashtag #SaveSpud would result in a pardon, but more #SizzleSpud shares meant he would achieve what the brand optimistically described as "every potato's dream" — becoming a Lay’s chip. A few days later, the brand announced on its Twitter account that "the people have spoken," and that "Spud lived out his dream and was SIZZLED."

The Frito-Lay North America division continues to be the strongest performer in the PepsiCo family of brands, reporting in July a 5% organic revenue growth for Q2. These millennial- and Gen Z-focused efforts could help Lay's continue to drive revenue growth for its parent company, which has launched several efforts to boost its flagship brand with younger consumers, including an Instagram AR-heavy summer campaign and a new mobile loyalty rewards program.