THE STORY OF CRACKER JACK’S REALLY BIG BAG.
The Cracker Jack Super Bowl commercial that brought Cracker Jack to a new generation.
The founders of Division of Labor created one of the most improbable Super Bowl commercials ever. Because it was never intended to be a Super Bowl commercial. But thanks to a good idea and a little bit of luck, this spot aired in prime position on the biggest stage in the world and came in top 5 in the USA Today Ad Meter.
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Division of Labor the San Francisco advertising agency was founded in 2009. But before that, the founders were working at Goodby Silverstein and Partners and Goodby had projects from Frito Lay.
One of those assignments was to relaunch Cracker Jack, the storied brand that Frito Lay had just aquired. Cracker Jack was famous for coming in rectangular box and at the bottom of every box was a prize. Problem was, boxes were expensive to ship and they didn’t keep the product fresh. So Frito Lay relaunched in bags. And the creative problem to solve was to make it a good thing that Frito Lay had taken away such an icon.
Now all the work the agency had done up to this point was based on Cracker Jack nastalgia, candy-coated popcorn peanuts and a prize and the wonderful surprise kids felt when they found it. But that wasn’t playing with the clients who really wanted to talk about the fact that the classic snack came in bags. Which to us seem particularly exciting. Until one day, Paul said, “if they want to talk about bags, let’s give em a really big bag.”
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After they came up with the idea of the Really Big Bag, the team hired Joe Public, a directing duo out of London with a broad sense of humor. Jim Hutchins cut it and people thought it was pretty funny. Clients liked it and that was that.
Until…
Frito Lay’s main agency was BBDO New York. BBDO had 95% of Frito Lay products; Lays, Doritos, Ruffles, Cheetos, Tostitos, if it was on the Super Bowl, BBDO was making the commercials. And apparently, they took all the commercials prior to the big game and tested them to see which spots would air and which would not. Well, somehow, the client got the Cracker Jack spot into BBDO’s testing and it performed better than anything BBDO did. Even with all the star power and celebrities, the Really Big Bag was the winner.
So not only did the Really Big Bag get a prime position on the Super Bowl where Doritos was suppossed to be, Frito Lay made Doritos pay for it.
The spot aired just once, on the Super Bowl and people remembered it for months after. There was no need to run it again. Cracker Jack bags were launched for zero dollars in media.