Willem De Rede is responsible for activating media campaigns at Lay’s, one of the Benelux’s largest FMCG companies. He is passionate about finding new ways to connect with customers locally and personally.
There’s something so satisfying about the sound of a bag of crisps being opened. It’s a sound many people associate with fun and parties — and, let’s face it, a little moment of joy.
Lay’s is part of PepsiCo, and our products are consumed 1 billion times a day in more than 200 countries around the world. Like many large brands, our marketing campaigns are often crafted at a global level, and filtered through to local markets.
“Joy is a simple recipe” was our 2024 global message, aiming to establish a consistent, long-term brand campaign that resonates with consumers on a personal level.
But to truly connect with our customers, we needed to uncover the unique moments of joy that are specific to the Netherlands and Belgium. And for that, we turned to AI. That’s where the journey for “Genieten is een simpel recept” began.
Tapping into the power of AI for joyful insights
We started by gathering insights from our existing customer base through surveys and newsletters by asking “What does joy mean to you?” We had over 6,000 responses, ranging from a trip to Disneyland to time spent with friends — something I love to do myself.
We wanted insights from lots of sources so we could really understand the nuances of joy in the Netherlands and Belgium. So, our partners at Google then worked with us to create a series of prompts to input into their next-gen AI assistant Gemini. We hoped to be able to go beyond the obvious insights and use AI as a creative sparring partner.
It was a steep learning curve. Learning how to write a great prompt takes a lot of practice and we edited and reworked our requests a lot in the beginning. Investing the time to learn this skill was worth the effort though, as we would soon find out.
We would use the insights to create a real campaign in the Netherlands or Belgium, so we had to make sure that it would be recognisable for almost every citizen. We used Dutch terms like “geluksmomentjes” (moments of happiness) and we learned to be as specific as we could be with the audience we wanted to connect with. One such prompt was:
With a wealth of ideas, revealing both common and unexpected sources of joy, we carefully evaluated these insights, considering their scalability and relevance to our brand. We fact-checked all our insights using more methods like Insights Finder, where we uncover search trends and look into audience interests.
The team working on this was made up of both Dutch and Belgian people, which meant that we could verify the insights we got ourselves. I remember it became obvious from the insights early on, that family is very important among all our audiences, as who we want to spend moments of joy with. This was something which resonated with all of us.
Bringing Dutch and Belgian joy to life
Armed with insights from Gemini, our survey, and our own team, we began the creative process. The local moments of joy formed the foundation of our campaign, guiding everything from the visuals and messaging, to our media targeting strategy.
“We analysed the insights and clustered them into recognisable situations which we could easily translate to an image," explains Mike van Brummen, senior project manager at Boomerang, the agency who we worked with. "For example, there's a lot of water in the Netherlands. Most Dutch people will recognise the feeling of happiness associated with being with your friends or family on a boat trip."
We created visuals that captured this experience, using local places that would be recognisable, like Zandvoort beach and Prinsengracht canal in Amsterdam.
As we were devising a campaign for the Netherlands and Belgium, we were keen to create ads which would speak to both markets. A lot of the joy-giving experiences are similar — like interest in festivals, afterwork drinks, the beach — so we used these similarly for both markets.
However, in execution of the creatives there are some differences, like in Belgium cycling as a sport is more important, and in the Netherlands people like to relax on a boat — which is not really popular in Belgium.
“We also decided to always have a ‘three word recipe’ overlaid on the ads, but there were some rules we had to apply,” continues van Brummen. “The first word is explaining what is happening, the word in the centre is the location of where this thing is happening, and the third word gives it a twist."
So for instance “sproeier”, “park”, and “zon” (sprinkler, park, sun):
We wanted to ensure our ads connected on a local level so decided to refine our media placements too. Using scripts on our Search and Shopping ads, beach-themed and sunny weather ads would be displayed in close proximity to beaches, at least within driving distance. And when the weather was good, these ads would be displayed via our digital channels.
"The boat and canal campaign was geo- and weather-targeted in Amsterdam when it was over 20 degrees,” van Brummen elaborates. “Whereas at that same moment we would show a Search or Shopping ad of people playing on the beach to people located closer to one. And on rainy days we would show a family enjoying some movies inside in front of the television together."
Results that bring joy to marketers
The “Genieten is een simpel recept” campaign has been hugely successful for us to reconnect with consumers in the Netherlands and Belgium.
In just over one month, we reached an incredible 6.5 million unique users with our local ads.
All our ads have also led to a brand lift that is best-in-class against industry benchmarks. Brand lift measures how an advertising campaign impacts a desired audience and is used to gauge how people perceive a brand or product. This is obviously very special, because we can see the campaign really resonated locally because of the insights we started with.
Integrating AI into our marketing workflow was a new and exciting experience. It is an invaluable addition to our toolkit, providing a deeper understanding of our markets than we ever thought possible. By combining human intuition with the power of AI, we have been able to unlock new levels of meaningful connection with our audience.
