28 Jul Pringles: Facebook Fan Page Example in Detail #9
Remember the original Pringles mantra “Once You Pop, You Can’t Stop?” The now out of date statement still holds true in many ways for the Pringles Facebook page where fans just can’t contain their excitement for the brand. Pringles has more than 14 million fans and counting coupled with constantly high engagement rates. This summer’s theme for the brand’s Facebook page is music festivals, a huge staple of the season. The theme is supported with a tab that’s partnering with music festivals around the world and Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles to create Pringles branded experiences with online and offline components.
Festival Fever Tab
Several days filled with thousands of people, lots of sun and tons of great live music is currently being fused with an endless supply of Pringles chips and fun to add to the atmosphere at music festivals. This promotional tab invites fans to RSVP to meet up with the brand at upcoming music festivals through the month of August from Sweden’s Peace & Love Festival to Belgium’s Lokerse Feesten.
In addition to the festival calendar, there are two other sections on the tab. The “Find Yourself at the Festival” section a collection of photo galleries featuring candid images of festival goers interacting with the brand at past events such as Skive, Isle of White, Pinkpop, Jammin, Provinssirock and Parkpop festivals. The other section, “Share the Fun,” offers a chance for fans to pair a themed Pringles image with a few select captions that can be shared with friends. Each section can be shared to a fan’s wall, whether it’s an event, a snapshot or a customized Pringles graphic. This Festival Fever tab was meant for sharing the Pringles festival excitement with friends!
Conga Tab
Another unique tab, titled “local” is an application that turns fans into Pringle chips conga line dancers. Fans can either use their Facebook profile picture or upload a photo from their computer to use with the application. The use of frontal headshots and images that do not contain other people are encouraged and work best to produce quality dancing Pringles of fans.
Once fans choose a photo they can crop it, and then add any accessories they desire. There are tons of options for head gear including a Viking hat, a sombrero, a wig and other funky headwear. Fans can also choose items to hold in their hands to shake to the beat such as a red pepper, a kebab, maracas and a few other celebratory items. The finished product is a moving animation of your image placed as the head of your accessorized Pringle chip moving to the beat of some funky music.
A fan’s Pringle dancing twin could be posted as their profile image, shared on their wall and comment enabled. Fans can of course invite their friends to join the conga dancing fun and eventually be shown in one animation dancing as a group with up to four other people. This is a Pringles fans exclusive, so friends must be fans in order to participate. Pringles does a nice job incorporating elements that are sure ways to get fans to engage and share.
Pringles Content Strategy
Pringles’ formula for engaging on its wall includes a dash of the Pringles’ brand character, a pinch of wittiness and dollop of carefully crafted questions for fans.
Pringles is creating wall posts about once a week and is still managing to on average receive a 0.04% interaction rate per post. The Pringles engagement at its best has received a 0.08% interaction rate and this particular post received 25% more comments than likes, which was as follows:
The above engagement question is a sample of the types of posts that are relied on most when posting, which manage to effortlessly tie in the Pringles brand’s personality.
The least performing types of posts from the past ten published to the wall were announcement posts. The worst performing of the two below average posts attempted to promote a summer promotion with not much interest from fans, as you can see below:
After fans click the link they are taken to a microsite that is promoting a proof of purchase giveaway that is a completely offline promotion and is far from social.
Another snack brand, Starburst, was used for the purpose of comparing Pringles’ Facebook performance. Although Starburst has a slightly smaller fan following as well as more frequent and varied content per last ten posts their average interaction rate is an unimpressive 0.01% and the highest performing post received a 0.03% interaction rate. The above average post was an engagement question about music albums.
A key finding in comparing both these brands was that both the highest performing posts were fan engagement posts that resonated with fans’ personal lives. For Pringles it was asking fans about their chip flavor preference, but for Starburst it was a statement related to fans’ music opinion.
Pringles’ Facebook fan interaction success is a rare example of how more frequent posting and the use of mixed media is not always the secret to success. Every brand that is succeeding at receiving high engagement rates on Facebook has its own unique formula, because what works for one brand does not necessarily work for another.
