The Pringles brand was based on an extraordinary innovation: the production of regularly sized, curved potato chips that could be stacked on top of each other, sealed in a container and shipped - and thus distributed nationally (and later internationally).
When your breakthrough product is based on a genuine technological innovation, it's very tempting to tell the world about it. You're excited - surely they will be too! But of course, consumers won't necessarily give a hoot about your ingenuity. When P&G launched Pringles in the US in 1973 they got carried away with their cleverness. Despite being famed, as marketers, for a ruthless focus on consumer benefits, they ended up launching this new brand with a bizarre ad that had everything to do with their internal breakthrough and nothing to do with what consumers got out of it. It promoted Pringles as a form of futuristic, 'new fangled' technology - rather than as an irresistible snack:
"Are there really potato chips in there?"
"I don't believe this."
"They're made a new way."
The launch was a flop, sales flatlined, and the brand looked in danger of failing altogether. Then in the 1980s P&G decided to refocus on consumer benefits, found the tagline "Once you pop you can't stop"...and Pringles never stopped.
