Background

Old El Paso was launching their biggest product innovation in 7 years, Tortilla Pockets. They’re essentially a tortilla with a bottom, allowing you to stuff them to the brim with the nutritious ingredients that Mexican is known and loved for. Importantly, Tortilla Pockets also conquered a significant consumer pain point around eating Mexican...that it is quite messy. Our task was to launch Old El Paso’s Tortilla Pockets with a campaign that would break into culture, and immediately demonstrate the unique product benefit. However, we knew that we couldn’t just tell consumers that Mexican is finally mess-free. With Tortilla Pockets, we knew that the proof would be in seeing them in action.

Describe the strategy

Old El Paso’s new brand platform, Make Some Noise, needed to build salience with the platform and the brand in addition to achieving mass awareness of the new Tortilla Pockets. We decided to drive the desired awareness by highlighting the unique product benefit of Tortilla Pockets; Mexican is finally mess-free. To deliver on this ambition, we identified international tennis star, Nick Kyrgios - known for making his own ‘noise’ as the spearhead who would then galvanise a global sports community into action. Originally a ‘bad boy’ he has transformed his public reputation via numerous charitable efforts and supporting major causes like the Australian Bushfire Relief. Additionally, his flair on the court is a great encapsulation of the vibrant Old El Paso platform. With a multi-channel campaign supporting the launch, we recognised the value of social media as a broad reaching channel which invited engagement and demonstrated the product in action.

Describe the execution

To demonstrate how mess-free Tortilla Pockets really are, we partnered with Australian tennis star, Nick Kyrgios. Challenging him to take part in our #MessFreeChallenge by playing tennis full tilt whilst eating a Tortilla Pocket. Kyrgios then posted content across his social account, and for every share of Nick’s post, Old El Paso donated a Mexican meal-kit to Foodbank Australia, supporting families in need. Leveraging the popularity of social media challenges, and existing Instagram behaviours, the challenge quickly gained momentum peaking during the French Open. Tennis stars across Europe joined in support of the campaign, including British icon Andy Murray, Gael Monfils and Garbine Muguruza before the #MessFreeChallenge expanded to the Americas and Asia with Australian Open champion Sofia Kenin and Olympic gold-medalist Monica Puig also taking part before finishing symbolically with French Open winner Iga Swiatek. With each contributor, further donations were made to a local Foodbank.

List the results

The #MessFreeChallenge resulted in 50 million social accounts being reached and generating an earned reach of over 1.2 billion PR impressions globally with over 250 articles across Europe and Australia alone. The Tortilla Pockets launch exceeded the sales forecast by 60% across Australia and Europe and added in 70% new shoppers to the Mexican category within the first 2 months of launch. Most significantly, the initiative has also resulted in the joint donation by tennis stars and Old El Paso of over 100,000 meal kits to families in need, all as part of Old El Paso’s initiative to fight food insecurity.