Context

Business Issue

Pringles is investing heavily in media but still trails key competitors on consideration, household penetration and repeat purchase.

Comms/Growth Objective

Convert a key growth audience “Social Explorers” into loyal, multi-can buyers by owning the right moments, flavors and places to buy.

Challenge

This is a new business analysis, so we don’t have any MMM, surveys, or any actual performance data from the client. We need to rely 100% on my team’s internal data sources without interacting with the client team.

My Task

Decode and design the right ‘Pringles moments’ (time-of-year, week, day) and couple them with channel & flavor innovations that make Social Explorers pick Pringles first, more often, and in more places.

Key Findings

There is a sizeable, slipping growth audience.

19.5 M “Social Explorers” (open-minded, flavor-seeking snackers aged 18-39) have drifted away from Pringles—new-buyer potential is down 7 pp and frequent-buyer potential down 11 pp since 2021, faster erosion than the overall chips category—yet even converting just 5 % of them could deliver a step-change in revenue.

Pringles loses shoppers when consideration dives in April & July.

Unlike Doritos or Tostitos, Pringles’ monthly consideration plunges mid-spring and mid-summer, driving lapses despite heavier media investment; July TV spend in particular is inefficient. Owning culturally relevant “white-space” moments in Q2–Q3 is critical.

Weekends and two day-parts are ripe for takeover.

Chips are “weekend snacks” across the board, but Pringles performance lags peers. Transaction spikes at 12 PM (lunch‐pairing), 5–6 PM (grab-and-go) and 1 AM (late-night munchies) present clear “Eat-Now vs Eat-Later” territories to win.

Club stores are the untapped door to new households.

Club channels supply the highest flow of incremental salty-snack buyers, yet Pringles’ household penetration there is only 2.4 %—6.8 pts behind Doritos and 3.7 pts behind Ruffles—especially among Millennials and Gen Z.

Flavor architecture is holding the brand back.

Although more SKUs usually boost consideration, Pringles under-indexes because it lacks flavors that resonate with high-growth segments—Latin-inspired variants drive the biggest units-per-buyer and repeat, but are missing. Hispanic shoppers are 33 % less likely to buy non-Original Pringles, while AA shoppers slightly over-index.

Digital salience is weak—no breakout “search moments.”

Google Trends shows a flat index of ~10 versus 30–100 for competitors; 2023 featured zero viral spikes. Creating culture-driving collaborations or events is essential to lift awareness and consideration.

Purchase barrier is choice overload, not price.

Shoppers pick Pringles when the can stands out, but many walk away overwhelmed by shelf options; price is a smaller deterrent than for Doritos or Cheetos. Streamlined flavor navigation and stronger in-store cues could recover these lost sales.

Baskets reveal natural partnership whitespace.

Frequent-item-set mining shows Pringles over-indexes with carbonated beverages, fresh bread & rolls, cookies and even bananas, signalling potential joint promos (e.g., beverage tie-ins) and “sweet-savory” positioning.

Media dollars must stretch further.

Pringles spends nearly as much as Doritos but generates fewer units per dollar; re-allocating to the right moments, channels (Club), and flavor innovation offers the biggest ROI lift

The Details

Understanding the impact of Pringles’ Spend

TV spending does appear to influence unit sales.
July spending does not yield effective results.
The cost per unit exceeds that of competing brands like Doritos, Ruffles, and

Why Owning Moments Matter: Media Spend is Not Enough

Despite Pringles investing more in media compared to Lays and nearly matching Doritos' spending, it fails to attain the anticipated consideration levels. Additionally, even though Pringles enjoys more positive sentiment than Fritos, Ruffles, and Doritos, its consideration levels remain unchanged. This phenomenon may occur due to several reasons, including the timing of marketing efforts throughout the year:

Seasonal Trends
Holiday Impact
School Calendar
Summer vs. Winter
Marketing Campaigns
Event Sponsorships

Funnel Focus: Which one to prioritize?

Customer retention in the category across the year is very well predicted by the brand’s consideration levels. Pringles experiences consideration drops during July, resulting in lapsed users, while Doritos and Tostitos don’t.

Equity metrics by Brand and Month vs % Current Consumers. Equity Metric relationship to consumer retention (including explanation of variability). Higher R-Squared implies stronger predictive power.

Understanding the campaign concepts each competitor “owns” throughout the year.

Mid-year, Pringles showcases unique themes like Seasonal and Road Trip ads but misses out on collaborations and new product launches. Collaborations often drive new product introductions, as seen with Doritos and Jack Link’s. Pringles has a significant opportunity to diversify its offerings during this period by engaging in various sporting events and high-profile collaborations, all while continuing to promote their core flavors through general advertising. This approach can broaden Pringles' appeal and stimulate consumer interest.

** Charts are showing Moments throughout the year, but do not show uncategorized ads. Therefore the absence of impressions during a period may not mean there are none

All Brands: Moments of the Year

Pringles: Moments of the Year

Lay’s: Moments of the Year

Doritos: Moments of the Year

Ruffles: Moments of the Year

Understanding Equity and Sales across different time frames to identify opportunities

Customer retention in the category across the year is very well predicted by the brand’s consideration levels. Pringles experiences consideration drops during April and July, resulting in lapsed users, while Doritos and Tostitos don’t.

If we look at granular transactions aggregated by day of the week, similar trends show up for all salty snack brands:

● Transactions increase at the end of the week starting on Friday and climb until Sunday.

● Monday - Thursday remain steady

● Salty snacks are the the “weekend snack”

● Everyone knows that weekends give us time to do what we want, but weekends also let us EAT what we want too!

● Can Pringles be the brand that carries the free weekend spirit to all days of the week?

Consumer purchase behaviors fluctuate based on time of day. However, when it comes to salty snacks, it appears consumers have two main motivators, Eat Now or Eat Later. Being the brand that owns both these mindsets can be key to getting ahead of competitors.

● For Pringles and all competitive brands, we have found 3 major time frames that we feel could be owned.

● Looking at transaction counts, we see that Lays is the top performer while Pringles is in between it’s likely neighbors of Cheetos and Ruffles.

● 12:00 PM Noon: our snackers might be enjoying chips paired with lunch.

● 5:00 PM & 6:00 PM: Our snackers are purchasing chips at local stores with plans of eating them at a later time. They also are enjoy a late afternoon snack before dinner.

● 1:00 AM: Our snackers are indulging in their late night munchies.

Ran a Frequent Item Set Algorithm on all transactions for each brand aggregated by hour of the day, looking specifically at the hours where transactions spiked.

● Pringles was found to have the most diversity in items purchased together across all hours of interest and brands.

● Some of the items that were being consistently purchased together across all hours included [Carbonated Beverages],[Carbonated Beverages, Salty Snacks], [Cookies, Fresh Bread & Rolls]. Unique to Pringles only: [Bananas], [Bananas, Fresh Bread & Rolls, Salty Snacks], [Berries, Salty Snacks], [Crackers, Salty Snacks, Fresh Bread & Rolls]

● These bundles highlight a potential collaboration opportunity with a carbonated beverage brand. They also suggest our consumers desire to keep households stocked with common goods such as fresh fruit and sandwich prep.

Ran the Frequent Item Set Algorithm on the same transactions but this time aggregated by month.

● Found a similar pattern, Pringles has the most diversity in items purchased together. Pringles also saw some of the same itemsets appearing monthly such as [Salty Snacks, Carbonated Beverages], [Salty Snacks, Fresh Bread & Rolls] and [Salty Snacks, Cookies]

● Some of the standout frequent items purchased together include: [Salty Snacks, Chocolate Candy], [Cold Cereal], [Salty Snacks, Soup], [ Salty Snacks, Crackers], [Dinner/Entrees - FZ, Salty Snacks], [Dairy Milk, Salty Snacks, Fresh Bread & Rolls].

● These item sets teach us that our consumers enjoy a flavor combo of Salty and Sweet, prioritize convenience, and might enjoy a little extra crunch in their soup (Crackers or Pringles).

Gen Pop Internet Search Behavior Aggregated Monthly

● Pringles and Ruffles have significantly weaker online presences compared to their competitors

● Pringles index value for searches hovers around 10i throughout the year, while their competitors hover around 30i with volatile spikes reaching 60i(Lays) and 100i(Cheetos)

● Pringles needs to create more of an online presence

● Volatile spikes in search behavior are good indicators of a successful online campaigns or moments of trending

● Unfortunately, in 2023 Pringles did not have one of these breakout moments, based on Google Trends Search Trends

● Creating these moments can only help raise awareness and consideration

Understanding Point of Sales and Category selections across multiple channels and sub-audiences to identify opportunities

Where People Buy

● Club stores: a major source of new customers in the Salty Snacks category, experiencing minimal competition from bakery items, dry fruits, and dried meat snacks. Among its peers, Pringles attracts the lowest household penetration (HHP) from Club stores within this category. This trend is particularly pronounced among Millennials and Gen Z consumers.

● Grocery Stories: Salty Snacks are 88%+ HHP in grocery stores. This channel is close to saturated from a growth perspective unless we incentivize even more frequency.

Club stores are a major source of new customers in the Salty Snacks category, experiencing minimal competition from bakery items, dry fruits, and dried meat snacks.

Among its peers, Pringles attracts the lowest household penetration (HHP) from Club stores within this category. This trend is particularly pronounced among Millennials and Gen Z consumers.

Pringles’ HHP in Club Stores is only 2.40% 3.7% less than Ruffles and 6.8% less than Doritos

Brands offering a greater variety of flavors generally see higher levels of consumer consideration, yet Pringles appears to deviate from this trend.

This anomaly is largely due to its limited offering of flavors that resonate with high-growth demographics, such as Hispanics.
Flavors related to Latin cuisine tend to generate higher units per buyer and more frequent product purchases.

Additionally, other flavor options in the market tend to be oversaturated by competitors, limiting the appeal of Pringles' current flavor lineup in these crowded segments.

Even with more flavors, Pringles captures 51% less buyers than Doritos and 36% less buyers than Cheetos.

The insight about flavors is validated by Stylus: “In the US, 37% of Gen Zers say that ingredients have a significant influence on their choice of snack”

This observation is further supported by the fact that Pringles under-indexes across all levels of Hispanic acculturation and among Asian ethnicities.

Conversely, Pringles varieties beyond the original flavor show a slight over-indexing among African American consumers. This indicates a varied response to Pringles' flavor offerings based on different demographic groups' preferences and cultural affiliations.

While Regular Pringles are consumed similarly across all Hispanic acculturation levels in the 18-39 age range, Hispanics are 33% less likely to stick to other Pringles flavors.

While Other Pringles are 17% more likely to be consumed by AA demographics, they are 12% less likely to be consumed by Asian demographics

Cheetos and Doritos buyers are ~20% more likely to buy the brands for a partner compared to Pringles, even though it is less likely for Pringles buyers to be thrown-off by the brand’s price.

Pringles and Cheetos tend to attract buyers because they are noticeable on store shelves.

Unlike Doritos, Pringles and Cheetos are often chosen for more "shareable” situations.

The price of Pringles does not seem to be as much of a barrier compared to Cheetos and Doritos. However, when consumers opt not to buy Pringles, it is often because they are overwhelmed by the many choices available in the store.

Additionally, many shoppers still visit stores to explore their options rather than with a specific product in mind.

Pringles buyers are 2x more likely to perceive Pringles as more “natural” than Cheetos and Doritos, while Cheetos buyers are 2x more likely to make up their mind about the brand purchase before buying it

Converting 100% of our Sweet Spot Social Explorer Non-Buyer audience into buyers could boost our household penetration (HHP) by 21.3 percentage points.

This is equivalent to matching the size of the entire Pretzels subcategory.

However, achieving a 100% conversion rate within a single year is highly unlikely. Realistic annual conversion rates typically range from 3% to 20%.

Therefore, we must set ambitious goals while maintaining a practical perspective.

To achieve significant financial success with Social Explorers in the first year, we need to not only encourage them to try or return to Pringles but also to buy it more frequently.

$ Opportunity of Social Explorers by frequency and pricing scenario (assuming 5% CR)

Each unit per buyer and pricing combination belong to a category. The idea is to set benchmarks to what subcategory we need to assimilate more to achieve $ gains

Audiences, Moments, and Flavors: Identifying Low-Hanging Opportunities for Pringles US