For 30 years, Lunchables was seen as a functional snack. Our goal was to change the perception of the product by ramping up our “buildability” message, inspiring kids to build more and play more with our food.

We wanted to expand our lead, increasing sales as well as category share—something we’d failed to do in 2021. But since there isn’t much differentiation in the “build-your-own snack box” category, we had to get consumers to see our product in a whole new light.

The key was to dial in on kids’ behavior. Studies showed that “kid request” (“I want more Lunchables!”) had a 70% correlation with parent purchase, making it key to unlocking growth.

To fuel household penetration—and grow sales—we had to increase parent favorability. That is, we needed parents to feel even more inclined to purchase Lunchables, perceiving them as not just snack fuel, but creative fuel, as well.

We needed to shift from passive traditional advertising (TV, Print) to activations that get kids building with Lunchables.

And importantly, since we saw how kids used the world around them as building inspiration, our strategy was to bring our Lunchabuilds to their world, showing up where we knew they’d see them. And, we made sure that every media placement was contextual to that specific build.

Our approach was to bring this to life through a multicity takeover, installing contextual OOH and experiential installations in places kids were —on the way to school, at the zoo, etc.—to prompt them to build with Lunchables.

QR codes would take people to Lunchables.com for blueprints and ordering by build.

The strategy also affected how we sell our product. We rebuilt our e-commerce site and, for the first time in the brand’s history, sold Lunchables not by flavor, but by the build.

We literally turned a series of real-world objects into “Lunchabuilds,” with blueprints to match, all serving as sparks of inspiration for kids. Every media placement was contextual to that specific build. We took over public transit with Lunchables buses, put 18-foot-high “Lunchabears” at zoos, had a “Lunchabike” next to a rack of city bikes, and at Marvel’s Ant-Man movie premiere, fans could ride a giant Lunchables ant. A massive SpongeBob Lunchabuild even appeared at the Kid’s Choice Awards.

Altogether, we created 31 Lunchabuild objects spread across six city takeovers - Minneapolis, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New York & Cleveland - and over 1,100 contextual placements.

With QR codes, every placement could be scanned to get blueprints and to order the Lunchables needed for the build. Kids could even upload their own builds. Surrounding this ecosystem were platform-bespoke social executions pointing people to the idea of building objects with Lunchables.

Our “Lunchabuild This” campaign reinvigorated the brand, causing sales to jump a whopping 38% in YOY dollar sales. And Lunchables unit sales grew by 20.9 pts. YOY. This made for significant category-share growth, increasing Lunchables’ brand dominance over its imitators (source: IRI Panel data – Lunchables and category YOY dollar sales/unit share, comparing back-to-school launch time frames).

“Lunchabuild This” turned around last year’s penetration decline, with Total Household Penetration increasing by 1.9 pts. YOY—that’s 2.3M more new households buying Lunchables! And on our site, page views were up by 287%.

We also moved the needle on parent favorability. Brand Tracking showed a 6-point uptick in parents’ Favorability rating of Lunchables during the campaign’s six-week back-to-school window. And in tracking, 66% of parents said that Lunchables “fuels creativity.”

And on Instagram, kids submitted thousands of new build ideas which we turned into new “official” Lunchabuilds to keep kids building.