For over 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 Lunchables 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 more parents to perceive Lunchables as not just snack fuel but as creative fuel, and therefore be more inclined to start purchasing our product.

To get all types of kids building with Lunchables, we designed 31 unique food builds—from dinosaurs to baseball diamonds to SpongeBob SquarePants—using just our product. We called them “Lunchabuilds” and created blueprints for each one.

But we didn’t stop there. We also rebuilt our e-commerce site and, for the first time in the brand’s history, sold Lunchables not by flavor, but by the build. You could order a cat. Or bulldozer. And get the packs and blueprints needed to build them yourself.

Then we brought our Lunchabuilds to the world. We made life-size “Lunchabuses” for public transit, an 18-foot-high “Lunchabear” for zoos, a Lunchables ballpark for MLB at Field of Dreams and a life-size SpongeBob Lunchabuild for the Kids’ Choice Awards. And fans could ride a massive Lunchables ant at Marvel’s Ant-Man premiere.

And every ad could be scanned to order that build instantly, making ads you could literally eat.

For over 30 years Lunchables encouraged kids to build their lunch, their way.

But in 2022, we changed the way kids build—and buy—our product.

We decided to shift from passive traditional advertising (TV, print) to active ideas that get kids building, with a new call-to-action: Lunchabuild This.

The key would be finding new partners and showing up in new places where kids would see us. Our Lunchabuilds showed up at zoos, on buses, during superhero-movie premieres and even at the Kids’ Choice Awards—everywhere that kids were.

In order to drive sales, every ad was scannable and linked directly to our site, where families could buy that build instantly. We developed unique QR codes for every build and worked with Instacart to make a seamless purchasing experience: just click “Order This Build,” and your cart would be automatically filled with the packs needed to make it.

We worked with a food stylist to create 31 Lunchabuilds. Each one was made using only our food: crackers, cheese, ham, pretzel sticks, chicken nuggets, pizza crust and pepperoni slices.

Once we had the builds, we rebuilt our e-commerce site, partnering with Instacart to let kids and families order “by the build” (instead of by the flavor, as we had done for 30 years).

Our Lunchabuilds were featured in OOH, digital, social and several contextual activations—like a giant Lunchables stadium at the MLB at Field of Dreams baseball game and a SpongeBob SquarePants Lunchabuild at the Kids’ Choice Awards. And every ad could be scanned so you could order that build instantly.

The site went live with the advertising campaign, which launched on August 15, 2022, and is still in market.

The 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 for Lunchables and category YOY dollar sales and unit share, comparing 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!

Page views on our site were up by 287%, and on Instagram, kids submitted thousands of new build ideas with #LunchabuildThis, which we turned into new “official” Lunchabuilds to keep kids building.

Fans were obsessed with our bus wrap, too. Articles and poems (yes, poems!) were written about the “Lunchabus,” a petition was started to keep them, and two fans dressed as a Lunchabus for Halloween.