The Return of the Gobbledok saw Smith’s Chips bring its mascot (the Gobbledok) out of retirement for a new role as the brand’s very own TikTok content creator. Once it started to grow a following, the Gobbledok saw a PR opportunity to put Smith’s Chips on the map for World Potato Chip Day.

To do this, the Gobbledok leveraged the biggest news story at the time – spy balloons – by launching his own spy balloon into Australia’s sky to show just how obsessed he was with Smith’s “Chippies!”.

Smith’s Chips is a beloved 90-year old potato chip/crisp brand in Australia. It once dominated the snack market in the 80s and 90s with help from its out-of-this-world mascot – the Gobbledok. He’s a 5-foot furry alien from the planet Dok obsessed with eating Smith’s “Chippies!”

But skip forward to today and the once pantry staple is now struggling to connect with a new generation of snack lovers, who were turning to other brands instead.

Our brief was to attract a younger generation of snack lovers to the Smith’s brand.

Return of the Gobbledok saw Smith’s Chips bring its 1980s mascot – the Gobbledok – out of retirement to turn it into an influencer worth following in the 21st century.

Instead of throwing lots of money at existing social media influencers to convince our target audience to buy Smith’s Chips, we squeezed the Gobbledok into a 9:16 frame on TikTok and taught it to become a snack influencer.

Just like any influencer trying to attract an audience, the Gobbledok began pushing its content to new heights – literally. On World Potato Chip Day, when the world news was talking about spy balloons, the Gobbledok launched one of his own, only this one was shaped like a potato.

This potato-shaped spy balloon was used to spy on people who were eating Smith’s Chips.

March 14th, 2023, was World Potato Chip Day and that’s a pretty important day for a potato-chip mascot obsessed with eating “Chippies”. So rather than jumping on a trend to tell everyone to eat Smith’s Chips, the Gobbledok jumped on one of the hottest and most current news stories at the time for inspiration: the discovery of spy balloons flying over North America.

Despite the events occurring overseas, the Gobbledok saw the opportunity to localise and leverage the story by launching a spy balloon of its own. One that allowed it to spy on everyone snacking on Smith’s Chips.

In the lead up to World Potato Chip Day, while Gobbledok was busy posting teaser TikToks about whether potatoes could fly, we were reaching out to influencers, TV news stations, websites and publications to help support the launch of the spy balloon.

On the big day, the Gobbledok lifted off into the skies with his Spy Potato, which was captured live on Australian TV, and streamed across social media. Our influencers on the ground also shared content of the Gobbledok spying from the sky.

5 points brand love uplift

980,000 minutes watched

2 x view-through benchmark (21% video completion rate)

Best performing post: 947,463 impressions (Spy Potato launch)

Total impressions: 25,900,000 + total reach: 14,280,000

The Gobbledok was a brand mascot created by Smith’s Chips back in the 1980s. His appearance in ads saw him become an Australian icon right through to the 1990s.

The mascot is a 5-foot furry alien from the planet Dok, which is a planet in space made out of potato. He landed on earth in order to discover the best potato chips in the universe. These chips/crisps he discovered were Smith’s Chips.

The Gobbledok could only ever say one word “Chippies!”, which became a catch phrase across Australia. The mascot was obsessed with Smith’s Chips and was often caught trying to steal them off people eating them.

After the 1990s, the Gobbledok was retired as the brand mascot.