REWIND, a new snack brand from Santa Maria, launched in the hyper-competitive Dutch snacking market with zero awareness and a tiny budget — exactly the situation where traditional brand campaigns fail.
Instead of telling a brand story, the launch product was '9V Flavour' tortilla chips: a mix of citric acid and sodium bicarbonate recreates the tongue-tingle of licking a 9-volt battery, with mineral salts for a metallic tang. The flavour was the ad.
The universal childhood memory of that tingle made the product inherently shareable. The launch reached 348 million people worldwide and earned the ultimate PR badge — an official health-authority warning not to lick real batteries.
The limited edition sat beside standard flavours (Cheese & Onion, Tangy Sriracha, Creamy Paprika, BBQ & Honey), letting the stunt pull people into the range; D&AD later archived the work in its awards.
Make the product itself the ad
Sensory memory is a universal language; the flavour triggers a story everyone has.
A product people must taste to believe generates its own press and sampling.
The warning from health authorities proved the provocation landed.
A tiny budget can outshout big rivals if the product itself carries the story: engineer one outrageous, tasteable detail and let people's sensory memory do the sharing.
The 9V chips became a global conversation piece and REWIND's calling card; media from tech to tabloids covered the launch, and the range gained the awareness a paid campaign could not have bought.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The sources
- 9V Flavour — D&AD Awards archive D&AD · dandad.org
- Nine volts to nibble on: battery flavor from the chip bag heise online · heise.de