Lay’s® Make Their Super Bowl Ad Crunch on TikTok
The Super Bowl has a long history of entertaining audiences, from the excitement of the game itself to the Halftime Show performance to the much-anticipated commercials. While the Big Game may be one of the few times a year when consumers gather around the TV to actively watch the ads, that doesn’t mean advertisers’ reach and impact should stop there. Increasingly, advertisers are exploring channels beyond TV to get their campaigns shared and their brands talked about and remembered.
A Standout Story of a Super Bowl Spud
For Super Bowl LIX, Lay’s® and agency Highdive developed a story worth celebrating. “Little Farmer”, directed by Taika Waititi, sees a young girl looking after a potato plant on one of America’s farms. Her dedication to its care results in the plant growing tall, culminating in a potato that’s delivered in time to join a truckload of spuds heading off to be made into Lay’s® chips. Lay’s® champions the family-owned farms it works with while also delivering a heartwarming narrative filled with character (and potato!) development.
The ad landed at #1 in System1’s annual Super Bowl rankings, the only Super Bowl LIX ad to secure the maximum 5.9-Star Rating, predicting exceptional long-term brand-building potential for Lay’s® and a step above the US Salty Snacks average of 3.1-Stars. “Little Farmer” also performed well on short-term sales potential (Spike Rating) and Fluency Rating, or brand recognition, with 92% of viewers correctly identifying the brand.
With such a rich story to tell in the 30-second and 60-second edits, as well as a 3-minute film, would a shorter format for digital channels resonate as well with audiences?
Condensing “Little Farmer” for the Small(er) Screen
System1 used its Test Your Ad Social platform to test a 16-second cut-down of “Little Farmer” with a TikTok audience. Test Your Ad measures consumers’ emotional responses to predict the commercial potential of ads.
Test Your Ad Social includes a brand recognition FluencyTrace and a Creative Attention Trace:
- FluencyTrace – The digital ad is shared for 2 seconds, and then consumers are asked to state which brand they think the ad was for to deliver a Fast Fluency score. Fast Fluency is the average % correct attribution.
- Attention Trace – Consumers then watch the ad again and can skip on when they are no longer engaged. They are again asked what brand the ad was for to collect Final Fluency and the average % of the ad viewed.
As a benchmark, the global average of TikTok ads tested by System1 and TikTok among platform users is 3.4-Stars (‘Good’ brand-building potential).
The cut-down of “Little Farmer” exceeded all norms, landing 4.6-Stars with TikTok users, as well an exceptional Spike Rating, highlighting its short-term sales potential as well as its brand building power. The ad also scored 96 on Fast Fluency, meaning that 96% of consumers recognized that the ad was for Lay’s® after just 2 seconds, which is truly exceptional and puts its early brand recognition at nearly double the TikTok average.
Why It Worked
There are several reasons why the TikTok edit performed so well.
First, Lay’s® had a strong foundation on which to start. The full version of “Little Farmer” applies many showmanship features that entertain audiences and hold attention. These include a story unfolding, characters, recognizable places, a melodic soundtrack and betweenness or an emphasis on human interaction and communication between people.
Second, Lay’s® selected key moments from the TVC’s longer, unfolding storyline to preserve the narrative in the cut-down. The heartwarming scene of the family enjoying a bag of Lay’s® chips was brought in early to hook audiences and land the brand. Then the ad transitions to show the young girl digging up her potato and bringing it to the truck. This progression keeps viewers engaged, while ending the ad on an emotional high, with the potato joining the rest of the harvest and the girl smiling, creates a sense of resolution and happiness.
By carrying the core narrative’s heartwarming sentiment into the 16-second version, Lay’s® maintained high levels of Upliftment and Pride, while the early inclusion of the branded bag of chips aids Sensory Pleasure.
Effectively captivating viewers throughout the ad encourages greater feeling, which helped Lay’s® achieve ‘Exceptional’ emotional intensity that pairs with Fast Fluency to support short-term sales potential. Lay’s® accommodates TikTok’s skippable environment by authentically weaving the brand within the first 2 seconds, dispelling the myth that early branding reduces emotional resonance and attention. Viewers are happy to watch an ad that takes them on a journey and entertains.
Create with Confidence
System1 and TikTok recently released The Long and the Short (form) of it, a whitepaper sharing creative effectiveness best practices for short form video. Explore the impact that positive sentiment and early brand recognition have on brand outcomes and how best to navigate creator-led content and showmanship, backed by success stories like Lay’s®.
Want to test your digital creative before launch to predict and improve its commercial impact? System1’s Test Your Ad Social enables marketers to test digital creative, including TikTok ads, using emotional measurement.