As I pulled out the small pile of my usual junk mail and the ever so irritating monthly bills from my mailbox tonight, I noticed an envelope that stood out and seemed to be smiling at me. In the return address spot was the bright and sunny logo of Frito-Lay and the envelope was addressed to ME, not "Current Resident" or "Frito Lay Customer"...actually me.
As my mind raced for a split second as to what they could want, I quickly remembered what this was probably about... ahh... yes...those noisy, earth friendly, compostable bags that they used to package their SunChips® in. You remember that bag, right? That bag sent chills down my spine...I couldn't stand it. Harvest Cheddar SunChips are probably my favorite chip out there but I would purposely not buy them because of that ridiculous bag. When I did break down and actually purchase the chips, I would open the noisy bag and dump all of the chips into a freezer size Ziploc bag and keep them in there and throw the original bag away, not even compost it just to prove a point. Sure, the chips started to taste like plastic after a few days, but it definitely beat not being able to hear yourself think while digging for the ultimate powered-cheese-covered chip at the bottom of the bag.
Back to my point...
I opened the personalized envelope to find a shiny white SunChips letterhead addressed to "SunChips® Fan". They thanked me for sharing my thoughts on the noisy bag (I didn't mention in the above rant that I sent a complaint email to the Customer Service people at Frito-Lay telling them about my dislikes for the bag. They responded back then very nicely and acknowledged that they have gotten other complaints and were working on resolving the problem.) and informed me that they have a new, quieter compostable bag and they want me to hear the difference myself. To quote My Friends from the SunChips team: "We hope you will use the enclosed coupon to hear the difference for yourself." That's right...a FREE bag of Original Flavor (I will settle for Original because they are free) SunChips just for writing an email.
Frito-Lay is forgiven in my book for one of the dumbest marketing ideas I have ever heard of---not just because I got a free bag of chips out of the deal, but I am happy that they came to their senses and changed their bags (rumor has it that their sales were down 11% during the annoying bags 18 month run) due to customer complaints and obvious boycotting.
It reminds me of the Great Doughnut Boycott a group of my junior high friends started in 8th grade. The lunchroom doughnut prices went up, anti-doughnut t-shirts were made, petitions were signed, a boycott was on and after a few short weeks of low doughnut sales to hungry teenage boys, prices were back to normal. It's great to be an American, isn't it?
Kudos to you Leiann for speaking up about the stupid marketing idea. It got noticed and you are partly responsible for them making the change. Report back after you "hear the difference".
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