No more Prizes?

Sing along with me:

“Take me out to the ball game.Take me out with the crowd. Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack…”

But wait, stop right there! What do you mean there is no more prize in the Cracker Jack box!

It looks like Frito-Lay is doing away with the two-bit plastic toy in the box. Actually I’m okay with this. I hate this waste-full use of plastic that just gets thrown in the garbage anyway. The same thing should happen with the Kinder Surprise and the nonsense toys people put in birthday grab bags – sorry I digress.

But Frito-Lay’s  choice to replace the toy with a Blippar app printed sticker is an interesting strategy. You may recall that our local Winnipeg Free Press tried the Blippar app to engage readers with additional content back in 2013. I have always been curious to know what happened with that initiative?

From a marketing perspective, scannable codes have been on the downslide. There was a time when their use was popular to direct traffic to additional assets like videos and surveys; but for the most part, they were used to forward people to a website. Now, with the speed and intelligence of search engines, beacons and clever apps, the codes have become a less favourable method of providing value-added content.

Whenever possible, executing a promotion to a strategy is always the way to go. I’m sure Frito-Lay did their due diligence on this decision, and it will be interesting to see if Blippar can deliver the results.