PepsiCo's FLVR TikTok inspires Gen Z, Millennial consumers to cook with Frito-Lay products

“We quickly realized that if we wanted to do justice to this notion of accelerated growth and transformation for our company, a brand-led campaign-based approach alone would not get us there,” Clarke said. “What we realized was we could really benefit from an ‘and strategy.’ It was not to take away from what the brands were doing. We wanted to continue those brand-led initiatives and encourage them, [and] we wanted to complement those through this ‘and strategy’ of combining those brand-led campaigns by launching an evergreen portfolio program."  

Targeting Gen Z, Millennial consumers ‘in an authentic way’ ​

PepsiCo launched FLVR in early 2023 with an existing marketing budget, Clarke said. Since its launch, FLVR has amassed 1.6 million followers and 6.6 million likes, more followers than the Frito-Lay and Dorito brand TikTok accounts, he noted.

FLVR's TikTok and food entertainment channel features a range of PepsiCo-produced cooking recipes and content as well as consumer-generated content, Clarke said. This content is also featured on a dedicated FLVR website​.

"We wanted FLVR to sit somewhere between our traditional brand at PepsiCo and more of a creator brand or publisher, so it sits somewhere between the two. If you think about who we are trying to target — from a mature Gen Z and young Millennial standpoint, obviously the more branded is not always the better with that cohort. So, we were really trying ... to show up in an authentic way," he elaborated.

He added, “We have partnered with those micro-creators and tried to keep it as organic as possible, so not being super restrictive on our briefs to them. We have had those micro-creators come forward with their own recipe ideas ...  and we are again giving them as much wiggle room to work within to create something that is authentic to them and their style. And [we are] also leaning in to make sure that the creators that we are selecting to partner with on FLVR, that these creators represent the breadth and diversity that is America."   

Delivering on PepsiCo’s mission to expand in mealtimes

Previously, PepsiCo’s CEO and Chairman, Ramon Laguarta, outlined expanding​ Frito-Lay into more mealtime occasions as a key growth objective. In building out FLVR, Clarke and his team found that many consumers were already cooking with PepsiCo snacks.

“[Younger consumers] are actually taking some of our products, and they are using those products to create recipes. So, 74% of our Doritos buyers report having used the brand as an ingredient at one time or another in the past,” Clarke said. “There is an opportunity to lean into some of those behaviors that are already happening. How can we find those people who are doing these things and start to rally communities around those behaviors?”

He added, “[FLVR] is introducing consumers to new snack brands that maybe they are not familiar with, maybe they have never considered or seen before, and it is helping us cross-sell and upsell.”

PepsiCo created an ‘owned media powerhouse’ with FLVR

PepsiCo is building out its media capabilities with FLVR, instead of relying on retail-media platforms to promote products, Clarke explained.

“FLVR has been a great vehicle for us to start to build a bit more of an owned media powerhouse internally,” Clarke said. “It is growing this audience around FLVR by leveraging the power of content as a magnet to pull people to us to engage with us ... instead of running after them with our advertising,” Clarke said.  

Moving forward, PepsiCo will be expanding FLVR in-store and with on-pack messaging later this year and expanding the brand into different media outlets. Last year, Amazon and PepsiCo partnered to display FLVR social-media content to Fire TV, which garnered nearly 10 million impressions and resulted in PepsiCo product-detail pages seeing 15 times more views than the benchmark, according to an Amazon case study​.

“In under a year and a half, the teams have a lot of work at scaling this thing up and bringing it to a lot of consumer touch points, which has been a part of how we drive superior ROI for the program. We can create a recipe once and then through the power of strategic syndication across this ecosystem, we can reach an ROI by syndicating that content to different audiences,” Clarke said.