PINK KEY
Pringles...
If Anyone Can... We Can
Pink Key Licensing Talks About the Exceptional Growth and Versatility of the Pringles Brand The Pringles brand in licensing terms is rather enigmatic. A lot of the early potential licensees we’ve talked to have given us the same reaction ‘That’s great’ followed by ‘Err, what do we do with it?’. In the recent global fashion trend that was focussed on logos, food and brands with broad awareness, Pringles did a lot of box-ticking and as a result the brand has performed exceptionally well for us over the last 12 months, appearing on a lot of T-shirts and pyjamas. The image is a strong one and the style-guide one of richest and most adaptable we have at our disposal, with colours, fonts and slogans all interchangeable (even within a single design) that gives it a real vibrancy and flexibility you don’t often see. However, where the brand really wins is something that’s so obvious that we probably missed it in the first year or so of licensing it. Of course, the brand name has global awareness, of course everyone knows Mr P (even if they do get him confused with the bloke on the Monopoly board), of course everyone thinks the Olympic velodrome was built in the shape of a Pringle, but nothing separates out Pringles in a more distinctive way than …. the shape of the Pringles can. I can more or less guarantee if I put a plain, blank, unbrand-
ed can on the table most people would know what they are looking at. And so began our search for the licensees with a bit of imagination, who weren’t going to just label slap the logo, but who were going to dig a little into the brand DNA and use that, along with the unique can shape to bring products to market that really represented the brand and its character. PAGE 10
Pringles is a social brand, eaten at occasions related to sport, entertainment and general gatherings. It’s pretty cool too, which is why it has lent itself so well to the apparel we’ve seen in H&M, Primark and others. But the real wins in terms of product have been where the product has gone a little bit further than just putting the logo on a T-shirt. It began with the Helix pencil case and the TOTAL BRAND LICENSING
