Snack Brand Walkers Launches Eight-Week Champions League Campaign

Snack brand Walkers is launching an "eight-week TV campaign coinciding with the first knockout round" of the UEFA Champions League, according to Simon Gwynn of CAMPAIGN LIVE. The ad, created by Abbott Mead Vickers BBDO, introduces the new platform #WalkersUnited and "promotes the brand’s new resealable sharing packs, which are aimed at social occasions such as a night of watching the game." It features "brand mascot" Gary Lineker and plays with the "long-running joke of Lineker being unable to share." PepsiCo, Walkers’ parent company, signed a three-year deal in '15 to sponsor Europe’s elite football tournament, "allowing a number of its brands to make use of the relationship in their marketing." Walkers U.K. Brand Manager John Savage said that the campaign "was about highlighting the role Walkers could play in occasions that brought friends and family together." The TV run "is being supported by an on-pack promotion." Promotional packs feature "the lower half of a football fan’s face; consumers hold the pack to their own face, take a selfie and share it on social media with the hashtag #WalkersUnited." Savage: "It does elevate on-pack promotions. The beauty of this campaign is it’s all about sharing something" (CAMPAIGN LIVE, 2/1).