What it had to solve
The Twisties Museum campaign collects consumer-submitted photos of Twisties that resemble real-life objects, with entries competing for weekly cash prizes; 2020 marked the third year PepsiCo ran it in collaboration with PHD.
How it works
In partnership with Snapchat, PHD built PepsiCo's first-ever augmented reality World Lens: users leap into a lifelike gallery via the Snapchat lens, browse last year's Twisties Museum winner and find new favorites — including Twisties that look like a T-rex, a koala, and even a human heart — brought to life in AR.
What it did
The campaign went live in September 2020, extending a two-year-old UGC photo wall into an immersive gallery and giving the fan tradition a year-three platform.
Background
The Twisties Museum is a PepsiCo Australia tradition: consumers submit photos of Twisties — the puffed corn snack — that resemble real-life objects, and entries compete for weekly cash prizes. By 2020 it was in its third year, again in collaboration with PHD.
The twist for year three was format. In partnership with Snapchat, PHD built an immersive augmented reality experience: PepsiCo's first-ever AR World Lens, which drops users into a lifelike gallery where they can browse last year's Museum winner and discover new favorites. Twisties that look like a T-rex, a koala, and even a human heart come to life around the visitor.
Brand manager Xin Na Zeng framed the goal as letting consumers 'interact with Twisties in a whole new, fun and creative way'; PHD's Laura Cobertera pitched it as pairing new platforms and technologies to delight brand fans. The campaign went live in September 2020.
Why it lands
The content engine already ran itself: fans photographing lookalike snacks supplied the exhibits, so the brand only had to curate and stage them.
AR solved the museum's distribution limit — a photo wall on feeds became a space people visit, inside the app where the audience already is.
A third consecutive year turned a promotion into an anticipated institution, with its own archive (last year's winner) worth revisiting.
What you can take
Fan-made pareidolia is free creative: when people already photograph your product as other objects, give them a museum — then let them stand inside it.
Since then
The AR experience was live from late September 2020. No participation or sales figures are recorded in the coverage.
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE