The archive · Marketing & Growth · Marketing decision · 2008–2014
Walkers asks a million Britons to invent its next crisp — the vote picks the winner
Walkers stops inventing flavours in-house: 1m+ public ideas, six sold nationwide, one public vote — the winner banks £50k plus 1% of sales.
Walkers (PepsiCo UK)
What it had to solve
Walkers — the UK's leading crisp brand, owned by PepsiCo — competed in a mature market where new flavours were frequent but fell flat as often as they landed. Rather than gamble internally, it made the product decision itself the media event.
How it works
In July 2008, Walkers stopped behaving like a conventional FMCG manufacturer: instead of testing new flavours secretly in-house, it asked the whole of Britain to invent them. 'Do Us a Flavour' invited anyone to submit an idea for a new crisp flavour, and more than one million ideas came back — from 'Cajun Squirrel' to 'Builder's Breakfast'.
Chef Heston Blumenthal and a judging panel cut the million entries to six finalists, and Walkers actually made them: from 9 January 2009 the six flavours were on sale in every UK supermarket, until May. The product itself was the ballot paper — buying the crisps met the contest, and online voting on the Walkers site decided which flavour became permanent.
The stakes made the work feel national: each finalist had already won £10,000, the winner took £50,000 plus 1% of all future sales of the flavour (an income Walkers modelled at around £57,000 a year if the flavour matched a big seller like BBQ), and the finalists' personal stories — a midwife's breakfast crisp, a vegetarian's fish-and-chips flavour — were free publicity of the kind no agency could buy.
Walkers proved the format was reusable: in 2014 the same mechanics returned with a £1m prize, five £10,000 runners-up, and flavours built on six named British regional ingredients — consumer co-creation had moved from promotion to strategy.
Why it lands
- A million entrants, their families and friends formed a promotion network no media budget could buy.
- Putting the six flavours in shops before the vote made every packet a ballot — the product did the campaigning.
- £50,000 plus 1% of future sales gave the contest real stakes, drawing serious, newsworthy ideas.
- The format was reusable: relaunched in 2014 with a £1m prize, it turned a one-off promo into a recurring franchise.
What it did
More than one million flavour ideas; six finalist flavours on national shelves; a permanent product decided by public vote; prizes of £10,000 per finalist, £50,000 and 1% of sales for the winner. In 2014 Walkers ran the format again with a £1m prize — proof the launch idea itself had become the product.
What you can take
Make the product decision the media event: when consumers both invent and vote, the launch ships with a built-in audience of participants, and the winner arrives with a national story attached.
Since then
The 2008 contest's mechanics became a Walkers franchise: relaunched in 2014 with a £1m top prize and five £10,000 runners-up (built from six named British regional ingredients), the format has since been repeated, and the 'consumer picks the product' mechanic spread across FMCG launches worldwide. For Walkers, public ideas stopped being a niche R&D input and became a marketing platform with its own audience — the 2014 return was handled as a major national launch rather than a promotion, confirming that the contest, not any single flavour, had become the product.
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