I have subscriptions to two food/life/health magazines. I find myself looking at the ads in those two magazines more than I do for ads placed in other printed medium. Why? Because some ads actually inform us on health issues or give recipes and I also am looking for new food items to add variety in my meals.
To make readers actually pay attention to certain ads, magazines print them on different paper or have them be a different size than a normal page, insert them inside the magazine instead of being printed on a page, or have them be in 3D (you have something to pull, open, etc., to see the entire ad). These marketing tricks actually work on me to a certain extent. I will pay more attention to these ads but won’t feel the urge to buy the product because they used a clever tool to make me read it.
This week, the clever magazine ad award goes to Ruffles Potato Chips as you can see from the picture above.
This fun and clever ad for Ruffles chips and dips was inserted in the latest issue of the French-Canadian magazine Coup de pouce. As you can see, there is a jar of Ruffles dip in the middle and in the bottom right corner you see a bag of Ruffles chips and text that tells you that Ruffles have perfect ridges and are ideal for dips! But that’s not what got my immediate attention. Oh no! It was that piece of thick paper with a chip printed on it. Next to the chip it reads “pull”. So I did just that: pull.
Of course, the paper was perfectly glued to the magazine so even if I pulled with about 50% of my strength, the chip stayed in place. This movement allowed me to notice that something was written on the other side of the piece of thick paper (see below): Impossible? It is because Ruffles chips have perfect ridges from top to bottom. Perfect to ‘trap’ the rich and creamy Ruffles dip.
My translation of what’s written on the other side of the piece of paper may not be what Ruffles Potato Chips marketing people would have used, but it still gives you the gist of the ad: Ruffles chips have perfect ridges making them the best to eat with dip!
What’s fun is that the piece of paper is really well glued making it impossible to tear without making a mess with your magazine. This “impossible to tear” piece of paper made me think that 1) the ridges are really perfect to trap loads of dip, 2) the Ruffles dip must be extra creamy for the chip to be so difficult to get out of the jar!
Sadly for Ruffles Potato Chips, even if I enjoyed the ad, it won’t make me buy their product again. I’ve banned Ruffles from my kitchen until they treat the Salt & Vinegar chips with the respect they deserve. Back in the ’80s and ’90s, Ruffles made the best Salt & Vinegar chips out there. They were so salty and vinegary that you could almost taste the chip before it was in your mouth! So imagine the flavor party that was happening once it was in your mouth! I actually wasn’t able to eat more than 10 chips without having a huge glass of water back then. It was a great way to have a reasonable amount of chips and not eat the whole bag!
The company then decided to abandon making the Salt & Vinegar chips. Lays’ S&V potato chips are good but nothing compared to what Ruffles used to make. A few years back, Ruffles put S&V chips back on the market but they were not nearly as good, salty and vinegary as they used to be. Now, the company is back to not making the chips anymore; thus, me banning the products from my kitchen!
Clacked by Isabelle Carreau 
on Feb 02, 2009 @ 15:00 EST5EDT
