The document discusses several key concepts related to understanding snacks in a social context: 1) Ethnography can provide insights into how people interact with and use snacks in their daily lives and social networks. 2) Snacks represent more than just food - they can symbolize childhood memories, regional identity, and expressions of parenting or skill. 3) Understanding these social and symbolic roles of snacks provides opportunities to design packaging, products, and messages that enhance brand meaning and drive incremental sales.

1. Ingredient
Badge
Symbol
Design
Ingredient
Reciprocity
Context
SNACK
TWO WEST
Ethnography
Context
Opportunity
Design
Social Networks
Reciprocity
Ingredient

2. Ethnography
THEORY
• Uncover the unexpected activities,
intrusions, and interactions that ultimately
impact decision making, use and
performance
INITIAL HYPOTHESIS
• Understand why, not simply what
• Understand the contexts (processes) in
which people live and work.
• Subjects and their actions are viewed as
interdependent rather than independent
or autonomous units PATTERNS
• Relational ties (linkages) between
subjects are channels for resource flow
(either material or nonmaterial)
OBSERVATION
• Network models focusing on individuals
view the network structural environment
as providing opportunities for or
constraints on individual action

3. Snacks in the
Social System

4. Snacks in the Social System
∙ The shopper is part of a system.
∙ The challenge for is to recognize the innovative
ways consumers define and use their products
and facilitate strategies that will help them.
∙ Understand the system and new avenues for
revenue growth emerge.

5. 2009 of snack sales: $46 billion
According to Nielsen "savory Snacks" category data

6. Expectations of growth by 2015: + 4%

7. “Foodies”
14 % of US adults
(31 million)

8. What happens if you get
31,000,000 to buy an extra bag
of chips every time they shop?

9. Ingredient

10. Frito Pie
®
FRITO CHILI PIE
2 1/2 c. Fritos
1 lg. onion, chopped
1 c. grated American cheese
15 oz. can chili, heated
Place 1 1/2 cups Fritos in a baking dish or
pie pan. Arrange chopped onions and half
of cheese over Fritos. Pour heated chili over
onions and cheese. Top with remaining Fritos
and cheese.
Bake at 350 degrees for 10 minutes

11. Badge

12. Range of Frito Pie (1932 - 2010)
®
Native Habitat
Expanded Habitat
As individuals or families migrate, their regional dishes
are acculturated by the local population

13. Symbolism

14. The Frito
®
Whole Corn
Corn Oil
Salt
99¢
Simplicity

15. Design

16. The Frito Bag
®
Traditional package design
Higher product-to-package
ratio compared to other chips
Long shelf life

17. Ingredient
Ritual & Tradition

18. Ingredient
Ritual & Tradition
(Since 1955)

19. Ingredient

20. Ingredient
Inventing Tradition
- Traditions preserve a wide range of commonly held ideas and practices.
- They establish a past and validate identity in the present.
- They are a means of pulling people together.
Cultural change
- Expressions of skill.
- Expressions of idealized parenthood.
Ritualize the product, create cross-generational loyalty.

21. Badge
Hipsters
PBR: $4.99 for a
6-pack

22. Badge
PBR (in China): $44 for
a 22 oz. bottle

23. Badge

24. Badge
Snacks as badge
A snack is more than food; it represents:
- Childhood memories
- Quality of parenting
- Regional affinity
- Expressions of regional or subgroup identity.
The brand itself is equally symbolically charged
- Old Bay = eastern rust-belt nostalgia
- Guys = a sense of locality Expressions of regional or subgroup identity.
Design ad collateral, packaging and products to enhance these symbolic cues
and you do what Coke did.

25. Symbolism

26. Symbolism
Method of Expression
- Expressions of skill
- Expressions of idealized parenthood
Cultural Change
- The "democritization of food"
∙ Sweetbreads
∙ Haute cuisine and working class
- Foodie culture
Signal/Signifier
- "Coke" = "soft drink" in many parts of the South
- Linguistic and symbolic cultural/regional
holdings

27. Design

28. Design
Tying it to Purpose
- If a snack represents an idea, how does it shape design and function?
- Snacks do more than hold you over, they alter time.
- Snacks are to meals what the DVR is to TV programming
Design devoid of meaning will kill an idea
- Design for a function
- Design for context
∙ On-the-go
∙ Frugal suburbia
∙ Location/event of consumption
- Packaging as a tool
Design as catalyst
- Incremental sales
- Shifting the "norm"

29. Design

30. Design

31. Design

32. So what?
New market opportunities
New messaging opportunities
Partnership opportunities
Accelerated incremental sales
Opportunities to create and control new flavor profiles
Opportunities to breath life into old products.

33. NOM NOM NOM!
CONTACT:
GAVIN JOHNSTON
CHIEF ANTHROPOLOGIST, TWO WEST DISCOVERY + DESIGN
DIRECT 816.581.8202 | 816.471.3255
gavinj@twowest.com