Taking Pot Noodle online

Case study, as told by Jo Hagger and Seb Royce of digital agency Glue London.
This article originally appeared in the book Targeting Students: A Marketing Guide (2005).

"Our brief was to take Pot Noodle, the slag of all snacks, online. Students were considered to be a big part of the audience. There's a Pot Noodle sold every four minutes, and a lot of them are sold on campuses.

"We knew straight away that we wanted to do something other than the most obvious interpretation. The obvious approach might have been something like a sex shop mock up. We wanted to think it through further.

"The key theme at the centre of the Pot Noodle campaign is about illicit consumption. Pot Noodle takes the place of sex when you apply the illicit consumption idea. So firstly we started looking into what that means online.

"We realised quickly that it is a lot about porn, and in terms of the 18-24-year-old male audience that Pot Noodle is aimed at, porn takes up a significant proportion of their time online.

"We thought about how we could utilise that without being too crass or obvious about it, because Pot Noodle is very much tongue-in-cheek, cheeky humour, not outrageously offensive.

"We know that a lot of porn sites are organised in the form of web rings: a collection of sites that are interlinked and that you can travel round in without having to go elsewhere. We thought that idea could lend itself to the brand's site very well because it allows you to represent the different flavours, with each site having its own personality and linked to the overarching Pot Noodle brand.

"Once we came across porn web rings we realised the art direction would fit perfectly with what Pot Noodle had already done offline, because of its trashy feel. These web rings are often really poorly designed with appalling typos everywhere. We thought the amateurishness would make a great feature. We stopped trying to think about good design and concentrated on bad design.

"We had to reign ourselves back because of budgets, because the possibilities were limitless. We designed a site that navigates horizontally rather than vertically. When a site has just one entry point people don't drill down enough because they can't be bothered, but when there's not much to see on one level people tend to explore.

"Students are regular web users and have highly developed surfing habits. They like quick hits of content and don't like to dig far for it. We wanted to create something that had a broad yet shallow structure that was easy and quick to use.

"We were also careful not to push the product down their throats. There's a lot of FMCG [food, manufacturing and consumer goods] sites that are laughable - the products themselves aren't interesting and you think: why do they bother? Luckily we had a great campaign to work with, all about the attitude of Pot Noodle than the product itself. Yes, there is a section on the site where you can find out the nutritional benefits of Pot Noodle but generally the site's about having fun.

"There are certain bits you can't access without putting in your data and there are areas, like the hysterical girlfriend interactive video game, where you need broadband. These features create a sense of exclusivity.

"We experimented a lot with certain features and the great thing about this project is Unilever, the owners of Pot Noodle, just said 'do whatever'. So we did. Then when we did show them everything they did say 'but not that, or that'! But to their credit we virtually had carte blanche and that gave us enormous inspiration to be creative.

"Pot Noodle is a renegade brand, but what is and what isn't acceptable is a matter for careful consideration. Despite being hugely successful and having won awards, the Slag of Snacks campaign has fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Association on a couple of occasions which increases sensitivities. We knew that the target audience wouldn't be offended by anything we put out, but you have to bare in mind those visitors who aren't the target. At the same time, this is not a push media and people would have to pass a warning before they got in.

"When it comes to explaining the web's potential as a medium, it's not just about the technological advances, but what you can get away with. There are seriously offensive things on the web, some seriously edgy things, not necessarily selling products but very accessible. In terms of this target market's threshold, they are not easily shocked. They have been brought up on a diet of hardcore films of every genre, Jackass TV, sick stuff flying round on email. When you're not in that target group, it's difficult to see through their eyes.

"We created an anti-Pot Noodle site as part of the package. We tried to be as authentic as possible; a lot of porn web rings get hijacked by people trying to get their own messages out with pop ups, which must be massively irritating for the user but perfect for what we wanted to do. We wanted to keep people there as long as possible and if we had pop-ups with anti-Noodle sites it would add to the authenticity and the idea that Pot Noodle is something really bad that you shouldn't be doing. It definitely fitted with the message that you just can't help yourself.

"One new aspect for Pot Noodle is that we introduced them to dialogue with the consumer. There are lots of areas where you can speak and interact with the site - email the webmaster, t-shirt requests etc - and that brought something new to the brand.

"The beauty of the site is that it can be added to and developed easily, at least while Pot Noodle sticks with the illicit consumption theme. We've got loads of ideas to be rolled out as and when they're needed.

"We would say one of the main things we have found working with students is that they like to be heavily incentivised and the incentive needs to be massively relevant to them."