Beyond the Brief: Inside SnackaChangi’s ‘one chip per Kiwi’ campaign – a triumphant trainwreck

Following the success of SnackaChangi’s wildly ambitious ‘one chip for every Kiwi’ campaign, Pitchblack Partners’ Chief Creative Officer Tom Paine lifts the lid on how the stunt came together. In this edition of CB’s Beyond the Brief, Paine explains how an impossible sampling idea turned into a nationwide content engine.

Starting at the beginning, what was the brief presented to the agency?

It wasn’t a sampling brief as such, but that’s where we saw the creative opportunity. Most people try SnackaChangi once and they’re converted, so we made the product the hero and sampling the story – distributing not just potato chips, but also the brand.

The campaign leans into the idea of ‘failing spectacularly’ as part of its charm. How did you plan and execute that deliberately absurd stunt?

Smart dumb. Executing dumb well, requires smarts, otherwise it’s just dumb. Sounds dumb, I know, but a lot of smart people helped us make this not dumb. For example, we intentionally structured it as a media campaign as much as direct / sampling. ‘Delivering one chip to every Kiwi’ was doomed from the start, but we loaded the right channels with the right messaging to make people question whether or not Leigh Hart would knock on their door. Social influencers, PR partners, and radio hosts bragged about receiving their bespoke chip pack, while traditional channels published the absurd feasibility data. I assume most kiwis inherently knew the answer to “can he or can’t he”, but the SnackaChangi brand is so unconventional that the lines blurred between stunt and reality, leaving just enough room for second guessing. It also set us up perfectly for the promo phase – giving away the balance of Leigh’s sampling budget because he couldn’t be arsed finishing the job.

Why did you decide to focus on a single, human-scale challenge rather than a broad, traditional sampling approach?

“We’re handing out bags of chips at New World” might get a short burst of attention, but it does very little long-term for a brand. “Leigh Hart is hand-delivering one chip to every New Zealander, including you” is loaded with entertainment value and intrigue. It’s tangible, absurd, and easy for people to place themselves into the story. Handing out chips one by one also made the mission a more mathematically accessible marketing spectator sport, arguably one of New Zealand’s top 100 mathematically accessible marketing spectator sports of the past 12 months.

How important was Founder Leigh Hart’s personality and involvement to bringing this idea to life?

His love for the product is genuine, his deadpan delivery makes the absurd feel plausible, and his ‘try anything once’ attitude gives the brand its unpredictable charm. For the social content, we agreed on broad story outlines early, then he disappeared with a cameraman and re-emerged weeks later with raw, chaotic, fully-finished films. Leigh is SnackaChangi. SnackaChangi is Leigh. Finkle is Einhorn. Einhorn is Finkle.

The stunt quickly turned into a nationwide content engine with everyday Kiwis participating. How did you design it to be so shareable and encourage user-generated content?

UGC is difficult. Too many hoops? Nobody enters. Prize too small? Nobody enters. Prize too big? Apparently, nobody enters. You’re also handing over the keys to the brand, so it’s not for risk averse marketers. We positioned this phase not as a promo, but a job listing. We made the dollar value of the salary weird, the origin story weirder, and the entry mechanic simple. And we worked closely with content creators to seed videos early, encouraging entries and, crucially, setting the bar for creativity.

The campaign captured attention first with the unorthodox ‘one chip’ promise, then again with the offer to hand over the unspent sampling budget. How did you design those moments to land so strongly?

A good story has hope and despair. Climax and resolution. The mission couldn’t simply fade out, it needed a full-stop. The campaign looks pretty seamless now, but the idea of Kiwis doing the sampling wasn’t the starting point, it was just a lightbulb moment. Act one was entertainment, act two was engagement, but both had SnackaChangi sampling at the core.

What were the biggest production or logistical challenges, even knowing this was an intentionally “impossible” task?

We had a pretty quick turnaround from presentation to delivery. The upside of moving fast is that it leaves little time to second-guess the thing everyone instinctively loved. The downside, under normal circumstances, is that you have less time to smooth out the edges. Not a problem in this case – organised chaos was kind of the point, and we leaned into that energy. Designing, printing, and filling bespoke packaging for single chips. Sending Leigh off with next to no idea where he was going or what would come back. Responding daily to countless unexpected requests and curveballs from the public. Through it all, our incredible clients, Mel and Carolyn, embraced the madness. They understand what makes SnackaChangi tick.

The campaign smashed sales records on a modest budget – what do you think drove that success?

Smart use of media and an idea that engaged the viewer. Intriguing creative travels further and delivers a stronger return than big-budget wallpaper. At Pitchblack we’re resourceful – we like to think laterally, move fast, and make ideas that work harder than the budget.

What lessons does this campaign offer other brands looking to turn bold, human-scale stunts into shareable, cultural moments?

Embrace imperfection. Let your quirks breathe. Over-polished marketing sets off alarm bells. Real people, messy edges, and slightly questionable decision-making tend to resonate more than something that looks like it came from a brand playbook. Also nail the thinking early. The campaign might look effortless, but it’s built on a lot of careful planning. As my old mate Abe Lincoln allegedly said, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening the axe.” He probably wasn’t referring to a potato chip campaign. Still, good advice.

Client: Griffin’s Snacks
Creative agency: Pitchblack Partners
Production: Jetblack & Moon TV
Media: MBM
PR: Omnicom Group

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