To breakthrough the crowded holiday season, we set out to convince people to adopt a new holiday tradition — building houses out of Snyder's of Hanover pretzels. To ensure this behavior created a spike in sales, we created elaborate pretzel cabin blueprints that used the full range of Snyder's of Hanover holiday pretzels.

But how do we compete with the centuries-old tradition of building them out of gingerbread? It wasn't enough that our pretzels were tastier than the prefabricated, cardboard-like walls of modern-day gingerbread homes. No, we had to find a more emotional way in — something that would tug on the holiday heartstrings.

Introducing, Gingerbread Dread, a mock-PSA campaign created to save Gingerbread people from living in homes made of themselves. Instead of forcing Gingerbread people to live in homes made of their own gingerbread flesh, we called on people to build them Snyder's of Hanover pretzel cabins instead.

Every holiday season, people build Gingerbread houses for Gingerbread people — forcing them to live in houses made of themselves. This year, Snyder's wanted people to build them a more tasteful home. So, we created a mock PSA film campaign directly asking people to join our cause to save Gingerbread people from living in houses made of their own flesh — by building Snyder's Pretzel Cabins instead.

The integrated PSA campaign featured an impassioned host and a loveable gingerbread character, Gavin. Together, they made a plea to all of America to help save his gingerbread community by putting a stop to building tasteless gingerbread houses in favor of building Snyder's pretzel cabins instead.

Our task was to market the Snyder's holiday lineup of pretzels, by introducing a new behavior into the holiday season of American families — building pretzel cabins. To do that, we had to convince them to ditch the centuries-old behavior of building gingerbread houses. A Harris Poll confirmed consumers would be open to the switch as 68% of people agreed a house made of pretzels would be a fun mix-up on the gingerbread tradition, 54% confessed to not even eating gingerbread houses after construction and 81% agreed that a pretzel house would be a tastier treat.

To initiate this switch, we tugged at their holiday heartstrings by pointing out that building gingerbread houses for Gingerbread People, is forcing them to live in houses made of themselves. This approach turned our holiday campaign into a PSA with a simple call to action "Build a Snyder's Pretzel Cabin, Save a Gingerbread Person".

On Thanksgiving weekend, the official start of the "holiday season", consumers were first introduced to our campaign with a PSA film that playfully tugged at their heartstrings, and illuminated that Gingerbread people have been forced to live in houses made of themselves. The film launched in broadcast, OLV and social media placements.

We then hijacked their Pinterest, TikTok and Meta searches for how to build Gingerbread houses with a plea to build pretzel cabins instead. The message was empathetically delivered by the film's hero Gingerbread person, Gavin. Then, the week of National Gingerbread House Day, we went on Good Morning America to ask the entire nation to join in with the help of celebrity chef and personality Jeff Mauro.

Each asset directed consumers to a website where they could find step-by-step instructions and videos for how to build custom pretzel cabins — making it incredibly easy to join the movement.

The campaign garnered 294 million impressions and generated an astonishing 1940% increase in conversation around pretzel cabins. And people bought pretzels — like a lot — to the tune of a 45% increase in the sales. The campaign also posted strong IPSOS results driving impact for the brand; including a behavior change index of 141 (70-130), creative effectiveness of 134 (70-130) and an ability to stand out score of 120 (85-115).

On social media, a pretzel cabin movement began. The social films compelled consumers to support Gavin and the broader gingerbread community, and they vowed to build pretzel cabins instead. Those who did, and posted them on social media, were personally thanked (like any good PSA campaign does) with the help of Open AI. After the campaign launched, it inspired a joke by world-famous actor Adam Driver on Saturday Night Live — immortalizing the campaign within culture forever.