Mukbang, the hobby of watching other people eating large amounts of food to enjoy the sounds they produce, is a territory that many brands have joined over the last few years to connect with food lovers. The latest to do so has been Sprite with a special straw that connects its drink with the particular trend.
In Canada, with the help of the creative agency VML, it has created “The mukbang straw”, a straw designed to intensify the experience of combining soft drinks with spicy food. And, as it began to communicate last year with the “Hurts real good” campaign, Sprite ensures that its drink helps cool and calm the heat produced by the spice, but also intensifies its sensations.
Thus, the design of this peculiar straw has been inspired by the mukbang community’s passion for spicy food and ASMR and, in this sense, it is designed to amplify the sound of each sip of soda, offering a new way of creating sounds and making the content more attractive to users.
The straw, just as it is collected Little Black Bookis a limited edition and is made of stainless steel with a double channel designed to maximize air flow and amplify the sound when drinking.
In this way, Sprite becomes part of the experience of both content creators and users. “The popularity of spicy food is growing exponentially among young Canadians, and Sprite is the perfect accompaniment to those flavors“explains Jacques Blanchet, Integrated Marketing Director of Coca-Cola Canada, according to the aforementioned media. “We wanted to give visibility to this trend, which inspired us with the idea of an ASMR-focused straw that we could launch with the Mukbang community and thus make our idea a reality.”.
The brand has extended the straw to Canadian content creators directly related to the mukbang trend or food in general. They have shared videos showing how the straw works and showing how it amplifies the ASMR experience of the content. In the special shipment, Sprite has included its product, the straw and a bag of Takis, a snack brand with which it collaborates.
“As part of our ‘It Hurts Real Good’ global platform rollout in Canada, we wanted to prove one thing: Sprite is the go-to spicy food drink. So we created a social experiment inspired by an internet obsession with Mukbang.”, commented Mélissa Charland, Executive Creative Director of VML, through LinkedIn.
As part of the campaign, the creators are also encouraging Canadian users to pair Sprite with their favorite spicy dishes. The campaign was launched at the end of August and has been created in collaboration with VML, OpenX and Publicis.
