Disrespectoids
- Brand
- Capri-Sun
- Year
- 2009
- Objective
- Awareness
- Industry
- Food & Drink
- Mechanic
- Mini-Games
- Platform
- Web
- Agency
- Fuel Industries
Objective
By 2008 Capri-Sun's long-running ad campaign had lost its edge against tougher competition, and the brand needed to raise the pouch's perceived value with families ahead of a price increase. It also had a reputation problem on its hands: kids were inflating and popping the pouches in school cafeterias, getting Capri-Sun pulled from some schools. Rather than scold its own audience, the brand set out to reclaim "disrespecting the pouch" as its own entertainment property and hold kids' attention well past a 30-second spot.
Solution
Each TV spot ended with a kid mutating into a "Disrespectoid" and sent viewers to RespectThePouch.com, where that transformation continued. Players read the character's origin story, picked one of the mutants, and dropped into their matching minigame — Bobblehead Fred's "Crash Course," Leaky Louie's "Odd Jobbin'" — racking up achievements that unlocked new content and episodes of the "Disadventures" cartoon. As new TV spots aired, new characters and games kept arriving on the site, giving returning players a reason to check back. In the campaign's final year, players assembled a squad of Disrespectoids for "Legend of the Golden Pouch," steering the team through challenges with a mouse or by waving in front of a webcam to win back the Golden Pouch and turn everyone human again.
Results
The site drew 2.5+ million unique visitors and 11+ million game plays since launch, with an average visit of over 16 minutes in mid-2009 — longer than top children's sites. Its first year alone produced 14 million game sessions at 20 minutes per visit; the second and third years each topped 18 million sessions, with repeat visitors averaging 49 minutes per visit. The "Disadventures" webisodes reached 2.4 million views plus 55,000+ unpromoted YouTube views, and kids who watched one episode came back for 8 more on average, a pattern that lifted return visits 25% once the cartoons launched. Over the campaign, Capri-Sun's market share grew 2 points, making it responsible for over half the kids' beverage category.
- 1
A TV spot shows a kid mistreating a Capri-Sun pouch and mutating into a creature that reflects the offense, then sends viewers to the site.
- 2
The site opens into an animated hub built around the mutated cast, rendered in dimensional 3D, where moving between sections plays out as a staged cinematic scene rather than a page change.
- 3
Players browse a gallery of character bios explaining who each character was, how they disrespected a pouch, and what mutation resulted — Bobblehead Fred's bat strike gave him a bobbling head, Leaky Louie's straw-stab left him full of holes, Sandy Mandy's burial turned her into a sand figure.
- 4
Each bio links to a short minigame built around that character's mutant ability — Bobblehead Fred's Crash Course, Leaky Louie's Odd Jobbin' — with rules simple enough to read in seconds, so play starts almost immediately.
- 5
Clearing games earns achievements that unlock content hidden on a first visit, and the roster of characters and games expands in waves timed to new TV spots.
- 6
A separate section streams episodes of the animated series Disadventures, starring the same characters.
- 7
A final chapter, Legend of the Golden Pouch, opens with a cutscene establishing a lost Golden Pouch that can restore the Disrespectoids to human form; players pick a team of characters and choose to play with the mouse or with hand movements tracked by a webcam and overlaid on the game scene.
- 8
The chapter runs as a sequence of physical challenges: rescuing pouches from a monster's trap, mirroring a dancing monster's moves, sneaking a character past a sleeping dragon, and stopping a pouch-throwing monkey.
- 9
Clearing the final challenge reaches the Golden Pouch, which restores the team to human form and closes out the campaign.
