Goodby Silverstein & Partners

Tostitos Party Safe Bag

On Super Bowl Sunday 2017, Tostitos puts safety into the packaging. The limited-edition “Party Safe” bag can detect when you have been drinking, then helps you get home safely from the party.

How the Party Safe bag works

The trigger is built into the bag itself. The bag is created by Goodby Silverstein & Partners and comes equipped with a sensor connected to a microcontroller calibrated to detect traces of alcohol on a person’s breath. If alcohol is detected, the sensor turns red and forms the image of a steering wheel.

Then it turns that moment into action. The bag provides a $10 off Uber code along with a “Don’t drink and drive” message. If you have an NFC-enabled smartphone, you can also tap the bag to call an Uber.

In US mass-market brands, the smartest behaviour design often lives where the decision is made, not where the messaging lives.

Why Tostitos ties this to the Super Bowl

The campaign starts from a hard, uncomfortable statistic. According to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 45 people are killed in drunk-driving crashes on Super Bowl Sunday 2015, nearly half of all traffic fatalities that day.

Extractable takeaway: When risk peaks at a predictable moment, design the intervention to appear at that exact moment and make the safe choice the easiest next step.

So the “Party Safe” bag frames itself as a practical intervention on the one day when party behaviour and driving risk collide at scale.

This is IoT packaging with a clear behavioural goal

The packaging is not a gimmick for novelty’s sake. It is packaging that nudges a specific decision at the moment it matters most. Do not drive. Call a ride.

By IoT packaging, I mean packaging with sensing and a built-in trigger that can prompt an action without a separate app.

The real question is whether your connected experience can change one specific choice at the moment it is made.

This works because it is a behaviour-change intervention first, and a tech demo second.

The smart detail is the friction reduction. The message is immediate, the code is immediate, and the tap-to-request option removes even more steps. Because detection and the next action live on the bag, the distance from recognition to compliance is intentionally short.

The pattern worth stealing

If you work on connected experiences, the structure is reusable.

Put the sensor where the decision happens. Not in a separate app.
Translate detection into a single, obvious next action. Make the next step unmissable.
Pair the behavioural nudge with a concrete incentive. Give people a reason to comply faster.

A few fast answers before you act

What is the Tostitos Party Safe Bag?

A limited-edition Tostitos bag that detects alcohol on a person’s breath, then prompts a safer way to get home.

How does the bag detect drinking?

A sensor connected to a microcontroller is calibrated to detect traces of alcohol on the breath.

What happens when alcohol is detected?

The sensor turns red and forms a steering-wheel image. The bag provides a $10 off Uber code and a “Don’t drink and drive” message.

How does the Uber action work?

You can use the $10 off code, and NFC-enabled smartphones can tap the bag to call an Uber.

Cheetos Mix-Ups: Cheetahpult Dual-Screen Game

In March I had written about how Google had inspired developers to convert mobile phones and tablets into remote controls for desktop browsers via a simple mobile URL. Now Cheetos, an American brand of cheese-flavored puffed cornmeal snacks, has successfully tapped this technology to engage with viewers as they watch a regular TV commercial on YouTube.

Viewers watching the Cheetos Mix-Ups ad on YouTube get a dual-screen experience. They can fling the new Cheetos Mix-Ups snacks from their phone into a video playing on their desktop. The campaign creates a new way to engage with the ad, and to get to know the product’s new shapes and colors through play.

At this point, the video is reported to have reached 8.5 million views on YouTube. People who played the game are reported to have stayed for an average of 7 minutes and 17 seconds, and flung an average of 56 Cheetos per game.

A YouTube ad that behaves like a game

The trick is simple and surprisingly scalable. Your desktop stays on YouTube, playing the film. Your phone becomes the controller via a lightweight URL experience, so interaction happens in your hand while the “world” of the ad stays on the big screen.

How the dual-screen catapult works

Instead of treating the mobile device as a companion banner, the experience treats it as an input device. You aim, fling, and see the result immediately in the desktop video frame, which turns passive viewing into a loop of action, feedback, and repeat.

In global FMCG launches, second-screen interactivity works best when it turns product attributes into gameplay, and makes “learning the product” feel like time well spent.

Why this lands while people are “just watching YouTube”

It hijacks a familiar behavior. People already watch ads on desktop while their phone is in hand. Cheetahpult converts that split attention into viewer control, and uses physics and repetition to teach what Mix-Ups actually is, in a way a standard product shot cannot. The real question is whether the interaction helps people understand Mix-Ups faster than a normal product shot would. In this case, it does, because the mechanic turns product variety into something people learn by doing.

Extractable takeaway: If your product is hard to describe in one sentence, let people handle it. Build a micro-game where the mechanic is the product benefit, and the reward is comprehension.

What Cheetos is really buying here

This is product education disguised as entertainment. The intent is to turn a new SKU with multiple shapes and flavors into something memorable, then associate that memory with the brand, so the next shelf moment feels familiar.

What Cheetos teaches about interactive video

Design for the device people already hold. Dual-screen works when the phone is the controller, not an afterthought.
Make the mechanic teach the product. If the game can be reskinned for any brand, it is not specific enough.
Keep the loop short and replayable. Fast rounds create “just one more try” behavior, which is where learning happens.
Use the main video as the stage. The desktop frame should feel like the real world, and the phone should feel like the tool.

A few fast answers before you act

What is Cheetahpult?

Cheetahpult is a dual-screen YouTube experience that turns a Cheetos Mix-Ups video into a simple physics-style game, with the phone acting as the controller and the desktop video acting as the playfield.

Why does second-screen interaction help an ad?

It converts passive reach into active time. When people interact, they process product details more deeply, and the ad becomes something they did, not just something they saw.

What makes this different from a typical “interactive ad”?

The interaction is not layered on top as buttons. The phone becomes a controller, and the main video becomes the environment, so the ad and the game feel like one system.

When should a brand use this pattern?

When a launch needs fast product education, and when the product has attributes that benefit from repetition, variation, and play, like shapes, combinations, flavors, or configurations.

What should a brand avoid when copying this idea?

Avoid mechanics that are fun but unrelated to the product. If the interaction does not teach something specific about the item being launched, the brand gets playtime but not product understanding.

Chevy: Hacking the Super Bowl

Super Bowl Sunday is the biggest TV advertising day in the US. With 50+ advertisers competing for attention, “standing out” is usually code for shouting louder.

Chevrolet takes a different route. With “Chevy Game Time”, it turns the ad break into a live second-screen game. Viewers watch the commercial on TV, then immediately replay it with purpose on their phones.

A second screen that reacts to the broadcast

A “second-screen” experience is a mobile layer that runs alongside a live broadcast and responds to what’s on TV in near real time. Chevy Game Time prompts viewers the moment a Chevy spot airs, asking trivia about what they just saw and rewarding fast, correct answers with points and prizes.

It also adds a high-stakes twist. Every user receives a personal license plate. If you spot your plate inside a Chevy commercial, the car is yours.

The mechanic: turning commercials into a repeatable loop

The loop is simple and effective:

Trigger: a Chevy ad hits the broadcast.
Action: the app pushes a trivia question about that specific ad.
Social effect: Super Bowl parties start “rewatching” the spot together, first on TV, then on the phone, and often again online.
Jackpot moment: the personal license plate appears. Somebody wins a car.

That structure doesn’t fight the reality of distracted viewing. It harnesses it.

That works because the trigger arrives while memory is still hot and the reward gives the rewatch a reason.

In mass-audience tentpole broadcasts, second-screen interactivity is often the fastest way to turn passive ad viewing into measurable participation.

Why it lands: it makes attention feel like play

Most second-screen ideas fail because they ask for extra effort with unclear payoff. Chevy Game Time flips that. The reward is obvious, the timing is immediate, and the questions make the room collectively care about the ad’s details.

Extractable takeaway: If you want people to pay attention to a message they did not ask for, make the attention itself the game. Use a tight loop (trigger, action, reward) that starts exactly when the message appears, not five minutes later.

The license-plate mechanic is the accelerant. It converts “maybe I’ll play” into “I’d better look up”, because missing your own plate feels like leaving money on the table.

The business intent: convert reach into proof

Instead of treating TV as pure reach, this approach turns a broadcast into an engagement funnel. Case studies around Chevy Game Time describe scale in the hundreds of thousands of participants, plus high real-time concurrency during the game, and meaningful App Store chart performance during the event window.

It also earns industry credibility. The work is credited to Chevrolet with Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Detroit Labs, and it is associated with major recognition in mobile and multiscreen categories.

The real question is whether a brand can turn one expensive burst of reach into repeated, measurable acts of attention.

And the strategic win is clean. While other brands fight for a single impression, Chevy creates repeated, measurable touchpoints tied directly to its own creative.

What to steal for your next “everyone’s watching” moment

Design for rewatching: build a mechanic that naturally makes people replay the ad or replay the key message.
Sync to the broadcast: the question must arrive when the spot runs, not when the user remembers later.
Make the reward legible: users should understand the payoff in one sentence.
Give the group a reason to coordinate: party dynamics multiply attention when the action is communal.
Measure beyond downloads: track concurrent players, response rate per trigger, and “ad recall proxies” like question accuracy.

A few fast answers before you act

What is second-screen marketing?

Second-screen marketing is a companion mobile experience designed to run alongside a live broadcast, prompting actions that connect what’s on TV to what’s on a phone, usually in real time.

What made Chevy Game Time different from a normal companion app?

It tied interaction to the exact moment a specific commercial aired, then rewarded attention to that commercial through trivia and a personal “license plate” prize mechanic.

Why does the personal license plate idea matter?

Because it creates urgency and personal stakes. Viewers feel they could miss “their” moment, so they watch more closely and often rewatch immediately to confirm what they saw.

What should you measure in a live second-screen activation?

Track concurrent active users during triggers, response rate per trigger, time-to-answer, repeat participation across multiple ad breaks, and the uplift in brand recall or message comprehension tied to the trivia content.

Can this approach work outside the Super Bowl?

Yes, if you have a predictable live moment (finale, product launch stream, sports match) and you can synchronize prompts to it. The key is timing precision and a reward loop that feels worth the effort.