Tag: NFC

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.

Cornetto: Series Commitment Rings

Netflix has taken the world by storm, transforming itself from a mail order DVD company into a streaming behemoth that consumes immense amounts of internet bandwidth worldwide. Along the way, it helped normalize a cultural habit called binge-watching, where you watch multiple episodes of the same TV show in one sitting.

Cornetto looks at that habit and pulls out a relationship insight. People “binge-watch cheat”. Skipping ahead without their partner, then pretending they did not. Campaign materials from Cornetto described this as widespread behavior and framed it as “Netflix infidelity”, including stats about how often people watch ahead while the other person sleeps, or re-watch episodes later to cover it up.

To “fix” the problem, Cornetto creates Commitment Rings. A pair of smart wearable rings designed to block access to agreed shows unless both partners are watching together.

How the rings enforce “we watch together”

The mechanism is NFC proximity plus a companion app. The rings connect to a smartphone over NFC. In the app, users register the shows they want to watch as a couple. From that point on, the next episode only plays if both people are present and their Commitment Rings are nearby, effectively locking the series unless the pair is together.

In subscription streaming culture, shared series have become a relationship ritual, so small “watching ahead” moments can carry real emotional weight.

Why it lands

This idea works because it treats a modern micro-conflict as if it deserves a formal solution, and that exaggeration is the joke. The rings also make the conflict visible and measurable. Either both are present or the episode does not start, which turns a vague promise into a concrete rule. It is a product-shaped punchline that still maps cleanly to a real behavior.

Extractable takeaway: When a cultural habit creates a recurring “tiny betrayal”, build a playful constraint that makes the rule unmistakable, then let the product itself carry the story in one sentence.

What Cornetto is really buying

This is not about launching a scalable wearable business. It is a brand move that places Cornetto inside a current cultural conversation, binge-watching, couples, and the social etiquette of streaming. The rings function like a physical metaphor for commitment, then redirect that metaphor back to the brand’s role in shared moments.

The real question is whether a brand can turn a small relationship rule into a product-shaped cultural story people want to share.

At the moment there aren’t any pricing details or release dates for this particular wearable, so you’ll have to keep checking the Series Commitment website for more details about it, or register with the site to receive more information about the product.

What to borrow from the idea

  • Start from a recognizable behavior. The audience must immediately know the “problem” from their own life.
  • Make the solution overly literal. The comedy comes from treating a small issue with disproportionate tech seriousness.
  • Build a crisp constraint. A simple rule is more shareable than a clever explanation.
  • Create a proofable mechanic. NFC proximity is easy to understand and easy to demonstrate on camera.

A few fast answers before you act

What are Cornetto’s Commitment Rings?

A pair of NFC-enabled rings designed to prevent “watching ahead” by only unlocking selected shows when both partners and their rings are nearby.

How does the locking actually work?

Users register the shows in an app. When someone tries to play a new episode, the app checks whether both rings are in close proximity, then blocks or allows playback.

What problem is the campaign targeting?

So-called “binge-cheating”. Watching episodes alone, out of sync with a partner, then hiding it or re-watching to cover it up.

Is this positioned as a real product or a campaign stunt?

It is presented as a product concept tied to a campaign, with sign-up messaging and no clear pricing or release timing in the original write-up.

What is the key lesson for marketers?

If you can translate a current cultural tension into a simple, demonstrable rule, the rule becomes the shareable story, and the brand becomes part of the conversation.