Adhesive: Problem Solver

Adhesives can do it all. Even, apparently, solve a significant dilemma for a major product rollout for a major CPG company. It's back a ways now, but when PepsiCo's Frito-Lay division launched “the world's first 100 percent compostable chip bag” for its SunChips brand, it was done with lots of fanfare. The national rollout was timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of Earth Day in April 2010. The SunChips brand set up a national composting education initiative with the U.S. Composting Council and Earth 911. It aligned with Current TV for a consumer video contest featuring the SunChips compostable bag, with Al Gore selecting the winning video and signed up “green lifestyle” expert Sophie Uliano as its ambassador for the effort.

There was one small problem. As the new bag hit the shelves consumer complaints ramped up, complaining about noise—of all things. The compostable bag was made from plant-based polylactic acid (PLA), a renewable material. The material was, however, stiffer and resulted in significantly more noise when handling the bag—noise that consumers were not happy about.

Needless to say, Frito-Lay put forth a concerted effort to solve the problem and ended up using a different adhesive to join the inner (barrier) film layer with the outer (printed/graphics) layer. This new adhesive provided some noise suppression and resulted in a noise level that was on-par with the original packaging.

Every so often, even sophisticated marketers such as Frito-Lay have to backpedal and correct a problem that was missed in development of a new product. In this case, adhesives to the rescue!