As a 15-year veteran of PepsiCo, Jess Spaulding got used to a certain marketing approach. “We are usually so protective of our brands and want things to be curated and very put together,” she said.

But Spaulding, who’s been chief marketing officer for PepsiCo Foods Canada since 2022, learned to let go of the reins when launching the company’s first new brand in Canada in 10 years: Havoc, a chip line aimed at Gen Z. The snack brand, which debuted earlier this year with a variety of spicy flavors, launched with a marketing focus on TikTok and creators. That meant letting go of prescribed polished content and not being “too precious” with the brand, said Spaulding.

“When you ask creators to be creative, we do have guardrails for them, but you have to let go a bit. I think this might have been easier for the younger marketers on my team, but was harder for me,” she said.

The risk paid off. While PepsiCo declined to release sales data for Havoc, the brand launch “exceeded expectations,” Spaulding said, and the team plans to roll out a new flavor next year that is inspired by “street food culture.”

In a recent interview, Spaulding shared additional insights on Havoc’s development along with marketing lessons she has learned since moving to Canada from Plano, Texas, where she had been head of Cheetos marketing at Frito-Lay as part of PepsiCo’s North American marketing team.

“When you have an external perspective on a country, I think you can see what makes it special. As a food marketer, Canada’s diversity is such an inspiration. This is a diverse and young population, much more of a mosaic than a melting pot,” she said.

The development of Havoc stemmed from 2022 PepsiCo consumer data that showed Canadian snack consumers were an adventurous group and looking for more in the spicy and heat category. While Canada had Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, there seemed to be a gap in the chip category.

“They were looking for something that was not just heat for heat’s sake,” Spaulding said. “They were looking for a multi-sensorial experience.”

The chip comes in smokey nacho, fiery lime and bulgogi blaze and each flavor is a different shape—corn twists for smokey nacho, rolled tortilla chips (similar to Takis) for fiery lime and ruffled kettle chips for bulgogi blaze. The packaging is bright with cartoonish ingredients.

The marketing plan for the launch was inspired by rising interest in monoliths, referring to mysterious structures that had been popping up around the world.

PepsiCo built a mirror monolith on Nowhere Island in Canada to generate interest, posting on social media that the chips would launch Nowhere first on Leap Day, Feb. 29. (“A glitch in the calendar,” as Spaulding put it.) PepsiCo also teased the new brand with three 10-second TikToks that were turned into spots that aired during the Canadian broadcast of the Super Bowl, which drove viewers to the brand’s TikTok page. The company worked with the agency Vocabulary, as well as four creators: sound effects creator Josh Harmon, illustrator Phoebe Kut, 3D artist David McLeod and cinematic videographer Malick Lombion.

Like American brands, Havoc was looking for reach with its Big Game buys—50% of Canadians watch the Super Bowl, according to Spaulding. Plus, the brand knew the format and call to TikTok could resonate with Gen Z, the group born between 1997 and 2012.

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Spaulding, an American, began her career with PepsiCo in 2009 as a marketing analyst at the company’s Purchase, New York headquarters before moving to Chicago where she worked on brands including Quaker and Gatorade, according to her LinkedIn. She took the Canadian role in April 2022. 

Below, more from Spaulding on the Havoc launch and how PepsiCo takes a different approach in Canada.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity. 

What lessons did you learn from the Havoc launch?

Since this was the first new brand to launch in Canada in years, we had to take a different approach than we would a Lay’s or Doritos [launch] because there was no awareness yet for this brand. It was a big question of how we should drive buzz and trial, but still be patient with a new brand and keep the organization excited about it.

[The use of creators] made me wonder if we are too precious with other brands. Like for Doritos, we are looking at if we have the right personality for the brand for Canada, which is important when you have a global brand. Doritos is about being bold, but “bold” in Canada is different from the U.S.—it’s more about “freedom to be who I am.”

How do Canadian consumers differ from U.S. consumers and how does that show up in your marketing strategy?

There is inclusivity in being Canadian, but also Indian, Chinese, Indigenous. And that inclusivity allows you to pull from more influences and cuisines for flavors and products. For example, Southeast Asian and Chinese cultures have been fun to play in for flavors, but they are also opportunities to connect on cultural moments like Diwali or Lunar New Year.

How does that impact your media mix?

We have those large-scale brand campaigns for national equity, so that is a piece of our mix. But then, how do we pull that down and personalize it at scale for local communities? Canada is also such a large land mass but has concentration populations, which leads to diversity from a geographic standpoint and has led us to take a hyperlocal approach to what we do.

One example of that was a local campaign we did in Délı̨nę, Northwest Territories, which is the birthplace of hockey—we updated their hockey arena as a Quaker Oats breakfast bar. We have work in Quebec that is in French and has some different humor. We localize at the point of sale, because often our products are from local farms so we drive messaging there with, “Made in Alberta” or made at a local farm.

What are some trends in Canada that you are seeing?

As a regional CMO that is so close to the U.S., we have to ask how to make Canadian consumers feel seen. We want to reflect that inclusivity by ensuring we have the right mix of products and taste profiles, so having those broadly appealing, classic flavors as well as something like Havoc’s bulgogi blaze flavor.

From a consumer standpoint, they are looking for fusion. For example, with Doritos, we asked three Canadian chefs who were Jamaican, Hawaiian and Vietnamese to make a chip reflective of all three, and they created our tropical fusion chip. It’s about finding commonalities among these cuisines to make something new.