Play with Pringles

In France they spend their working days dreaming of the Apéro moment (the time between work and dinner where you can have a drink and a nibble). Always waiting for someone to ask that special question... “Apéro?”

To help French people to not feel guilty about taking a break, we created the Apéro alarm clock that reminds everyone that they can start an Apéro. If you hear it? You can start an Apéro! This launched with an IG and FB live counting down to Apéro. And then, at 6:30pm everyday we posted on the Pringles channels with our digital alarm clocks.

The key launch component was a physical, real life Pringles alarm that I built. We partnered with a content creator who created a series of videos where he surprised his friend get the Apéro going with our bespoke Pringles alarm.

Due to deadlines, the can was speedy build over 4 days. First I designed in CAD to work out the internal mechanical engineering and electronic layouts. I ended up designing 3D printed structure that provided a mechanical support and secure housing for the electronics. The trigger mechanism was a hidden light dependent resistor (LDR) that sat under the lid. As soon as the lid popped off, the light flooded in and triggered the Arduino code to sound the (very loud) alarm and push up the spring loaded flashing light.