How the Women Running Ruffles Unscrambled the ‘Bro Code’
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If men are from Mars and women from Venus, then Christina Menendez, Pam Forbus and Christine Kalvenes have just completed a galactic journey in potato-chip marketing.
After digging into the male psyche with what they called “bro research,” the Frito-Lay execs led an overhaul of the once-family-targeted Ruffles brand into a chip for millennial men with testosterone-fueled packaging, line extensions and campaigns. The three-year effort culminated a few weeks ago with a guy named “Ruff McThickridge,” a Ron-Burgundy-meets-Burt Reynolds-meets-Clint Eastwood character starring in a campaign that parodies 1970s action movies.
Conventional wisdom might suggest that men — not women — are better suited to lead a rebranding project that leans so heavily on male insights. But this trio insists their gender was an advantage. “The closer you are to something, the more you tend to overlook the "aha’ [moments] because they are so familiar to you,” said Ms. Kalvenes, VP-innovation for PepsiCo-owned Frito-Lay, noting that they gained insights because “we weren’t men.”
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