King's Hawaiian had equity in a beloved product but an open question about where it could grow next. To expand into new categories and consumption occasions, the brand needed to stop relying on intuition and start listening directly to consumers, particularly younger ones who weren't reaching for King's Hawaiian outside of dinner.

King's Hawaiian was entering a brand new snack category with the launch of Pretzel Bites. The product needed to earn consumer awareness and retail velocity before it ever hit shelves, in a competitive snack market where new products live and die by trial.

To sample Pretzel Bites at scale across a multi-city tour, King's Hawaiian needed a sampling format that didn't exist yet. The product had a 7-day shelf life once unfrozen, which made logistics complex, and with no existing brand template to work from, this was a new product development project in every sense of the word.

King's Hawaiian had a licensing partnership with Illumination and Universal for Despicable Me 4, and theatrical was an untapped channel for Pretzel Bites. With one of the summer's biggest animated films as the vehicle, there was an opportunity to put the product in front of millions of moviegoers nationwide at the exact moment they were looking for something to snack on.