Happiness Saigon has made advertising history, becoming Vietnam’s first ever Grand Prix winner, at Ad Stars. The agency won its Grand Prix in Radio/Audio for Lay’s Crispy Subtitles, a campaign that used AI to recognise the sounds of crisps eating when watching YouTube films and added language appropriate subtitles automatically.
Happiness Saigon set records for Vietnam, taking home 7 medals, from 10 shortlists – 1 Grand Prix, 2 Silver stars, 1 Bronze star, and 1 Crystal star for Lay’s Crispy Subtitles, as well as 2 Crystal Stars for its MotoThung PSA campaign for UNICEF.
Lay’s Crispy Subtitles has drawn global attention to Vietnam, with downloads in 80 countries and generating more than US$9,000,000 in earned media for Lay’s Vietnam and over 1.2 billion impressions. It became a top trending topic on Google and in social media and was covered in 200 publications throughout the world, including major publications like Gizmodo, Yahoo News and VirginRadio!
Alan Cerruti, chief executive officer of Happiness Saigon, commented, “I’m so proud of Happiness, the team and Lay’s Crispy Subtitle’s achievement. This is not only the pride of Happiness Saigon in particular but also our contribution to the future of advertising in Vietnam. We have a belief that Vietnam will become the “creative hub” of Asia in the next 3-5 years. I am very happy that Happiness Saigon is a home of East-West creatives and talents. We appreciate cultural diversity and unique ideas. It could come from anyone in this agency.”
Happiness Saigon also believes that the campaign has helped to lift technological innovation in Vietnam and to make Vietnam a bright spot in AI not only in the region but also around the world. In July this year, Vietnamese Government approved and issued the National Strategy on Research, Development and Application of Artificial Intelligence (AI), which will run until the end of 2030.
Where did the idea of Lay’s crispy subtitles from?
All of us have experienced munching on potato chips with the overwhelming “crunching” sound while trying to watch videos with. And touching the laptop’s volume buttons with greasy fingers is even more annoying. Capturing that insight, Happiness Saigon and BLISS teamed up to create Lay’s Crispy Subtitles through the use of machine learning algorithms that run directly on the Chrome browser plugin. This support for YouTube will automatically activate subtitles when it detects you’re crunching on potato chips. The crisp-activated subtitle technology was achieved by feeding an AI with 178 hours of audio recordings of people eating chips. To teach crunchy sounds to machine learning, a collection of 17,512 different “crunchy” sound samples were tested. (Yes, a lot of potato snacks were “wasted” in the plugin development process.)
Credits
Client: PepsiCo (Lay’s)
Marketing Head: Vu Thi Ngoc Que
Marketing Manager: Yen Le
Agency: Happiness Saigon
Executive Creative Management: Alan Cerutti
Chief Creative Officer: Geoffrey Hantson
Executive Creative Directors: Gregory Titeca & Marc Richard
Concept: Mathias Lemielle & Thomas Cappelle
Creatives: Mathias Lemielle, Thomas Cappelle & Nick Stillittano
Copywriters: Loan Anh Huynh, Nghia Tran & Dee Verwaetermeulen
Design: Dries Lauwers & Aldjia Bessalah
Art Directors: Truc Mai Hoang Anh & Thuy Pham Vuong Bao
Production & Editing: Trung Thai Thanh, Remke Faber & Seth Michielsen
Head of Performance: Nhat Qui
Performance & Data Planner: Tien Phan Cam
Strategic Planner: Linh Nguyễn
Account Management: Son Nguyễn, Ngọc Le, An Nguyễn & Giang Ngo
Producer: Bart Vande Maele
Platform Analyst: Loc Nguyen
Community Outreach: Hieu Phan Duc
Production Agency: Bliss Innovative Maker Studio
Head of Technology: Thomas Colliers
Digital PM: Joni Allaert
