Eta's 'Free Friends With Every Pack' campaign marked the brand's return to New Zealand advertising after 30 years, created by Colenso BBDO in May 2021.
ARCHIVEEta Chips Bets on Friendship to Stage a 30-Year Comeback
Eta's 'Free Friends With Every Pack' is a 2021 New Zealand film campaign created by Colenso BBDO for The Griffin's Food Company, built on the proposition that sharing a bag of Eta chips catalyses friendships so powerful that people will cheerfully skim past almost anything to keep them going.
Eta returned to advertising after approximately 30 years away from television and the broader media landscape. That hiatus is itself the sharpest strategic fact underpinning the campaign: a brand with genuine heritage in the New Zealand snack aisle had been functionally invisible to an entire generation of consumers. The 2021 relaunch was therefore not a refresh but a reinvention, requiring Colenso BBDO to rebuild brand salience from a near-zero base while simultaneously establishing an emotional platform capable of carrying the brand forward. Published in May 2021, the campaign centred on a single film asset designed to anchor a multi-channel rollout spanning television, video-on-demand, digital video, mall media, cinema, social media, and packaging, as reported by Campaign Asia. The advertiser, The Griffin's Food Company, paired the film with a new brand platform, revised strategy, and updated packaging, signalling that 'Free Friends With Every Pack' was the creative engine of a comprehensive commercial relaunch rather than a standalone executional play. In the New Zealand confectionery and snacks market, where shelf presence and emotional distinctiveness are the twin currencies of category leadership, Eta's decision to lead with friendship rather than flavour or value represents a considered bet on affective brand-building over short-term promotional mechanics.
ARCHIVEEta's relaunch strategy rests on a universal human truth: snacks are rarely eaten alone. The creative proposition treats the chip packet not as a product but as a social object, a shareable token that initiates and cements relationships. Colenso BBDO anchored this insight in the lifestyle genre, presenting snacking as an occasion for connection rather than consumption, a distinction that repositions Eta away from a crowded field of flavour-led and value-led competitors in the New Zealand market.
The global savoury snacks category provides useful structural context. According to Grand View Research, the global savoury snacks market was valued at approximately US$250.5 billion in 2021 and is forecast to reach US$386.8 billion by 2030, growing at a compound annual rate of around 4.9 percent between 2022 and 2030. In New Zealand, the snack aisle is a genuinely competitive environment, with international brands such as Bluebird, owned by PepsiCo, and Pringles holding consistent retail presence alongside domestic players. Eta's three-decade absence from advertising had ceded brand voice to these rivals, making the emotional re-entry strategy both creatively distinctive and commercially necessary. Rather than competing on product specification, Colenso BBDO chose a territory — friendship as the reward of sharing — that no direct competitor had occupied as a primary brand platform in the New Zealand market at the time of the campaign's launch. The lifestyle framing also allowed the campaign to speak across demographic brackets, though the social-connection narrative carries particular resonance with younger New Zealand consumers for whom shared experience is a primary driver of brand affinity, as noted by Clapboard's editorial analysis.
Director Adam Gunser helmed the film for Eta's 'Free Friends With Every Pack,' with production handled by Good Oil, as reported by Campaign Asia. The campaign's single film asset carries the full weight of Eta's relaunch brief, a creative constraint that demands both narrative economy and emotional clarity within a compressed runtime.
Gunser's execution leans into playful social comedy, dramatising the lengths to which a person will go — skimming content, glossing over inconvenient details, performing enthusiasm they do not entirely feel — in order to preserve a friendship forged over Eta chips. The tone is warm and self-aware rather than sentimental, a register well-suited to New Zealand audiences, who tend to respond to advertising that acknowledges absurdity without condescension. The film's central comic mechanic, the willingness to skim rather than engage, literalises the campaign line and gives the friendship proposition a specific, memorable behavioural expression rather than leaving it as an abstract brand claim. Campaign Asia described the creative territory as positioning Eta chips as a product that eliminates loneliness, a characterisation that captures the campaign's ambition to attach genuine emotional utility to what is, at a functional level, a commodity snack. The production's integration into a broader relaunch suite — new packaging design, a revised brand platform, and media placements spanning cinema and mall media alongside digital and broadcast channels — suggests a deliberate effort to ensure the film's emotional language carried through to every physical and digital consumer touchpoint in the New Zealand market.
Eta's 'Free Friends With Every Pack' carries a Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100, reflecting a campaign that executes its core brief with competence and strategic coherence but stops short of the creative distinctiveness required to rank among the most awarded work in the global confectionery and snacks category.
No independently verified sales, brand-tracking, or media-performance data for 'Free Friends With Every Pack' is publicly available beyond the campaign's own documented metrics. The film recorded approximately 3,646 views and 22 likes on its primary upload, as documented by Clapboard, figures that reflect the campaign's positioning as a broadcast-led initiative rather than a social-first execution. The channel strategy — prioritising television, cinema, and video-on-demand in the New Zealand market — is consistent with a brand attempting to rebuild mass awareness after a 30-year hiatus rather than optimising for digital engagement metrics. Structurally, the campaign's effectiveness rests on two factors that are difficult to separate: the inherent news value of Eta's return to advertising, which would have generated earned attention independent of creative quality, and the genuine strategic clarity of the friendship platform, which gives The Griffin's Food Company a scalable emotional territory capable of supporting future campaign iterations. The comprehensiveness of the relaunch — new brand platform, packaging, and media plan released simultaneously — indicates that 'Free Friends With Every Pack' was designed as the opening move in a sustained brand-building programme rather than a standalone campaign, a structural choice that makes short-term impact metrics a partial and potentially misleading measure of success.
Eta's 'Free Friends With Every Pack' is a May 2021 New Zealand film campaign created by Colenso BBDO for The Griffin's Food Company. It positions Eta chips as a catalyst for friendship, arguing that bonds formed over a shared bag are strong enough to make people willingly overlook inconvenient truths. The campaign marked Eta's return to advertising after approximately 30 years.
Colenso BBDO, the New Zealand agency, created 'Free Friends With Every Pack' for Eta. The campaign was produced by Good Oil and directed by Adam Gunser, as reported by Campaign Asia. It formed the creative centrepiece of a broader relaunch that also included new brand strategy, updated packaging, and a multi-channel media plan across New Zealand.
Eta's return to advertising after approximately 30 years reflected a strategic decision by The Griffin's Food Company to rebuild brand salience in the New Zealand snack market. A multi-decade absence had ceded brand voice to competitors including Bluebird. The 2021 relaunch paired the 'Free Friends With Every Pack' film with new packaging and a revised brand platform simultaneously.
The campaign ran across television, video-on-demand, digital video, mall media, cinema, social media, and packaging in New Zealand, as reported by Campaign Asia. This broad channel mix reflected Eta's objective of rebuilding mass brand awareness rather than optimising for any single platform, consistent with a brand re-entering the market after a generation-long absence from advertising.
Eta's 'Free Friends With Every Pack' received a Clapboard Score of 60 out of 100. The score reflects a campaign that executes its strategic brief with clarity and coherence but does not reach the creative distinctiveness of the highest-ranked work in the global confectionery and snacks category, according to Clapboard's editorial assessment.
Adam Gunser directed the film for Eta's 'Free Friends With Every Pack,' with production company Good Oil handling the shoot, as reported by Campaign Asia. Gunser's execution uses playful social comedy to dramatise the campaign's central premise that friendships formed over Eta chips are strong enough to make people willingly skim past inconvenient details.
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