• by Sarah Mahoney , Staff Writer, 6 hours ago

Flipz is back for year two of its Flipz Up Your Game Day push, aiming to tie the chocolate-covered pretzel brand to the biggest snacking moment of the year. After last year’s Saquon Barkley-led effort, the 2026 campaign teams the brand with San Francisco 49ers captain Kyle Juszczyk and his wife, fashion designer Kristin Juszczyk.

The big idea? Spotlight the NFL’s opening ritual and correct a linguistic “error,” petitioning to officially rename the coin toss as the coin flip – all without advertising on the Super Bowl itself. Lippe Taylor created the campaign, which spans digital, social, TV, retail displays, and giveaways, including a Flipz-branded coin and a custom football designed by Kristin. CPG Insider spoke with Ahad Afridi, CMO of Pladis in the Americas, about strategy, semantics and what’s next for Flipz.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity. 

CPG Insider: What’s the connection between last year’s ad, starring the ever-flipping Barkley, to this year?

Afridi: Our overall strategy is to try to tie Flipz to game-time snacking occasions. Game time is the biggest time for snacking in the year, especially with football. People have their habitual snacks that are sweet or salty, but Flipz is great because it’s sweet and salty. With that as our point of difference, we want to get into the snack bowl of consumers. That’s what we tried to do last year. Year two is the same strategy, but with a fun additional twist around a particular moment in the game, which is the coin toss.

CPG Insider: Why focus on that moment?

Afridi: The coin toss is the start of the game. It’s the start of snack time. It’s 'Here we go, everyone pay attention, start eating your food.’ It’s a great moment in the game. Others focus on halftime,  but the coin toss is underrated and is truly the kickoff of the game. As we thought about getting into that moment, we realized it’s called the coin toss, but often it’s not done properly, because the coin must actually flip in the air to be considered as a true toss. That’s in the rule book. So we started thinking, why is it called the toss and not the flip?  How could we leverage that for Flipz? To have some fun with that, we started a petition to officially change the name from coin toss to coin flip.

CPG Insider: How did Kyle and Kristin Juszczyk become part of the concept?

Afridi: The Juszczyks came up as a dual appeal couple, with different fan bases. Kyle is a hard-nosed fullback in a game where fullbacks hardly exist anymore. His wife is an interesting designer. They’re a really nice couple. Flipz is sweet and salty and about the and, not the or, so they make a nice tie-in for us.

CPG Insider: Petitions are risky. What if no one participates?

Afridi: There is no success or failure in doing this petition. It’s just another aspect of the campaign. We think it should be called the coin flip instead of the coin toss. This is a way of putting our own skin in the game. If enough people follow us, that would be great, and we’ll camp out on Roger Goodell’s doorstep to get it done.  

CPG Insider: Last year, the focus was on impressions and awareness. Did it work?

Afridi: We were pleased. Our research showed we got stronger awareness, familiarity with the brand and a stronger connection to game time. It was enough to give us encouragement that we should keep at this. The campaign last year also had shopper activity, and there was strong engagement and conversion. This year, we’ve doubled down, with more in-store displays and more retailers partnering with us. We’re trying to make it a more awareness-driving and conversion-driving initiative.

CPG Insider: What’s next?

Afridi: We’re trying to increase awareness by tapping into culture more and driving occasions. After this program, we have another program coming up later in the year, tying into video games. It’s kind of an extension of Flipz Up Your Game Day. It’s like Flipz Up Your Game Play. We’re doing a partnership with Xbox with some giveaways and promotions around that. The other part is innovation. We have some exciting new items we’re trying to develop for next year to bring in new users and create more usage occasions with a functional delivery.