The Slurp That Scored: How Knorr Made Eating the Game Mechanic
Knorr launched Korean Ramen in India by turning the act of slurping into the literal controller of a voice-activated AR survival game tied to Squid Game, reaching 60 million users across gaming platforms. The mechanism: map a product's physical ritual onto the core input of a game, so the brand and the fun become the same thing. This is one of the patterns in jugnu's Kosh.
The tension it resolves
A food brand entering gaming had no credible reason to be there until the product's physical ritual became the game's core input, making the brand inseparable from the fun.
The challenge it solved for Knorr: How do I get a gaming audience to genuinely engage with a food brand when they actively skip ads and distrust FMCG content that interrupts their play?
The mechanism
Map a stigmatised or overlooked product behaviour directly onto the control mechanic of a game so that using the product correctly is the same act as winning.
Knorr launched Korean Ramen in India by tying up with Netflix's Squid Game Season 2 for Dare to Slurp: special-edition packs, a campaign film, and an interactive survival game where players slurped to play, with a trip to Seoul as the top prize. Gaming creators wove the experience into live streams across BGMI, Minecraft, GTA and Valorant, and influencer Reels and Shorts extended reach to 60 million users.
The proof
70,000 unique players averaged 18.27 sessions each, with 108.5 seconds of dwell time per session, roughly 18 times the global AR benchmark of 6 to 10 seconds, as reported in the brand's own award entry.
Where this applies in India
This principle is genuinely available in India right now in at least three places. Energy drink brands targeting college and esports crowds could make the act of cracking open a can trigger in-game sound cues or leaderboard events. Chewing gum or mouth-freshener brands, whose physical ritual is very visible but socially policed in formal settings, could route that same action into a reaction-time challenge. And regional snack brands with a distinct hand-to-mouth eating gesture could build that motion into a mobile AR experience where the snack behaviour is the score.
FAQ
What is the Make the Product Action the Game Mechanic pattern?
Map a stigmatised or overlooked product behaviour directly onto the control mechanic of a game so that using the product correctly is the same act as winning.
Which brand proved it works?
Knorr, in instant noodles / packaged food (India). 70,000 unique players averaged 18.27 sessions each, with 108.5 seconds of dwell time per session, roughly 18 times the global AR benchmark of 6 to 10 seconds, as reported in the brand's own award entry. jugnu's Kosh tracks 304 such patterns across Indian and global brands.
How do I apply this to my brand?
Run your brand challenge through jugnu. It diagnoses the tension underneath your problem, checks whether this pattern fits it, and builds ideas on the patterns that do.
This is the story. Every Kosh card also carries a transfer layer: the consumer insight underneath, the principle that moves across categories, and the boundary conditions where it breaks. jugnu applies that layer to your brand when it builds ideas.
Wondering if this pattern fits your challenge? Run it through jugnu and find out.
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