The Yellow Pages - Yellow Chocolate Campaign

Incase you did not know the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival ended last week Friday and as expected there was some absolutely outstanding work put forward. For a full list and overview of the winners click here. But as always there are always going to be one or two entries that in our opinion stood above the rest.. one of these, and it is my personal favorite, is the Yellow Chocolate Campaign from the New Zealand Yellow Pages.

The campaign picked up a Gold Titanium/Integrated Lion as well as a Gold Media Lion and a Bronze Cyber Lion - quite the catch, here is why: The campaign kicked off in August 2009 when The Yellow Pages made a call for video entries to a competition that would take the winner on a 'mysterious quest of ambition' From these entries Josh Winger was chosen to design, market and distribute a chocolate bar that tastes like the colour yellow…. im sure you can see where they are going with this but just incase you didn't guess: Josh was restricted to using only companies listed in the Yellow Pages (both off and online) to do so!

The thing that I love most about this campaign is how it involved as many people as possible through the whole process. Josh did extensive research to find out what New Zealanders thought the taste of yellow was - which helped narrow down potential flavors (pineapple custard, banana French toast, kowhai honey and lemon tart) - to conducting national taste testing tours and getting feedback on package designs before it even hit the stores!

To tie the whole thing together people could follow Josh on his quest through fortnightly TV spots and online webisodes at yellowchocolate.co.nz and the obligatory social media channels - A Facebook Page, Youtube account and Twitter stream. People were able to make suggestions to Josh on everything from flavors to packaging as well as learn about the business that helped him along the way. I must say that one of the coolest additions to the campaign was Josh's tweets which were transmitted to specially created electronic billboards, brilliant if you ask me!

Eventually the Yellow Chocolate bar was launched in February 2010 and was supported with a fully animated tv spot as well as an outdoor and point of sale advertising campaign all put together by Josh. The results - The Yellow Chocolate bar became the fastest selling chocolate bar in 10 years and bars were found selling online for as much as $320 after they sold out in stores. But the best thing, the chocolate bar included a flyer telling the story of Josh and his Yellow Chocolate bar which meant people were paying $2 for something that was infact a piece of direct marketing… priceless!