Yellow Chocolate

The taste of Yellow

If you were anywhere in New Zealand during the back end of 2009 and the first bit of 2010, chances are you were impacted by an outbreak of Yellow fever we helped engineer.

Charismatic young surfer and actor Josh Winger was tasked by our client, business services search giant Yellow, to create a chocolate bar tasting like the colour. From scratch. With just a phone and an empty office for company and using only the services of Yellow’s advertisers.

With our sister agencies handling above the line marketing activities, direct and digital, our job was to publicise the challenge, which we did with a vengeance. We took Josh on a roadshow throughout New Zealand, letting Kiwis sample his prototypes and have their say in the Taste of  Yellow.From the moment Josh accepted his challenge on Breakfast to the day he unveiled the finished product on Campbell Live we generated more than $396,000 of editorial coverage, reaching a combined audience of more than 17.6 million people - a return on investment for Yellow of 8:1. Other wins included coverage on Sunrise, 91ZM, More FM, Classic Hits, Radio Live and National Business Review.

Public response was incredible. Supermarkets fought with each other for the right to sell Yellow chocolate and sold out as soon as it was stocked. Josh gained 80,000 online followers, more than 16,000 of whom connected with him through Facebook and Twitter. And after the Campbell Live launch visits to the Yellow Chocolate Website increased by 300 percent. It was the most talked-about marketing campaign in New Zealand and, importantly, online usage of Yellow grew by nine percent. Yellow Chocolate has gone on to win numerous local and international marketing awards.

Porter Novelli team: Louise Wright, Sarah Geel, Anna McIntosh