For the next few months 27 year-old New Zealander Josh Winger will take on a mission like no other - to make, market and sell a chocolate bar that tastes of yellow.
The new campaign for Yellow, brainchild of Colenso BBDO Auckland, sees Winger tasked with developing a chocolate bar with a difference, and then manufacturing and distributing it so it's on shop shelves in time for the upcoming southern hemisphere summer. The catch for Josh - and the hook for the campaign - is that he has to find everything he needs to get the job done using only Yellow books, online or mobile.
An aspiring actor and surfer, Winger was selected from more than 80 members of the public who auditioned by submitting videos biographies of themselves. His trials and tribulations are all documented on the Yellow Chocolate website which includes a blog, a list of businesses recruited to the cause and a various video diaries updating followers of his progress. And in the spirit of democracy, visitors to the site can also post suggestions about what the chocolate bar should taste like.
At the core of the idea was the desire to reinvigorate the Yellow Pages brand, so building in an interactive element was a key part of the campaign. "People think of the Yellow Pages as that big book your mum keeps in the cupboard below the phone," explains Colenso BBDO creative director Steve Cochran. "It had become an icon of the pre-internet age, and en masse both consumers and advertisers were questioning their need for Yellow in the world where they could find everything on Google."
Colenso BBDO wants to use this campaign to breathe life into the product and show consumers it is as relevant now as ever. Cochran says they had to do something truly contemporary and innovative to make people re-evaluate the brand and sever it from its past. "We want to get people to begin thinking of Yellow not as somewhere to find stuff, but as a tool for getting things done," he adds.
The idea for a Yellow Chocolate Bar follows on from last year's Cannes award- winning campaign for Yellow where a member of the public was challenged to create a fully functioning restaurant in a tree. The Yellow Treehouse was designed and built by sourcing everything from architects to caterers using the range of online services offered by Yellow.
Just like the Treehouse project, Winger's journey is being catalogued and posted on the website as a way of opening up the campaign to viewers as well as accentuating Yellow's digital credentials. "We want to help people engage and stay in touch with the journey wherever they are: on the couch watching television, on the web, or out on the street getting Tweets," says Cochran.
So far the strategy appears to be working. After only a couple of weeks Wigner's been inundated with suggestions and comments on the website and attracted more than 10,000 fans on Facebook.
