It's that time of year again - a magical season when communicators ritualistically brace themselves against the cacophony of the holidays, and move "information overload" up a notch on their lists of beasts to conquer. Hence the age-old question...
How to break through the clutter?
Perhaps you answered, "create the coolest digital Webadelic event of the millennium..." or, "kidnap Leonardo diCaprio and auction off his socks." Wrong! Seasoned PR practitioners (backed up by PR NEWS' extensive staff reserves of Freudian and Jungian psychoanalysts) will testify that the best strategy for winning the attention of the ever-fickle media involves a seduction of a more carnal nature. Deploy the chocolate.
Lest you think we're joking, we offer evidence of the power this substance can wield. When the marcom firm Teuwen One Image imported an entire chocolate-themed event from Europe last year, its staffers weren't sure what to expect. "Le Salon du Chocolat," a five-day consumer show conceived by the French agency Event International (EI), had enjoyed five years of success in Paris, with attendance topping 80,000 in 1998. But the concept had never been tested in the states. Teuwen One took a gamble, partnered with EI, and brought the idea to New York - sans sponsorships. Mondieu!
But the "if you build it, they will come" theory proved sound, and the first official "Chocolate Show" kicked off during the 1998 holiday rush with 25 chocolatiers as sponsors. In the end, the event drew a respectable crowd of 10,000 choco-aficionados and netted more than 70 television media hits. (Did we mention the press packets included goodie bags of fine chocolates?)
According to Stephanie Teuwen, vice president of Teuwen One, the first year's event - which touted upscale brands such as Perugina and Godiva alongside vending machine moguls like Mars Incorporated - practically sold itself through word of mouth and an aggressive PR campaign. "We surpassed our goal without purchasing a single traditional advertisement," she says. Instead, the firm direct mailed 50,000 brochures to hotels, restaurants, corporations and shops, and hung mouth-watering posters in 500 New York storefronts.
Edible and Credible
Last week's second annual Chocolate Show, held in Manhattan's Metropolitan Pavilion, featured nearly double the number of chocolate makers - including American, Dutch and Swiss brands - and decadent photo opps such as a giant hot chocolate cup and a chocolate-bearing tree. While final attendance numbers weren't yet in as PR NEWS went to press, visitors were projected to top 12,000. This year's sponsors included not only chocolate manufacturers, but also peripheral brands such as KitchenAid, Barnes & Noble, Chocolatier Magazine, the trade magazine Food Arts, and a host of upscale restaurants. Among the attractions:
- Crash courses ("Chocolate 101 and 102") on the basics of cooking with chocolate.
- Interactive workshops for children featuring cookie decorating, baking, puppet shows and storytelling.
- Chocolate architecture, including a fudge-ified replica of Times Square.
- A chocolate fashion show - 12 haute couture dresses made of chocolate.
- An exhibit detailing the chocolate manufacturing process, from beans to bars.
- An exposition of vintage chocolate ads, illustrations, manufacturing equipment and packaging.
- A cookbook store (courtesy of Barnes & Noble), featuring chocolate cookbooks and special author signing sessions.
- Chocolate therapy, led by a therapist from New Zealand.
- A traveling exhibit (also making the rounds in France this year) detailing the origins of chocolate in Mayan and Aztec civilizations.
- Chef lectures - on topics such as chocolate etiquette and wines that go with chocolate - by renowned pastry chefs including Chris Broberg of Lespinasse and Sherry Yard of Spago.
Ridiculous? Maybe. (The edible fashion show was a stretch...especially under those hot stage lights.) Attention-grabbing? Definitely.
Chefs Who Get Around
PR NEWS smells a trend brewing and the flavor isn't vanilla. Spago head chef Yard also was spotted with culinary mentor Wolfgang Puck earlier this month at Universal Studios Hollywood, touting the impending summer 2000 launch of the live-action/animated film, "The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle." The main attraction: a 4,000-pound, hand-carved chocolate moose. The celebrity chefs also had several monstrous vats of chocolate mousse on hand, which fed 150 local school children, plus camera crews from CBS, NBC, ABC, the WB, five local stations in L.A., and seven international news organizations.
"I think we gave [the press] something very visual and offbeat," says Eliot Sekular, director of publicity and public relations for Universal Studios. "The nice thing about having the resources of an entertainment studio is we can come up with fairly ambitious ideas and our production department doesn't even blink." The giant chocolate Bullwinkle nailed air time on 60 U.S. stations, as well as in the U.K., France, Korea, Mexico, China and Taiwan. Universal is now seeking to donate the caloric monstrosity (packing 40 million calories) to an appropriate "mooseum." Yuck yuck.
The truth is, journalists eat this stuff up (PR NEWS included). In his annual compilation of "Best T-shirt" slogans, Washington Post columnist Bob Levey earlier this year selected shirt number five as the one touting the tagline, "If they don't have chocolate in heaven, I ain't going." Note to media relations staff: the more decadent, the better.
(Teuwen One Image, 212/244-0622; Universal Studios, 818/622-6896.)
Chocolate...Cha-Ching
- Consumers will spend more than $300 million on boxed chocolates this Christmas/Hanukkah season. Confectionery sales as a whole are expected to top $1.4 billion.
- The winter holidays aren't even peak time. Halloween is the top candy holiday ($1.8 billion in sales), followed by the winter holidays, Easter and Valentine's Day.
- More than 35 million heart-shaped boxes of chocolate will be sold for Valentine's Day. Over 60 million chocolate bunnies will lose their heads for Easter.
Source: National Confectioners Association.
PR Chef-D'Oeuvre
Although the Chocolate Show (nee Le Salon du Chocolat) was a huge success in France, it had to be "Americanized" en route to New York. One key to the event's success in the states was the formation of an advisory board of top pastry chefs. Gaining initial backing from heavy hitters like Jacques Torres of Le Cirque 2000 and Francois Payard of Payard Patisserie & Bistro not only ensured quality programming, it also brought access to hundreds of other chefs and sponsors in the food industry. "This really was an 'A' list, a 'who's who' in pastry arts," according to Michael Batterberry, an advisory board member and founding editor of Food Arts, a leading trade publication in the culinary business.
The advisory board approach also gave Teuwen One Image (the agency that orchestrated the show) more control over its own destiny by alleviating its dependence on individual sponsors to make the show fly. "We used to produce a lot of events for clients, but no matter how good the events were, the client the next year would ask for another agency," says Stephanie Teuwen, vice president of the eponymous agency. That's no longer the case in the chocolate arena, where Teuwen One now owns a stake in the show's concept (and, therefore, an upper hand). Next year, the show will debut in Tokyo.