Chocolate Milk: The Official Drink of Halloween

Best Campaign that Uses a Holiday Theme in its Promotion

Chocolate Milk: The Official Drink of Halloween
Agency: Draftfcb
Client: MilkPEP

MilkPEP has positioned its chocolate milk as the Official Drink of Halloween since 2006. In 2009, MilkPEP focused its message on bone health using skeleton-themed artwork. The campaign was directed primarily at retailers, with an additional component designed to reach into local neighborhoods and communities where kids and families were participating in Halloween activities.  

Retail sampling and event kits were distributed to more than 25,000 stores featuring the new bone health message. In addition, Spanish-language kits were developed with a tie-in to Dia de Los Muertos – Day of the Dead, a Hispanic holiday similar to Halloween.

Haunted-house tie-ins and community events material were provided to dress up their stores with banners, pennant strings, a tablecloth, balloon, reproducible handouts, artwork and temporary tattoos. Additional program support included a national Milk Mustache ad featuring Heidi Klum, a national ad launch, satellite media tours, PR and a 25-market tour of events.

For consumers, MilkPEP introduced the Halloween-themed “Make Your Own Milk Mustache ad” contest on its whymilk.com website. Kids and consumers were able to upload their pictures, apply a chocolate milk mustache and then pick from a host of Halloween-themed bodies. A sharing application allowed them to pass their creations along to friends and family.

The program was a huge success, more than doubling MilkPEP’s sales in the flavored milk category to 9 million, up from 4.8 million in 2008. Retail POS generated nearly 155 million impressions. Approximately 250 personalized Milk Mustache ads were created during the promotional period, while more than  1,000 “Event in a Box” toolkits were distributed for local marketing initiatives.

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