Leo & Choc

In Quebec, chocolate milk was seen as something strictly for little kids. To get past that perception, Parmalat and BBDO created the animated characters Leo & Choc to entertain, engage and drive the 12- to 34-year-old target to an interactive website engineered to make chocolate milk cool.

To break through to this discriminating and savvy target group, PHD brought Leo & Choc to life in edgier, more mature media environments: cinema, print, online social networks and instant messaging, as well as video-game integration and iPod, wallpaper and mini-clip downloads.

The campaign launched with three 15-second cinema spots during the run of The Simpsons Movie. Print focused on free dailies and weeklies, such as Voir and Metro. The in-game advertising component integrated virtual billboards within Xbox 360 video games. Within social networks, PHD employed a new advertising format, a semi-transparent animated super above the selected video that gave the viewer a choice of clicking to follow Leo & Choc to their microsite or continuing to view the chosen video. A unique cost-per-engagement pricing model was introduced for this placement, instead of paying on a CPM basis.

Within five months, chocolate milk consumption had increased by 5%. Visits to the website increased by 234% vs. the previous campaign (more than 290,000 visits) and fans created over 28,000 animated clips, which received 103,000 votes. The campaign generated extensive blog coverage and Parmalat redesigned its chocolate milk boxes to feature the cartoons.