Goodbye yellow brick chocolate road
It seems the chocolate reviews written by our StopPress readers have caused Yellow chocolate to sell out! Well, perhaps we’re being a little presumptuous, but the sweet yellowish concoction has all but vanished from supermarket shelves, making it the fastest selling chocolate bar over the past year. Not bad considering its chocolate creator Josh Winger, only got assigned the ‘mission’ to create the yellow chocolate six months ago.
“I had an inkling it might sell out really quickly, and it sure has!” says Josh. “Public response has been awesome; I’ve had really good feedback so it’s a great result for everybody involved.”
Launched on Monday, February 8, Yellow chocolate had sold 73,000 bars by its first three days on sale. In an exclusive distribution deal with Countdown, Woolworths and Foodtown only 102,000 limited edition bars were made.
The sales of Yellow chocolate far exceeded expectations. “This is one of the fastest selling new chocolate bars Progressive has experienced in a decade,” says Eve Dhar, Progressive Enterprises Limited category manager.
Perhaps not surprisingly, a Facebook page ‘Make More Yellow Chocolate’ has been created (there’s a Facebook page for everything right?), currently hosting over 400 members.
If you have any of the yellow stuff lying around (still in original packaging of course), there’s profit to be made if you head to Trade Me. Various listings for the chocolate have popped up over night on the site, upon news of the sell-out.
We spotted one bar in such hot demand, 25 people have already placed a bid on it, with the bid currently sitting at $16. It seems some people have it bad for yellow.
But for those of you who aren’t willing to pay $16 for a bit of yellow, don’t worry, the regular brown stuff is in ample supply.
Lastly, see below for another possible use of yellow chocolate—though at the current asking price, perhaps a regular yellow crayon would suffice:
Grumpy Old Marketing Guy Rob Bree
February 24, 2010
Maybe I'm being overly harsh but I found the Yellow campaign to be pretty daft (now there's a word you don't hear much of anymore). What is the point that actually got made? Yellow Tree House I kind of got.
J-Rex
February 25, 2010
At the essence of this campaign lies one major logical flaw. It positions Yellow as a challenge that must be overcome. Josh was challenged to launch a business using only the Yellow directory. We've all said all along that it'd be far less complicated just to use Google. Why on earth would any client pay an agency for a campaign that shines the spotlight on its core weakness? Yellow should demand a refund and move its business to an indie that'll use their money wisely. Perhaps one that spends more time in strategy than it spends in studio mocking up awards boards.
Mike
February 25, 2010
This 'sell out' is of course manufactured by a low production volume. Shame on journalists who print this stuff without checking the real story. If the product were any good, they would be making more of it. The fact they are not tells the real story.
Ant
February 25, 2010
Well imagine how excited we were when the Yellow Chocolate office opened on Dominion Road. "They'll need an agency to take the chocolate bar to market" we thought. "They'll go to yellow.co.nz, enter 'advertising agency' in the 'What' field and 'Dominion Road' in the 'Where' field and we'll be sweet, we thought (sweet, geddit?). But the phone never rang. So one of our suits popped down there to offer our services, even left our contact details on a Post-it note (brilliantly, we used a yellow Post-it note). No call. In the end, Colenso got the gig – which doesn't really seem to be how the whole campaign was meant to work. Or did the fact that we have absolutely no experience or credentials in confectionary count against us? Must have done.
Simon Mills
February 25, 2010
To be honest I would love them to produce another batch of this and see how many consumers would actually repurchase. I bought out of hype and hope that this would be a revolutionary, yummy peice of chocolate. Sadly I was dissapointed and think I only ate 1/4 of the block. To the advertising side of things, I think the story was well executed (It sucked me in) but on reflection the story lost credibility somewhere along the lines. Also with a weak product, the whole campaign will quickly be forgotten from my mind.
Vincent Heeringa
February 25, 2010
What's with this 'shame on journalists' thing that comments people write all the time. Don't they know we have no shame?
Not a journo...sorry
February 25, 2010
This has been like having a one-night-stand with a brand. A bit tough for the businesses who supplied products & services and the 14,000 + Facebook fans and 700 odd Twitter followers when their new found…aah.."buddy?" closed shop. So I wonder, have Yellow Pages converted all those ditched brand lovers to consumers of their services? Or was it merely a tease? (sigh)
Not a journo..sorry
Nottafan
February 26, 2010
1) It wasn't chocolate
2) It wasn't nice
3) It was well hyped
4) People are suckers
El Capitan
February 26, 2010
What a load of crap! (karitane yellow crap at that!)… It's one thing to make out that this is something special to the masses, it's another to make out the same to the industry! "Perhaps not surprisingly, a Facebook page ‘Make More Yellow Chocolate’ has been created"… Dah! You can just see the pitch to the client… "and then we'll create a facebook page" "Genius!!!" everyone exclaims patting themselves on the back… Yawn. Got any interesting, ground breaking, innovative marketing trends/campaigns to report Stop Press? …coz this ain't!
Duncan Stuart
February 26, 2010
Bloody yellow journalism I say Vincent.
danno
February 26, 2010
Hey Ant – it wasn't the lack of experience, or credentials – probably the client was underimpressed that you couldn't even spell confectionery …. duh!!!
StampTramp
March 1, 2010
To you all… dont eat yellow snow….bunch of cornholes!
Angela
March 5, 2010
Yawn.
Gerry Kookmeyer
March 7, 2010
Could it be the first campaign worked because an ad agency didn't actually come up with the idea of building a restaurant in a tree? Who's willing to run odds on a third campaign appearing?