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General Mills’ Millennium Penny CampaignHow could General Mills ensure success for its Millennium Cheerios Promotion, a campaign involving a partnership with the U.S. Mint which involved the insertion of new Year 2000 pennies inside 10 million boxes of Cheerios?By having Maccabee Group coordinate a brand-focused media relations blitz that included an outrageous Cheerios publicity survey asking kids who they’d like to see on the penny (winners included singer Britney Spears and golfer Tiger Woods) and revealed that one of every five kids thought the U.S. penny was made of gold (only 3% thought the penny was made of chocolate!) The agency’s Cheerios media relations campaign reached millions of consumers through USA Today, New York Times and more than 600 other newspapers and magazines. It caught the attention of ABC “World News Tonight” and talk show host Jay Leno, who mentioned Millennium Penny Cheerios in his monologue on NBC-TV's "The Tonight Show." Overall, the Maccabee Group’s Millennium penny campaign generated a staggering 94 million consumer impressions in print alone, along with an additional 44 million radio/TV and five million online impressions. With a total of 143 million impressions, the campaign was cited by Promo magazine when it honored General Mills as one of its "Brand Marketers of the Year." Maccabee Group and General Mills earned a national Bulldog Gold Award for Media Relations Excellence as "Best Food and Beverage PR Campaign of the Year." But most importantly, what happened to the 10 million Millennium Penny Cheerios boxes delivered to grocery stores? Each and every box sold out! |
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