the real caramilk secret: pseudo-event

In the summer of 2010 Caramilk launched a national campaign.
http://www.caramilk.ca/en/HowToPlay.aspx

Specially marked Caramilk bars with golden keys were sold with with a validation key.  A valid key entitled the bearer to a free trip to Toronto, and a chance to try their "golden key" on the vault containing the Caramilk secret. If the key opened the lock then the winner would receive $125,000.00, the Caramilk secret which they were to safeguard for six months, and another $125,000.00 at the end of their six months.

In the fall of 2010, at a lavish ceremony, Lisa Landry was given the awesome responsibility of keeping the Caramilk secret intact for six months.

Phew! It was a big build up to the ceremonial passing of the pseudo-torch. Did it work?


From a personal perspective, I remember when the bars with the mystery packaging came out. I bought one (even though I don't like this bar) to find out about the game. When I realized that the chances were really slim, and required phone calls and verification, I said meh. I am an instant gratification kinda girl.

I tried to find press coverage of the Caramilk ceremony and I did find a couple of newspapers with items about the contest/ceremony including the Globe and Mail and the Ottawa Citizen. Mostly the coverage was clearly labeled as a press release by the paper. I also found several blog entries about this pseudo-event but I am very certain that these blog posts were subsidized by Cadbury as they were little more than advertisements for the event.

It is difficult to gauge the Twitter impact as the site is not allowing me to view posts older than 5 days but the Caramilk Facebook presence is massive. They currently have 38,686 friends so they must be doing something right.

In the end I think that this pseudo-event worked extremely well. The change in their packaging for the summer made the Caramilk bar very visible to the consumer and refreshed interest in the merchandise. I think that the ceremony itself was a bit of a lame duck with not very much press interest, but I don't think Cadbury cares nor do I think they should care. The real secret of the ceremony was that it was an excuse to sell more chocolate bars - I am willing to bet it worked. Nice!