Lewis Road Creamery Chocolate Milk: a brilliant marketing campaign based on NOT putting product on the shelf. Photo: Su Leslie, 2014 Shot with iPhone4, frame applied from Pixlr Express.
When iconic Kiwi chocolate manufacturer Whittakers recently teamed up with newish artisan dairy food manufacturer Lewis Road Creamery to produce chocolate milk, the marriage of these two brands was apparently so successful that demand has massively exceeded supply and a whole marketing campaign has been built around scarcity, rationing and a “black market” in chocolate milk.
Not being in the target demographic, it’s a campaign that would probably have passed me by except that the FaceBook page of my favourite greengrocer/artisan grocer — Boric Food Market — got in on the act. Then the boy-child started talking about it too.
Still not being quite aware of the extent of the shortage, I vaguely started looking for the stuff in Boric and my local supermarket, thinking I’d buy a bottle for the kid so he could tell me if it was worth the hype (and the price).
I still haven’t actually seen it stocked anywhere!
But luckily some lovely artist friends brought me a bottle for the boy while we were working at NZ Sculpture OnShore. It took a few hours before I managed to get it home to him, and I was worried about it spoiling, but — as the pics show — it was fine. Better than fine it seems. I’m told it’s the best chocolate milk he’s ever had. Given that I don’t really think of chocolate milk as a premium product, I’m not quite sure how great an accolade that is. But the demand is high, people are willing to queue for the one-bottle-per-person they’re allowed, and I just noticed someone sold two 750ml bottles on TradeMe (the local eBay) for $32.
Go figure.
Meantime, I had to capture some shots of the moment when the boy child enjoyed his gift.
Photo: Su Leslie. Shot with iPhone4, frame applied from Pixlr Express.
Photo: Su Leslie. Shot with iPhone4, frame applied from Pixlr Express.
Photo: Su Leslie. Shot with iPhone4, frame applied from Pixlr Express.
This post was written for Sally’s Phoneography and Non-SLR Digital Photo Challenge at Lens and Pens by Sally. You can join in here.
Zimmerbitch 
Sounds good to me – bring back NZ butter to the UK and lets have chocolate milk. Goodbye EU 😀
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Yay; it really is good chocolate milk! 🙂
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Yer all mad.
{grin}
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You are so right; but it was good choccy milk!
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I adore your post. It brought such a glorious smile. Just had a morning cup of hot chocolate to ease the temps outside. The images of your son with his eyes wide open and edging over the large glass of scrumptious liquid are gems. It’s a total surprise that such an item would be in such demand. Chocolate milk is so last century here. But I also was surprised at the pale color. Our products have a greater balance of milk and chocolate. Haven’t brought it for years and years. Really $32/bottle on the Internet–insanity. Shows the power of marketing. Happy Photo Challenge.
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Indeed; the power of marketing! Both the brands involved are really innovative. Whittakers Chocolate is well-established, but very forward-thinking and Lewis Road is quite new, but has great positioning. What really surprised me about the milk was that despite being really pale, it was incredibly chocolatey! I expected it to be quite insipid, and was really pleasantly surprised. I think because they used “real” chocolate — not the adulterated stuff you’d expect in a low-end product like normal chocolate milk — it was delicious. It’s been really interesting to watch the way a very unfashionable, outdated product has been brought to life as a luxury worth queuing for by quality ingredients and very clever marketing.
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I’ve been reading about it and saw it on the news. My daughter just said to grate some Whittakers chocolate into some normal milk to produce the same product. I just said it was the combination of the two products – the artisan milk has to go with it. 😀
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Some of the boy-child’s friends have melted Whittakers into plain Lewis Road milk and tell me that works. Personally I’m not sure my palate is refined enough to distinguish between milks and chocolates. And my brain isn’t attuned enough to it to care!
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To be honest, I don’t care either. I don’t drink chocolate milk either.
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I think it’s definitely a teenage thing.
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Cool post.Love the boy-child’s smile in the last shot.:-)
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Thanks. It’s definitely a case of simple pleasures being the best.
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