Ghana is No. 1 in the market for solid chocolate bars. But customers are fickle; brand loyalty is weak. Numerous competitors were expected to mount counter attacks in 2007. The need for a campaign combining both branding and selling was urgent.

During the campaign period, the cell phone site was accessed 2.5 million times. Ghana's score on the core brand value "In tune with how girls feel" rose by 5% (from 12% to 17%). Ghana's score for "The leading chocolate brand" rose by 5% (37% to 42%).Sales increased by 10%.

Ghana's brand concept is "The chocolate that applauds girls with dreams." To communicate this concept we developed TV commercials and—in a truly novel approach—a serialized novel read via cell phone.

The novel is a love story, designed to appeal to the target through a topic in which their involvement is high.It was written to be read while eating the chocolate and updated weekly and released in bursts timed to coincide with Christmas and Valentine's Day, the periods when demand for chocolate peaks in Japan.After the serial ended, it was collected and published as a book.

The product's primary target is high school girls. Their cell phones are their most important information-gathering tool.Cell phone ownership in this segment is 96.5%!Average mobile web usage is approximately two hours per day.Of all cell phone sites, cell phone novel sites are their most frequent form of entertainment. This special role of the cell phone novel in Japanese popular culture makes it an ideal medium for long-duration contact and brand placements in the novels themselves. In 2007, five of the 10 best-selling novels in Japan were cell-phone novels.