The entire campaign was reliant on the power of earned media. One billboard generated over 245 million earned impressions, which was both organic and generated through concerted PR efforts.

For many years, Black Diamond Cheestrings has always held a strong position in the market. But with aggressive competitive pricing strategies, innovation in snacks, and pandemic lock downs, the brand was losing share. To elevate our product above commodity status and combat market effects, we were tasked with injecting new excitement into the brand and get people talking about their once beloved cheese snack again.

The new platform, “Keep it Cheesy,” was built around the idea that Cheestrings have an inherent child-like quality to them. So, what better childhood memory than the age-old tradition of trading lunchtime snacks to tap into to remind adults to have fun.

The new platform, “Keep it Cheesy,” was built around the idea that Cheestrings have an inherent child-like quality to them. So, what better childhood memory than re-creating the age-old tradition of trading lunchtime snacks to tap into to remind adults to have fun.

We launched the new platform with a giant, unignorable billboard at Yonge and Dundas Square in Toronto and tying it to a familiar childhood tradition for Millennials—the lunch trade.

The billboard was intentionally designed to look like a classified ad soliciting trade offers for a single Cheestring. The billboard was unbranded and kept low-fi to curb suspicion that a brand was behind it. We included a phone number and hired 48-year-old actor Angel Domingo to field the calls.

The PR strategy was executed in two phases.

Phase 1: When the billboard went live, we used an anonymous email in an attempt to tip off media to this ‘strange’ occurrence in hopes of landing organic coverage opportunities.

Phase 2: After we compiled a number of live interactions over the Cheestrings trade hoax, we used the compilation to position a recap pitch that outlined our orchestration of the posting and the offers we received in hopes of landing mainstream news coverage as a result. Angel Domingo, the actor hired to field the calls, then served as our “spokesperson”, sharing his experience of what it was like handling requests and the strangest offers he received.

The campaign was a big hit, garnering 245 million earned media impressions, including 67 pieces of earned coverage off of one single billboard.

Major media outlets like Global News, CityNews, HuffPost, Narcity, and the New York Post who picked up the billboard story showed the product on air or in their publications, reminisced about eating them as kids, and discussed what they would trade—all unprompted.

When all was said and done, the billboard brought in more than 1,000 offers ranging from a Shaquille O’Neal rookie card to someone’s mom. But at the end of the day, we knew what we had. Nothing was good enough to trade and we didn’t accept any offers—not even the yacht we were offered.