The brand approached a local professor at McNally Smith College of Music to see if his students would be interested, along with a Vine rapper and two local hip hop producers. What could they rap about? Absolutely anything, as long as they didn’t offend moms.

Freedom and authenticity paid off. The tracks turned out to be shockingly excellent, including Feed the Streets, Hamburger Helper, Crazy, Food For Your Soul, and In Love with the Glove.

Now it got tricky. Without heavy promotion, the mixtape could go unheard. With heavy promotion, it would lose its authentic tone. We decided to go all in with one caveat: We drop it as a real mixtape, right down to the PARENTAL ADVISORY. It would be available to the masses, teased to influencers, and given every bit of WTF? we could inspire. The caveat? Our unexpectedly awesome album would drop on April Fools’ Day.

Our musical partners hail from General Mill’s Minneapolis backyard: McNally Smith College of Music, a rising hip-hop Vine celeb, and two promising local artists.

Five songs are chosen for “Watch the Stove,” each rapping on Hamburger Helper. Two are made into music videos in partnership with students at Minneapolis College of Art & Design.

The face of the album is the Helper logo, Lefty, the four-fingered glove, known for moonlighting on Twitter as a struggle rapper. He’d had a “break” recently with coverage in the popular hip hop blog “First We Feast.”

Naturally, First We Feast gets the exclusive on Lefty’s mixtape. Other niche hip hop media buy in, fueling chatter. Leaked album tracks start trending. We insist the national media start paying attention.

The album drops on April Fools’ Day with open source distribution on SoundCloud.

Whether you intended to mock or praise it, you simply had to listen.

What did people expect from a hip-hop album by General Mills?

They didn’t expect authentic excellence. “Shockingly Good,” declared Adweek. “Possibly the greatest April Fools' Day prank of all time,” said the Los Angeles Times. “Every other corporate #brand can just quit now. Hamburger Helper has a mixtape. And it's absolute fire.’”

“Watch The Stove’s” pop culture credibility now inspires national news stories and think pieces from Bloomberg to Mashable to the Today Show.

The hip hop community has a different takeaway, suggesting other rappers better up their game if they’re getting served by a branded Hamburger Helper mixtape.

Within one week of release:

•Helper brand saw a +37% increase in U.S. retail dollar volume

Within two weeks of release:

•8 million SoundCloud plays, and rising

•147,000+ social shares

•220 earned broadcast, print and online media stories

•530 million earned media and social impressions

•All five songs now trending worldwide

Hamburger Helper has two disparate core audiences: convenience-driven moms and 20-something dudes, requiring media strategies as opposite as Betty Crocker and Drake. Having dabbled in dialogue with the hip hop community via Twitter, Helper set out in 2016 to prove that we could talk the talk and walk the walk: producing a home-grown rap album that was positively sizzling. Was this a joke? A high or low point for branded content? A PR risk for General Mills? We chose “all of the above,” sending “Watch the Stove” into the zeitgeist with the most unexpected viral stunt of the year.

Helper has two disparate targets: millennial males and Gen Y moms; however, both share a pride in owning who they are and where they come from, a key foundation of hip hop. Our launch strategy had to rely 100% on earned and organic media. We had to be strategic in how we sourced and released the content, first fueling credibility and conversation on the tracks among millennial males (through Twitter and open source platform Sound Cloud), then reaching moms with entertaining music videos on Facebook. The bigger and more buzzworthy we played it, the more likely the mixtape would spill over into national media, and that would be gravy.

The entire strategy relied on trust. Trust the kids to make the music. Trust our target to like our content, and create more. “Watch the Stove” would only be fun if it were authentic; and only authentic if everyone had fun.

For more than 40 years, General Mills’ Hamburger Helper has helped moms put a hearty family dinner on the table. Over time, the target demo has expanded to include millennials who grew up on Helper and still appreciate its no-frills goodness. While relying on family-friendly messages and couponing to reach Mom, the brand began experimenting with Twitter to reach millennial males and the hip hop community, posting relevant content from its mascot, “Lefty.” When Lefty cleverly tweaked rapper Drake’s album art in 2014 and jokingly tweeted “The mixtape is almost ready,” it quickly received the highest organic traction yet. Lefty’s mixtape idea became a running joke among his inner-fan circle. In 2016, the PR question finally became: “how seriously should we take this?” With zero budget to pay influencers to rep us, the only logical thing left to do was to become the influencer.