Don't tell General Mills that America has an obesity crisis or that sugar is the next tobacco.
Instead they're doubling down on the dextrose and giving away 10,000 boxes of marshmallow-only Lucky Charms.
The only way to get them is to win them. Specially-marked rainbow boxes will be on store shelves soon. Inside some of them will be a special code to enter on a website to receive a box full of marshmallows.
It's all about taking a social media contest from two years ago to the big time.
In 2015 the brand did a social media promo where 10 fans get one of the cereal-free boxes. The quirky effort was fronted by rapper Biz Markie singing a branded parody version of one of his hit 1989 song, "Just a Friend" in a trippy and off-kilter video. At the end he encouraged consumers to tweet selfies holding "an imaginary box" using a specific hashtag in order to enter the giveaway.
But now it's 2017 and the rainbow-colored trend has completely mainstream with ROYGBIV Frappuccinos, bagels, and sushi.
So General Mills normalized the contest and blew out the numbers, dropping the psychedelic rap video aspect, making it a straight traditional sweepstakes, and boosting the number of winners by 99,900 percent.
"Fans of Lucky Charms are obsessed with our marshmallows," said Priscilla Zee, a senior marketing manager for General Mills in a blog post. "We were overwhelmed with calls, e-mails, and tweets last year, asking for a box of our Lucky Charms marshmallows. So this year we wanted to give them even more opportunities to win."
Winners are invited to share pictures of their winning boxes directly to the company's official social media accounts. The sweepstakes will run through December, 2017 with more details at MarshmallowOnly.com.
