The story behind Chocolate Chex

octaveministry

Canada20 Posts

July 05 2010 15:06 GMT

When I searched up something(It was 파맛, if you're curious) on Naver, a Korean search engine, the search results I got were totally unexpected. I could find nothing that was relevant to what I was looking for, but every page was plastered with the story of this green onion-flavored Chex cereal! According to all the stories, Kellogg ran an advertising campaign around 2004 in Korea and it went something like this... (I translated a Korean blog post because I was too lazy XD. Everything below this line was translated off of the blog post which can be found here.)

It was the year 2004... this was an event that happened about 5 years ago from today.
The root cause of this incident was this video shown below.
The so-called, "Elect a new president for the Chex Choco World" event.
If I become president, I'll add more chocolate flavor vs If I become president, I'll add green onions.

http://serviceapi.nmv.naver.com/flash/NFPlayer.swf?vid=EBCBA6C9C0B79BAA783F948873829FA1BE68&outKey=V1291a657c7e03c99c0cf04cc676647dae467ab16abd0cd0de3d204cc676647dae467

*t/n-The first "chex" character that appears in the video is Cheki. The latter is Chaka.
*Cheki-If I become president, I'll add more chocolate flavor to the chex choco for all the kids out there!
*Chaka-If I become president, I'll add green onions to chex choco. Vote for me! Got that?
*Narrator-Who'll be the new president of the Chex Choco World? Everyone, please vote!

For the most part, the elections were held via two different methods. ARS/Internet
Let's look at the votes on the internet!

[image loading]

The big text! *t/n-Actually it's the stuff that's underlined, but w/e

"We'll make a new Chex Choco according to the promise of the candidate of your choice~~"

[image loading]

The image above is the home page of the green onion chex that was made for the elections at the time.

I wonder what the netizens were thinking during all of this?

*t/n-A few notes before you read all these comments...
a) I'm going to shorten green onion-flavor to g.o.f.
b) F.U. is going to be short for Funny University, the two underlined characters that keep getting repeated. FU seems to be something similar to 4chan.
*end of t/n*

[image loading]

*translated:

g.o.f.g.o.f.g.o.f.g.o.f.g.o.f.-power to the FU-

Come... g.o.f.... I'll buy you and taste you right away~..- Hooray g.o.f.~-

Will Kellogg end up suing FU am I right? -famas(FU)-

g.o.f.... I'm looking forward to it? Chocolate with green onion... ha ha ha ha ha -FU-

Nongshim there's no rigged election here....! Hooray for FU~ Hooray~ - -FUer- -

Get the g.o.f. votes as high as you can and keep pressing F5 and enter like f**k!!- Hooray for FUers-

g.o.f. chex... Come!!! ~~~~~~~~ FU ftw- Hooray for FU-

I came from FU to eat some g.o.f.~!!! I really like green onions! -g.o.f. from FU

Kellogg wouldn't... keep their promise, would they? ...T_T- I came from FU

I guess I'll have to visit FU often for this now -DC-

Ha ha I'll buy g.o.f. when it comes out~ Ha ha - Kellogg conquered by FUers -

I'll be really sad if you don't give me g.o.f. -pubes-

Kellogg..If g.o.f. wins - I'll be looking forward to it.. -FUer- - Nam Seung Woo-

Let's go eat some g.o.f.!! It's health ftw now!! -Health is ftw!!-

Because of FU.. the kids' Choco Chex will be.. I still like green onions!! -FU tee hee-

Kellogg stay strong. -Hooray FU-

Kellogg's probably having it hard Ha ha -Shin Hae Chul (FU)-

Let's eat g.o.f. with fun and excitement! -Hydrochloric_acid(FU)-

Man..What are you guys going to do.. -Post- <=== Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Bring a new hope to the agricultural community with things like the carrot and red pepper flavors -A sophisticate- <=== That's what we want too

Damn... Seems like my chocolates won't sell... -The chocolate farm- <=== That's too bad

Don't you guys feel bad for the company you assholes- tsk tsk- <===A conservative appears

Us farmers can finally make a living thanks to this event thank you. -Green onion farmer-

FU s.o.b. I won't forget this OTL...-Cheki-

Please vote for me~ -Cheki-
*t/n-Above times ~7*

^The Kellogg Company's abuse FK

Hey big bros please vote for Cheki -Ahn Joong Won- <===They were desperate enough to get a kid involved

Chaka, I can't win against you no matter what you be president -Cheki-

Think about how stressful it must be for these people? You thoughtless assholes -FUer-
^Conservative number 2

I'll buy Chaka with my 290 dollars ~ -Jun Du Hwan- <===Ha ha ha ha ha ha

*t/n-Jun Du Hwan is a former Korean president who once said "290 dollars is all I have."

Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha It seems like almost all the netizens are in favor of the g.o.f.?? Because of that, it seems like the "vote for Cheki(the chocolate flavor)" replies were posted by Kellogg to stop the g.o.f. ha ha ha ha

*t/n-I won't post the next three images here, but the first of the three with text basically has people saying they want g.o.f. in their beef stew.

These guys are saying they'll put g.o.f. chex in their beef stew if it ever comes out... lol...

Well... Due to all this, most of the netizens at the time voted for the g.o.f. chex. The results are as follows.

[image loading]

Candidate #1 Cheki 7032 votes
Candidate #2 Chaka 33709 votes

You can see that the g.o.f. chex has way more votes than the other one.

H.O.W.E.V.E.R!!!

[image loading]

01 Homepage
*t/n-below is the little note below the first part of the image:

The 47,339 votes(Cheki: 4,620 votes/ Chaka: 42,719 votes) from 204 people who used an unsuitable method of voting were invalidated.

02 ARS

03 Lotte World

}Total results

Candidate #1 Cheki 46,424 votes
Candidate #2 Chaka 35,641 votes

They said people used unsuitable methods to vote, and most of the votes were invalidated! In the end, it was Cheki's victory....

Oh well...

After that, a commercial was aired like the one shown below;;

http://serviceapi.nmv.naver.com/flash/NFPlayer.swf?vid=CA4697E087E7E40FA08CE77B8BF50C066627&outKey=V127601fda0a5c3ff40a90a6dd4ad13278429729b5e38406bedb70a6dd4ad13278429

I...It has such a "matter-of-fact" feel, like nothing ever happened!

..........
g.o.f. chex.....
It would've been fun if it got elected ha ha
If g.o.f. chex got elected, what kind of a face would the kids have in the last video?? ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

And don't you think that the "unsuitable method" thing is bulls***??
So they could get the chocolate flavor elected...;;

Anyways... Even Chex Choco had a story of its own...

Source: http://blog.naver.com/kwon0238

Did anything like this ever happen in any other countries? Feel free to tell me about any other funny marketing campaigns.

Dakk

Sweden572 Posts

July 05 2010 15:09 GMT

I didnt manage to read this.. I got to tired.

User was warned for this post

Garnet

Vietnam9036 Posts

July 05 2010 15:22 GMT

I tried to read, but...

User was warned for this post

Dakk

Sweden572 Posts

July 05 2010 15:30 GMT

On July 06 2010 00:22 Garnet wrote:
I tried to read, but...

Totally get you.

Eatme

Switzerland3919 Posts

July 05 2010 15:32 GMT

I've seen ad campaigns like this before. Probably around the same time so I guess someone got the idea and it was used around the world pretty much. However I cant recall seeing any riggings, perhaps the other campaigns did not include any silly flavours.

Ixas

930 Posts

July 05 2010 15:36 GMT

SUMMARY

octaveministry: in short, Kellogg held a marketing campaign in Korea where ppl would get to vote for the new chocolate chex cereal
octaveministry: one of the choices was to add even more chocolate flavor and the other one was a green onion-flavor
Ixas : k finished reading most of it
Ixas : so people trolled kellogs by voting onions?
Ixas: and kellogs strikes back by rigging the votes to let chocolate win?
octaveministry: pretty much, not sure if those votes were rly invalid or not thu

251

United States1401 Posts

July 05 2010 15:49 GMT

I don't know....I enjoyed it. g.o.f. is the bomb on pringles

Lysis

United States147 Posts

July 05 2010 15:56 GMT

Oh sweet....what happened to the layout?

Anyways I'm not quite sure how this is the "story" behind Chocolate Chex, and more of a interesting tidbit about how F5 voting never got anyone anywhere.

synapse

China13814 Posts

July 05 2010 15:58 GMT

The page layout.... :0 Interesting story though.
+ Show Spoiler +

Thanks to Ixas for the TLDR

Diuqil

United States307 Posts

July 05 2010 16:02 GMT

#10

On July 06 2010 00:36 Ixas wrote:
SUMMARY

octaveministry: in short, Kellogg held a marketing campaign in Korea where ppl would get to vote for the new chocolate chex cereal
octaveministry: one of the choices was to add even more chocolate flavor and the other one was a green onion-flavor
Ixas : k finished reading most of it
Ixas : so people trolled kellogs by voting onions?
Ixas: and kellogs strikes back by rigging the votes to let chocolate win?
octaveministry: pretty much, not sure if those votes were rly invalid or not thu

Thanks for this ^.^
Pretty interesting but I don't understand the point of posting such old stuff.