The sales of Dunkaroos, a wildly popular snack for teens in the ‘90’s, was in steep decline.
The brand had not communicated to audiences for years and attitudes towards diet had greatly impacted the business. The product, already delisted in the US, was facing the same fate in Canada. Cossette was asked to reignite love for the brand on a limited production budget of $40,000 and no media budget.

While, from a sales perspective, the energy for the brand that had been present in the ‘90’s had disappeared, a close look at social media suggested that there was an appreciation for Dunkaroos amongst those who had lost the product – Americans who were taking to Twitter begging for someone to get them their beloved.

If Canadians were lacking appreciation for Dunkaroos, Cossette would expose them to how they
would feel if they were gone by connecting them to Americans who desperately wanted to get their hands on them through a smuggling program Cossette called Smugglaroos, which had a rally cry of “Make America Dunk Again”.

Americans wanting Dunkaroos could sign up through a website to have a Canadian smuggle boxes of Dunkaroos to a location near them. Canadians travelling to the States could sign up to smuggle a box to that American. Cossette would connect Canada and the United States through their mutual admiration of Dunkaroos, driving sales in Canada and fulfilling dreams in the US. The agency also provided instructions on how to stay safe.

While the key goal was to drive media conversations to reignite the product, Cossette never
imagined that it would also actually have people using the service to the extent that they did. Smugglaroos was featured in the Globe and Mail, Huffington Post, Cosmopolitan, Vice,
Vogue and Seventeen Magazine, amongst several others generating: 55,000,000 media impressions, $550,000 in free media and a 45% increase in social media conversations.