Sock It to Them: Coke helps Golden Books relaunch Lamb Chop in Japan.

Golden Books Family Entertainment and Coca-Cola recently got together in Japan to play with Lamb Chop, the feisty yet lovable sock puppet that has been entertaining around the world for 40 years.

The publisher has been working around the globe to relaunch the Lamb Chop franchise, which was dealt a setback in 1998 when creator Shari Lewis died. Coke, meanwhile, was looking to boost awareness for its newest product, a strawberry milk drink targeted to teenage girls. The promotion has proved to be a best-seller for both partners.

Golden Books did its homework before setting its sites on Japan, which is one of the most competitive soft drink markets in the world, with more than 7,000 different SKUs sold from 500 different manufacturers. Some 1,000 new soft drinks are launched there every year. Coke’s Japanese offerings include more than 25 brands and 60 flavors.

Vending machines are a major sales outlet in the country, accounting for more than 50 percent of all soft drinks sold. Coca-Cola maintains nearly one million vending machines, more than twice that of its nearest competitor.

With all those new flavors rolling out each year, it should come as no surprise that teens would play an important role in Coke’s overall marketing strategy. That’s why the Golden Books partnership made sense.

The brand wrapped the March-through-June promotion around a series of eye-catching Lamb Chop stickers affixed to 60 million cans and bottles of the new strawberry-flavored beverage, called Lactia Strawberry Feeling. When peele d, stickers revealed a special fortune message that junior and senior high school girls could have some fun with, including instructions on how to tell your boyfriend you love him or how to ask him if he is still interested in the relationship.

The products were sold at easy-to-reach locations including convenience stores, supermarkets, and vending machines. Promotional support included in-store merchandising and P-O-P displays, as well as posters and flyers distributed by the brand. Tokyo-based Dentsu Young & Rubicam developed the three-month program.

“The promotion was a success,” says Tetsuo Ishida, president of Cosmo Merchandising Co., which serves as the exclusive licensing agent for Lamb Chop in Japan. “We definitely believe it heightened awareness for Lamb Chop.” One particularly excited teen used her own Web site to boast of how many Lactia Strawberry Feeling cans and bottles she drank in a bid to collect the most fortunes, notes Ishida.

Cosmo Merchandising Co., Ltd. acquired the license from Golden Books last year, and has been working to increase the popularity of the Lamb Chop franchise. Lewis won 12 Emmy Awards for her work with the character. Her daughter Mallory, who co-produced the puppet shows that appeared in the U.S. on PBS, has taken over her mother’s role as puppeteer.

HOME GROWN

Golden Books’ efforts to revitalize Lamb Chop and other in-house properties come on the heels of its decision this spring to terminate a long-standing publishing license with the Walt Disney Co. at the end of the year. Although the Disney agreement was a lucrative one revenue-wise – about one-third of the company’s annual $200-plus million in sales comes from books about Disney properties – it ultimately proved unprofitable because of the exorbitant fees and high royalty rates Disney demanded.

“In our negotiations with Disney, it became apparent that there was no room for Golden Books’ profit in the enterprise,” says chairman and ceo Richard Snyder. “We walked away from an unprofitable publishing license with Star Wars in 1998, and that has been our direction ever since.”

Not that the company has moved away from licensed product completely: Golden Books still has mutually beneficial deals to publish books related to Nintendo’s Pokemon, Cartoon Network’s Powerpuff Girls, Time Warner’s Scooby Doo, and Mattel’s Barbie, to name a few. It recently inked a deal to release titles for Sponge Bob, its first license with cable network Nickelodeon. “Children’s publishing is now driven by television properties, not film properties. We have to move along with that tide, placing our emphasis on our more vibrant licenses and our own proprietary publishing,” says Golden Books chief operating officer Richard Collins.

Sounds like the company’s partnership with Coke was more than just a good summer read.