How it is the Chicago
River turns green
You see, a couple of leprechauns are on the river
By Toni Fitzgerald
Mar 17, 2011
Every year the weekend before St. Patrick's Day, the Chicago River turns green in honor of the city's large Irish community and raucous St. Patty's parade.
And every year the residents of Chicago wonder how exactly that happened. A vat of industrial-sized dye? Nuclear run-off? A really big container of food coloring?
Last Saturday they got their answer. It wasn't any of the above. The green coloring actually came courtesy of an enormous mint-colored milkshake that had been spilled into the river by two rather careless men dressed entirely in green and sailing around the river on a boat.
The shake, which measured 8 feet tall, had tumbled onto its side on the boat where it was riding. The two gentleman riding on the boat, leprechauns by the looks of them, were unable or unwilling to clean up the mess.
And so the contents of the shake seeped slowly into the Chicago River, dyeing the entire thing green, or at least that was the idea behind the clever sight gag.
It was really an alternative media stunt dreamed up by Leo Burnett Chicago for its client, McDonald's, which rolls out the popular Shamrock Shake every year at this time.
The fast food chain wanted to build awareness of the milkshake and its return to stores, and Leo Burnett decided to do that by playing off a Chicago tradition.
"St. Patrick's Day is a day when all Chicagoans become Irish for a day, and a key part of the celebration is dyeing the Chicago River green," says Jennifer Cacioppo, executive vice president and director of account management for Arc Worldwide, the marketing services arm of Leo Burnett.
"It's an idea that turns heads and gets the people of Chicago talking and another way to weave McDonald's into the fabric of Chicago, McDonald's and Leo Burnett's hometown."
Leo Burnett had to make sure that the shake was big enough to be seen on the river's banks, where people gather on the Saturday morning of the annual St. Patty's Day parade to watch the river turn green.
The shake's 5-foot-wide cup was made of plexiglass, as was the top placed near the cup to make it seem as though it had had "accidentally" fallen off.
The shake liquid was made out of foam padding colored a minty green. The foam floated out behind the boat to give the illusion of the spilt shake.
The boat with the two faux leprechauns sailed around the river from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday.
The stunt worked because it built on something already familiar to the people of Chicago, the dyeing of the river, in a clever but not overly obnoxious way. The key for a campaign of this type is to make it seem organic rather than having it come off as a product placement.
The shake spill was a perfectly reasonable explanation for the green river, and it made people laugh.
The stunt also got them talking on social networks, in addition to gaining coverage on local TV stations, blogs and newspapers.
"During the March 12 event Facebook and Twitter were abuzz with photos of the nautical shamrock shake and comments from local shake lovers," Cacioppo says.
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