Back to the main case studies page

Media Profile Celebrates the DQ Cake’s 30th Birthday with a Guinness World Record!

The Back Story
On May 10th, Dairy Queen celebrated the 30th birthday of its iconic DQ Cake by setting a new Guinness World Record for the world’s largest ice cream cake at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto. Media Profile worked with more than 100 different team members for nearly six months to create the giant cake spectacle, including DQ’s ice cream experts, food engineers, suppliers, structural engineers, event planners and food safety professionals.

The behemoth cake weighed in at 10.13 tonnes – smashing the previous record by two tonnes of extra weight. This included 20,000 pounds of ice cream, over 200 pounds of sponge cake, and 300 pounds of icing and OREO crumble. The cake took a team of 30 people more than 20 hours to build, assemble and decorate.

After it was weighed by the Guinness World Record adjudicator, hundreds of onlookers got a chance to taste the delicious treat, in return for donations to Children’s Miracle Network.

The Task
Media Profile was tasked with project management for the event, as well as traditional and social media outreach. We also served as the communications hub for the more than 100 people who had a hand in designing and building the cake. Our job was to ensure the smooth running of a public event featuring a perishable food item, and to ensure that everyone, from DQ franchisees, to suppliers, to Children’s Miracle Network ambassadors, to celebrities to the general public had a great time and enjoyed a safe and tasty cake. And all of this needed to be accomplished while getting the story out to media across the country.

What Happened
Not only did Dairy Queen set a stunning new Guinness World Record, but the event also drew record-setting interest from the public and media. Thousands of Toronto residents and visiting tourists came out to see and taste the giant cake and every major outlet in Toronto covered the event, interviewing Dairy Queen Canada Vice President of Marketing Denise Hutton, cake decoration participants, as well as ambassadors from Children’s Miracle Network and DQ-sponsored Olympian, Cheryl Bernard.

It was impossible to miss the story of the colossal cake, as media coverage spread across the country and lit up the Twitterverse. After hitting the airwaves and newspaper pages in Canada, the story went global, attracting attention in Ireland, India, the United States, China and even spawning a mention on Jimmy Fallon’s Late Night Show in New York City!

Highlights include
• Secured a total of 241 hits and 41.6 million impressions in Canada
• Photos in Canada’s major daily newspapers.
• Top rated television stations Global TV, CBC TV, Canada AM, City TV, CP 24, CHCH television, A-Channel and CTV covered the event, broadcasted during several newscasts on May 10 and 11, and aired on their national syndicates Canada-wide.
• Submitted 25+ online event listings.
• Received 15 international hits, including Malaysia, Singapore, India, Ireland, Britain and the United States.
• Facebook received an increase of 814% total post views over the previous month since the inception of the campaign, and on Twitter @DQCanada trended #1 in Toronto on May 10 and trended #3 in Canada for the same day.