- Alex Palmer

Not just the stuffing and mashed potatoes will be steamy this Thanksgiving. Muscle Milk this week launched a “Sexy Pilgrim” campaign for its protein drinks, using viral video, social media and live stunts to reach new customers and put a titillating spin on our founding puritans.

Consumers who log on to Sexypilgrim.com will find the viral video, which features a sexy pilgrim doing some soulful crooning through the original Thanksgiving feast. Decked out in classic pilgrim garb with large white collar and cuffs (and dapper mustache), he manages to make Plymouth Rock and decorative gourds sound scandalous and seductively promises to “unbuckle my hat.”

The site allows visitors to post the video on their Facebook profiles, Twitter it and to “Become a Sexy Pilgrim” by printing a coupon for 50 cents off a 14 oz. bottle of Muscle Milk. It plays on the Thanksgiving theme with a simple “You’re Welcome” on the coupon and the tagline, “The protein to take you from so so to sexy pilgrim.”

Special gift baskets with t-shirts and bottles of Muscle Milk are being hand-delivered by costumed sexy pilgrims (both female and male) to college campuses and media outlets including “The Howard Stern Show,” “The View” and Barbara Walters.

“I heard they were actually able to hand-deliver a package to David Letterman personally,” said Nikki Brown, chief marketing officer for Cytosport, which owns the Muscle Milk brand. There will be other live stunts as sexy pilgrims take to the streets of New York City early next week.





The Sexy Pilgrim push is part of a broader holiday campaign for the brand. “The holiday time is when people sort of fall off that workout wagon, and Muscle Milk is obviously a product that is intended to encourage a healthy lifestyle and connect to consumers with active lifestyles,” said Brown.

Cytosport spent $7.5 million on advertising in 2008 (for the Cytomax and Mighty Milk brands, as well as Muscle Milk) and $3.3 million in the first eight months of 2009, per The Nielsen Company.

This is the first viral campaign that Muscle Milk has done, and is part of an effort or the brand to get wider attention and expand its customer-base beyond frequent gym-goers.

“We are quite excited by how this broader active lifestyle consumer has embraced the product and we look forward to talking to more consumers with these types of initiatives,” said Brown. “We’ve been asked if Sexy Santa is coming out—he’s not in the plan today, but you never know.”