Could all those journalists planning stories about the health benefits – or otherwise – of Nestle dark chocolate please stop doing the company’s PR? You are being hoodwinked by a marketing company that has built an entire campaign around the media’s inability to distinguish a proper yarn from confected controversy.

A Sydney PR firm is today very happy with the launch of its campaign designed to generate debate on whether Nestle dark chocolate is good for us.

Grey Healthcare, has harnessed the media to turn what it is claiming is a “low-key promotional campaign for doctors” into a story for the news pages and it’s done it in the simplest of ways.

It has simply floated the mildly outrageous claim that dark chocolate is good for us because it has anti-oxidants.

The campaign’s ads are generic and don’t name Nestle. But in the scheme of things they are irrelevant. The ads are merely the device to generate mainstream coverage of the controversy. And they worked. The media has been queueing for the story.

Grey Healthcare’s Business Manager Jasmin Kossenjans today told Crikey she was “a bit surprised by the all the controversy”. But hang on, you can’t be too surprised. Just last week you were boasting to advertising magazine B&T that the launch would “create a stir” and “get debate happening.”

The Sydney Morning Herald today bought into the debate, with a page three story scathing of Nestle’s claims. But in this weird world of controversy-based marketing, that’s still considered good press.

“We’re on a roll,” admitted Kossenjans.

“I’m sure there’s a shock jock out there who wants to turn it into something that it isn’t,” she added, although I think that was a plea, rather than a warning.

Grey Healthcare is the Australian subsidiary of the New York based Grey Global Group and boasts clients such as Botox, Johnson and Johnson and the at-times controversial multi-national drug company Astra Zeneca.

It has form in this regard. It recently traded off the controversy of the “Where the bloody hell are you?” ads by tagging a boring drug with the slogan “Bloody effective” and “You can never be too bloody safe.”

This was apparently a hit with those fuddy duddy GPs who liked the direct colloquial language and duly increased their referrals to the drug.

The company clearly understands that the media is a chocoholic when it comes to controversy. It seeks it out and gorges on it. It can’t get enough.