Cadbury – a go to chocolate or sweet!

Cadbury founded almost 200 years ago, is a British multinational confectionery company owned by Mondelez International. Cadbury India began its operations in 1948 by importing chocolates and then re-packing them before distribution in the Indian market. Cadbury is a brand that almost all of us are aware of. Most of us were crazy for Cadbury chocolates. Back then, Cadbury was a brand of chocolates. Needless to say, the brand has expanded its age group.  Earlier the target segment was kids. Cadbury then came up with the advertisements which clearly depicted that it is a chocolate that even teenage girls and boys can eat. The ad in which a girl enters the cricket field and eats Cadbury when her friend hits a century demonstrates that. This was followed by the famous ad where a bride struggles to open the wrapper of Cadbury because her hands were covered in Mehndi. These ads have done wonders for Cadbury.

Cadbury has always succeeded in creating an appealing marketing campaign. The message delivered from each advertisement was crisp and clear. The commercials have always emphasized the joy derived from eating chocolate. The other specialty is that these commercials accurately focus on the relationships and amplify the emotions of the audience. This was the reason why the advertisements with the couple expressing love by exchanging Cadbury chocolates were a smashing hit. The campaign was titled “khane ke baad meethe mein kuch meetha ho jaye”

One thing which sets apart this brand is the ability to continuously innovate and successfully enter into new domains. A value proposition of chocolate only for kids was not sufficient. They expanded the age group. All these years, the product was the same – a chocolate. Cadbury also came up with a new value proposition when it launched Cadbury celebrations. This was an attempt to portray Cadbury not just as a chocolate but as a sweet! Cadbury celebrations aim to replace or complement the sweets.

Indian culture is blessed with a plethora of festivals. Each region in India celebrates a lot of festivals with enthusiasm and togetherness. Families gather at a place and happily celebrate the festivals. Sweets are essential in most festivals. The sweets sometimes are home-made or bought or gifted. Nowadays, people are busy in their professional lives. The homemade sweets are a rarity. Sweets are gifted. Cadbury grabbed this opportunity and came up with Cadbury celebrations.

Television commercials for Cadbury celebrations included soft aspects of the relationships. The message intended was a mind capturing one. The advertisements encouraged people to buy Cadbury Celebrations as a gift and celebrate the festival with their loved ones. Diwali is the most celebrated festival in India and this was an obvious choice.

There are several other advertisements that focus on family relationships. The core strength lies in identifying current problems and depicting a solution to them. The emotional connection was clearly evident.

There are several such advertisements by Cadbury that have touched the overall audience. Some of them are :

Cadbury this time came with a mind-blowing concept and created a data-driven campaign platformed by ‘Not Just A Cadbury Ad’ to highlight the spirit of generosity in action. Conceptualized by Ogilvy, Cadbury Celebrations’ latest Diwali campaign provides an advertising platform to local retailers, whose businesses would have been impacted by the pandemic.

Cadbury Celebrations, Ogilvy, and Wavemaker come together to put this campaign into action. Facebook & YouTube helped drive this hyper-local data-driven campaign that reached out to a large set of audience.

The brand designed a truly unique real-time data experience in a Cadbury ad where it advertised not just for itself but also for thousands of small businesses across India.

The displayed small stores in the ad changed based on the location in which the ad was being viewed. Therefore, a person viewing the ad in Pune would be guided to small stores in Pune, in their vicinity. Similarly, a person in Mumbai or Delhi would see the names of the small stores in his vicinity.

In short, Cadbury custom-designed hundreds of versions of the same ad, with the relevant geo-targeting based on pin codes. And developed an algorithm that served an ad customized to the viewer based on their geo-location. In order to execute this multi-platform activation campaign, Cadbury reached out to 1800+ local retailers across 260+ pin codes in Mumbai, Delhi, Lucknow, Indore & Pune.

The ad beautifully captures an Indian family celebrating the occasion of Diwali where the woman of the house gifts something to every member of the family bought from a local store. It ends on a celebratory note urging people to support local stores and add sweetness to everyone’s Diwali this year.

This is how Cadbury has always come up with new ideas and creative strategies which has never left a chance to make its audience smile. Also, Cadbury has very successfully repositioned itself as a sweet gifted during festivals in the Indian market.