Kar Bhala. Ho Bhala.

Simply loved the idea as well as the intent. Full marks to the client as well as to the agency for coming up with such beautiful integration of storytelling and technology.

Absolutely on point when it comes to Cadbury’s brand proposition of generosity and goodness. Very high on context, considering how the local businesses have suffered during the ongoing pandemic.

There seem to be some confusion about the hyper personalised execution. When I saw the ad, I saw some shop from Indore (Siyaganj) - my birth place, other three from Ahmedabad, Pune & Delhi and one from Mumbai (too!) - where I live currently, so got a bit curious only to figure that this hasn’t been rolled out in all the cities. Doesn’t matter. Pathbreaking work like this needs to seen with a lens of empathy and gratitude - So I’m not trying to find any fault in what the brand has done.

However, purely from the marketing mix stand point, I felt the PR muscle should have been flexed a bit later because 1. The initiative’s quality is truly superlative, so the media would have lapped it up whenever the brand would have wanted that to happen, 2. When one reads about such an innovative ad, one tends to search for the ad and when one ends up not seeing exactly what’s being spoken in media, it could be a potential downer because an average consumer won’t be curious enough and won't take pain to research further and 3. PR in such cases should come into the play at a stage when the critical mass of consumers and influencers have experienced the idea first hand and the PR stories should then be explaining the 5Ws & the H to make them reminisce the experience.

The PR strategy according to me should have been to amplify the initiative & the intent and not the idea. There’s a very fine difference between the two. Also to genuinely walk the talk, the brand had another opportunity - Mondelez could have taken a bold step of stopping all its online sales for a month or may be just for the Diwali week. If not all, at least the sales of Cadbury and encouraged consumers to buy offline with special focus on general trade. That would have brought alive the brand proposition in the utmost true form.