Why Cadbury was right to kill the Gorilla and move away from Joy as a brand territory.

Probably everyone in the communication and marketing world knows the Gorilla spot from @Cadbury. That spot not only became one of the most iconic pieces of work of the last decades but also “grew sales by 5% in the month where it was launched, created cultural currency and modernized the brand” as Mie-Leng Wong (SVP Global Brands Mondelez) mentioned it during her inspiring talk at WARC Digital Creative Impact Unpacked session at Cannes Lions this year.

So, killing the Cadbury Gorilla and moving away from the brand territory of Joy in 2017 was a risky move to make, but one that proved to be a game changer in bringing Cadbury back to growth, driving brand equity and reconnecting this iconic brand emotionally to the British nation:

• generating over $1 Bio. in net revenue over 5 years
• bringing more than 40 Mio. consumers back into the brand
• helping Cadbury achieve its highest penetration levels on record, with 75% of British households buying Cadbury Dairy Milk

by injecting Cadbury with an authentic and creatively inspiring purpose.

At the core of that business turnaround was the brand shift from “Joy” to “Generosity”. “Generosity” ?had always been rooted in Cadbury’s founding values. As mentioned in the great @IPA Case “Results & a half: How generosity paid off for Cadbury”, when John Cadbury founded the company in 1824, he believed that chocolate could make the world a better place. Retired members of staff received chocolate every Christmas. During World War II, Cadbury sent chocolate to the trenches. This was a brand with generosity of spirit. But generosity was also embedded in one of the brand’s most distinctive assets - the glass and a half of milk of Cadbury Dairy Milk. That product truth “not just one glass, but one & half generous glasses” had featured prominently in Cadbury advertising for decades.

VCCP did a fantastic job in bringing “generosity” to life through the “There’s a glass and a half in everyone” campaign that won the IPA Effectiveness Grand Prix Award and the special prize for Best Demonstration of Purpose.

Here are the 5 most important take aways for me looking at the campaign and the results it generated:

1)?Don’t underestimate the power of heritage: too often we get distracted by hyped topics and the shine they bring. Cadbury and VCCP did exactly the opposite and went back to the roots of the brand. They reignited the power of a product truth “one glass and a half of milk” by turning it into a culturally relevant and purposeful brand territory: generosity.

2)?Be obsessed about growing your core instead of celebrating the next product launch: having worked for several FMCG brands I keep witnessing “innovation obsessed” Marketing Managers who believe that launching the next flavor or the newest product formula is the cure to almost every growth disease. The same happened to Cadbury Dairy Milk between 2012 and early 2017 were cooperations with several brands like Oreo and the launch of multiple flavored variants took the focus away from its core product. Since shifting to "Generosity" Cadbury refocused its brand communication and commercialization efforts on it core product Dairy Milk.

3) What you leave out is just as powerful as what you put in: as a dad I must admit that the "Garage” commercial is the one that gets me every time I watch it. What this commercial does brilliantly – just like the rest of the commercials by the way – is to leave enough room for the story to unfold, not cram every second with voice over, let the acting and the silences tell the story. It’s also brave enough to go against some established beliefs like "you need to show the brand as of the first second" or "the more branding the better." When the father asks for the product it doesn’t say “and a Cadbury please”, but instead he asks “one of those please”. And despite all of that the commercial feels undeniably Cadbury. It’s beautifully crafted with a fantastic casting as pointed out by Mark Ritson in the Uncensored CMO podcast on the “Best campaigns of the Year 2023”. Thanks Mark and Jon Evans for this very entertaining and insightful session!

Cadbury Garage

4) Indulgence scenes are not the secret ingredient to effective food communication: this is another point where VCCP and the Brand Team broke with the category convention “effective food commercials need to show product indulgence scenes”. In none of the campaign commercials mentioned below will you find such a scene and yet the commercials scored amazingly in research and built the business incredibly. That’s because every commercial puts the product front and center of emotionally engaging stories we can all deeply relate to. Stories where we don’t need to see someone biting on a chocolate bar and indulge to engage with them.

5) Combine the power of Storytelling and Storydoing: commercials like “Mum’s birthday”, “Fence”, “Bus” and “Garage” did a wonderful job at creating emotionally engaging stories where people use Cadbury Dairy Milk to show generosity to each other. By going beyond just storytelling and supporting initiatives where everyone can show some generosity to each other (like the #DonateYourWords initiative), Cadbury added a crucial storydoing element which demonstrated how committed it was to bring its purpose to life and create a positive impact in peoples' lives.

Kudos to the Cadbury Brand Team at 亿滋食品 and ?VCCP for this iconic work which will hopefully inspire all of us to rediscover the magic that is often hidden in the heritage of our brands and be brave enough to disrupt category conventions to produce business and fame building ideas.

?#purpose #creativity #brandheritage #storytelling #storydoing #brandcore