Cadbury Celebrations has unveiled a new campaign that allows consumers to make personalised birthday songs for their loved ones using AI. Conceptualised along with agency partners Ogilvy and Wavemaker, and technology partners Gan.ai and Uberduck, the brand has a new microsite created by ADSMN Interactive where users can share little interesting details about their loved ones to generate a customised birthday song for them.
The brand, which bagged this year’s Cannes Grand Prix for creative effectiveness for the Cadbury Celebrations ‘Shah Rukh Khan My Ad’ campaign, has leveraged technology quite innovatively in recent years. It even dabbled with metaverse last year creating a unique Valentine’s Day campaign for Dairy Milk Silk. While metaverse is yet to become mainstream, what is abundantly clear is Mondelez India’s big bets on technology and data.
Talking about the agency’s recent efforts with Mondelez brands in the country, Shekhar Banerjee, chief client officer & office head, west, north & east, Wavemaker India, says that it is not so much about making tech the hero as it is the idea itself. “One of the primary reasons for churning great work year after year is the consistency in strategy and ability to plan long-term. Creating great consumer experiences sits at the heart of our strategy,” he says. For the brand’s latest campaign around birthdays, the focus was on creating an exclusive gift for the recipient. Banerjee says the initial response has been great, with close to 30,000 original birthday songs created within the first four days of the campaign.
Mondelez in India has purpose at the centre of its campaigns, strengthening its value proposition with authenticity in storytelling, say experts. Nitin Saini, vice-president, marketing, Mondelez India, says, “Consumer centricity is the cornerstone of Mondelez India’s work, and we have been using digital effectively to scale data-driven marketing and build hyper-personalised experiences for our consumers. We call this approach Empathy@Scale.”
In 2018, the brand embodied its “purpose of generosity” with a change in tagline from ‘Kuchh Meetha Ho Jaaye’ to the current ‘Kuch Accha Ho Jaaye, Kuch Meetha Ho Jaaye’. As per Nielsen, Mondelez India has over 65% of the chocolate market share in the country, of which 40% is commanded by Dairy Milk.
Decades of brand building
The latest campaign and indeed the big Cannes wins for Cadbury are also a testament to the brand’s partnership with creative agency Ogilvy, which spans almost 40 years. According to Sukesh Nayak, chief creative officer at Ogilvy India, the best and bravest work comes from strong, long-term partnerships. “We do not approach a Cadbury brief by focusing on the technology we will use, but rather on the human insights and the joy our work can create. The brand represents joy and sweetness, so that is really the genesis of every Cadbury campaign. The brand’s core proposition of generosity perhaps has been showcased best in our SRK ad because Cadbury, through that move, shared a Bollywood superstar as brand ambassador for thousands of small businesses during peak Diwali season post the pandemic. These are results that cannot be quantified,” asserts Nayak.
As per media reports, the SRK ad saw 1,30,000 personal videos uploaded, and the brand saw tremendous business outcomes with a 42% increase in sales and 33 million gift boxes sold.
The Ogilvy-Cadbury partnership is one for the record books, says KV Sridhar, global chief creative officer, Hypercollective and Nihilent. He points out that it was Ogilvy’s iconic cricket ad featuring a young woman dancing on the field that changed the perception of the brand in the 1990s. Previously viewed as a kids’ treat brand, the ad demonstrated that adults could enjoy chocolate too and tackled a major marketing concern for Cadbury in the process. “It became a marquee brand and stayed relevant because it has spoken to multiple generations,” notes Sridhar. Brands like Maggi, Surf and Coca-Cola have also mastered this art of winning love across generations.
Because it is the undisputed market leader, Ajimon Francis, MD India, Brand Finance, observes that Cadbury is also a generic word that represents all chocolates, including rival brands like Nestle’s KitKat. Nonetheless, the brand has withstood onslaughts from competitors such as Nestle, Ferrero Rocher and others. Says Francis, “Brands create value not just with communication but also strong product programmes. That is perhaps where Cadbury has much more to do. Product innovation goes hand-in-hand with communication.”