Cadbury: "Spread the joy"

Here is an example of one of the most phenomenal campaigns I have come across in a long time. This is an example of a brand that did an amazing job of using a country's cultural context to spread the joy and make people's lives so much more happier and beautiful.



Here's the gist:

Need Identification:

• Cadbury was suffering from the backlash of Kiwis unhappy with product changes made to their beloved Dairy Milk. The company had surrendered to global pressure to use palm oil in its product and move production offshore, taking jobs away from New Zealanders.

• Those who had previously loved Cadbury Dairy Milk felt let down and betrayed by a brand they had taken into their hearts as one of their own.

• Cadbury lost share from 68% to 50% in a matter of months. The business was now unsustainable, maintaining share only through a competitive pricing strategy.

• No joy in New Zealand: New Zealand still struggled with recession blues and was reeling with grief over the recent Pike River mining disaster and devastating Christchurch earthquakes.

Business Goal:

- Extending their leadership position by taking lost share in Everyday Milk Chocolate, from 64% to 71% by Year 2011

- Maintaining share growth while increasing the average price back up to profitable business margins

Agency:

DDB New Zealand

Objective:

- Save Cadbury Dairy Milk’s relationship with New Zealanders
- Create moments of joy so irresistible to New Zealanders that they couldn’t help but fall in love with Cadbury Dairy Milk again.

Opportunities:
• Cadbury had very strong brand equities in the hearts and minds of New Zealanders
• Remind New Zealanders of the gift of Cadbury Dairy Milk and give it new meaning within the current cultural context. Taking it from being associated with frivolous moments of joy, to meaningful moments of joy that really matter.

Current behavior:

People love eating chocolate for the joy of it, not for its rational virtues. But this had been tainted by the events of the last year and by having to think about chocolate rather than just enjoy it.

The desired behavior:

Getting the majority of milk chocolate block buyers to purchase Cadbury Dairy Milk regardless of price

Goal:
• Change the process of decision making to one of pure emotion
• Create something that defied reason and got people acting differently and as a consequence, feeling something about chocolate again.
• Stop thinking and start feeling when it comes to Cadbury Dairy Milk




The Idea:

Incite a movement that invited people to experience the contagious power of joy.

The idea centered around creating, capturing and passing on the real sounds of New Zealanders’ joy. “The Joy Collective” whereby the most addictive sounds of our joy are captured and used to build a song that rings out for the entire world to hear.
The Joy Collective was the finest example of co-creation. The team comprised Cadbury, DDB, Rapp, Tribal and Mango (PR/Experiential).

How it works:
The sights and sounds of joy for The Joy Collective – made up of musicians, producers, directors, film engineers and legendary vocalist Bobby McFerrin – were captured to make a song of the sounds of collective joy. The first Glass and A Half Full Production created by a nation.

The idea comprised of three critical phases:

1) Ignite the feeling
A year-long series of entertaining events across the country which allowed New Zealanders to experience and share the true contagious power of joy and at each event Cadbury captured the spontaneous sights and sounds joy from these events which have been hosted online and shared with the online community.




Giant Snow Globe - making the Kiwi dream of a white Christmas come true.
The first time it snowed in Auckland was 1939. The second time was in 2010. In the middle of summer three busy public spaces turned into a winter wonderland. For 12 days, Kiwis could feel falling snow and a giant Christmas tree with chocolate decorations at its center. Almost 35,000 people experienced the joy of a white Christmas that summer.

Sounds collected: Squeals of delight, oohs, ahhhs and giggles.

2) Build on and capture the feeling
The second phase focused on constructing the song and making sure they captured as many nuances of sounds of joy as they could.



The phase was kicked off with a 30” teaser ad asking New Zealanders “What does joy sound like”? It purposefully peppered Bobby McFerrin with obscure footage from events and user generated videos to create a sense of excitement and intrigue. Critical to this was taking the campaign up a gear and sparking New Zealanders’ interest without giving too much away.

3) Give back the feeling
This is the phase where the nation learnt about the song, was asked to sing with Cadbury and heard their song of joy.

Cadbury revealed the reason: To create an epic orchestrated piece of music made by New Zealanders.

A competition was run for people to upload their joyful moments and filmed everyday Kiwis doing everyday joyous things. Like jumping off wharfs, or playing volleyball, to playing in water. This created captivating and joyous content for the site.

New Zealanders sang along.

They created a giant karaoke vending machine that travelled the country, asking members of the public to sing for joy. This served two purposes.

Firstly, it was the perfect way to truly create a song made by the entire nation as they collected sounds from thousands of people and layered them in the song.
Secondly, it gave them a joyful and magical way to distribute chocolate all over the country.

The full song and accompanying music video was launched and 80,000 people lent their voice to the anthem. Cadbury arranged local musicians to remix the track and the song was freely available to anyone after making a small donation to help rebuild Christchurch.

The website acted as a window into the movement, allowing all New Zealanders to view each of our Glass And A Half Full Production events and share their own images of joyful moments through social media with the rest of the online community.

Result:
• Joy is now synonymous with Cadbury
• For a country of 4 million people, Share the Joy made an enormous impact with a PR reach of over 6.5 million and a PR value of $2,000,000
• A staggering 150,000 people experienced a Share the Joy event personally.
• 150,000 visits to the campaign website and 500,000 page views
• Sparked over a 100,000 online conversations and YouTube views
• Over 900,000 New Zealanders were reached by word-of-mouth from their family and friends, based on an average word-of-mouth of 6 degrees.



Business Impact:
• Maintained Cadbury Dairy Milk’s share, while increasing their retail price
• In the first month with all of the elements of the campaign live Cadbury saw sales lift between 16% and 27% varying between supermarket chains
• Sales increased in the supermarkets that raised their price by 12% compared to three weeks earlier

Reason for success:
• The idea connected people to the brand by inviting the nation to join in, play and share in the joy of it that in turn, created a chain reaction of people sharing the joy.
• The idea went beyond just connecting people to people, to uniting a nation through the power of joy.

Sources:

DDB Worldwide
Tribal DDB