Objectives:

2021 saw Indian economy fighting hard to revive. Big brands with big budgets were combating business downturn. Small traders, who contributed to 80%+ of Cadbury Celebration sales, didn’t have means to compete.

To secure business for Celebrations, we needed to get people to make their festive purchases from local stores.

Insight:

Diwali is the most celebrated festival among Indians. This is also a period heighted level of consumer spending, making it an important event for almost all brands and business.

Diwali is especially crucial for Cadbury Celebrations, given that it accounts for more than 45% of the annual sales.

Selling Celebrations isn’t the same as selling other chocolate brands. Unlike impulse purchase, the gifting business opportunity has a limited window. It thrives on the seasonal demand for sweet gifting during festivals. Celebrations exists to gain the greatest share of this sweet gifting pie.

But Consumer sentiment was at its lowest due to a fall in household income, job/pay cuts- affecting impulse buys the most. This resulted in chocolate category sales nosediving by almost 60% during each lockdown.

Since consumers weren’t indulging as much as before, grocers focused on stocking essentials over chocolate, compromising our shelf presence and chances of being picked up.

Moreover, the lingering after-effects of a devastating second COVID wave meant moods were somber, and festivities would be muted.

Celebrations response to the impending crisis:
Offline trade contributed 95% of Celebrations’ business and was struggling. Efforts were undertaken to scale up ecomm, but it alone could not cover for the huge sales that were expected from offline sales.

To ensure Diwali-2021 was successful for Cadbury Celebrations, we not only needed to make chocolate a relevant gifting option, but also make sure the small traders stocked up on product while uplifting mood during the festive season.

Strategy & Idea:

Cadbury Celebrations stands for Generosity. It believes that there is some kindness in all of us that’s waiting to be nudged. To evoke generosity during the festive season, we realized we needed to be generous ourselves.

We decided to lend a helping hand to the small store owners so that they too could compete with their bigger counterparts. By
themselves, they would neither have the means, nor have the knowledge and experience to launch media campaigns to drive footfalls.

So we would need to advertise on their behalf.

We had faced a similar situation in 2020. As a response, we had launched Not Just a Cadbury Ad- a hyper-localized geo campaign where we shared our advertising real-estate to promote local stores. Through the use of AI, specific local stores in 2kms of the users vicinity were tagged in our ads on real-time basis. Deployed in over 300 pincodes, the campaign was a roaring success and was applauded by all corners of the society. There were some learnings that emerged from last year’s execution:

We needed to give the store owners something they could never achieve by themselves: While the traders appreciated our
previous effort, we had to go beyond text based creative optimization to give them an asset that which seemed it was made specifically for their store

Cover as many stores as possible... and more: For every store that was included in our campaign, there were hundred other stores that could not be featured. To overcome this, we had to cover more pincodes. But that still wouldn’t have been enough!

So we had to create a mechanism that could be used by individuals to make their own version of the ads.

Execution:

Re-introducing “Not Just a Cadbury Ad” – a hyper local personalized ad featuring Bollywood Superstar- Shahrukh Khan (SRK) promoting retailers & urging people to remember them while making their festive purchases this Diwali.

We resorted to the power of tech, dynamic creative optimization and AI to localize the campaign to 500+ pincodes with 2500+ local business owners. Working with our tech partners, Rephrase.ai and DeltaX, we used machine learning to recreate SRK’s face and voice to take local store names in the ad. Every time a Celebrations ad was served, the user would see and hear SRK encourage purchases from specific stores that were in close vicinity of the user.

The campaign was launched across Facebook and YouTube simultaneously. Each ad served was customized to feature SRK promoting specific local shops from 5 categories covering grocery, clothing, footwear, eyewear and electronics.
We were aware that we would never be able to cover all stores. So, we created a microsite- NotJustACadburyAd.com, where users could go and create their own version of the ad, either for their own business, or for someone else they knew. These ads were made available to download and share within individuals whatsapp groups and social media feeds. Traders felt extremely proud that the biggest brand ambassador in India was now a brand ambassador for their own store- something they could have only dreamt of.

Results:

The campaign delivered 22% higher VTRs and 18% higher CTRs
105k users logged on to NotJustACadburyAd.com to create their own version of the ad

A total of 130k versions of the ad were created which were circulated through whataspp and social media

The campaign earned PR worth 1.5Mn+ USD

Cadbury Celebrations delivered a bumper Diwali, growing by 29% vs LY (highest ever Diwali delivered on the brand)

The Confederation of All India Traders (CAIT), which represents millions of traders across India, reported a whopping 74% increase in Diwali sales- clocking the highest sales in a decade

This case study is widely regarded as not only the best campaign of Diwali 2021, but also a stellar example of how media, creativity
and tech come together to create meaningful connections with brands. It has opened up huge possibilities of AI based innovations that other brands are trying to leverage now.