Cadbury Dairy Milk: Thank You

In light of the COVID-19 crisis that hit globally as well as the national lockdown, the economic machinery came to a standstill. The environment was gloomy with people losing their livelihoods and people were struggling to make ends meet. In such a situation, the chocolates category, which is considered discretionary, faced potential de-prioritisation to other essential categories. Since people were spending less time outside of home, it was an even bigger concern for the category which is traditionally driven by impulse purchases in physical stores. As the leader of the category, CDM was tasked not only with reviving itself, but acting as a catalyst for the entire category, which was going through a relevance crisis.​

At the same time, the brand wanted to ignite generosity by encouraging Indians to be more thankful even in dark times. While CDM was working on building the Thank You platform for a year before the COVID crisis hit, the event led to all brands appreciating the warriors who work relentlessly in the face of COVID.​

CDM had to differentiate itself in the way it approached Thank You to ensure our narrative was not diluted by what other advertisers were doing or be perceived as opportunistic and riding on the current sentiment

Cadbury Dairy Milk has been the first taste of chocolates for a billion+ Indians and proudly ‘owns’ the sweet space among Indians’ tastebuds. In order to unlock the next lever of growth, there was a need to build beyond the functional benefits of chocolate and harp on the emotional benefits of sweetening interpersonal relationships.​

A Lighthouse project mounted in partnership with Google revealed that a typical Indian, while not thankless, tends to ‘thank less’ i.e., there is a tendency to ignore the contribution multitude of people who make an impact in their life on a daily basis. ​

There existed a strong ‘hierarchical bias’, an implicit power distance that created hesitance towards acknowledging other individuals across social strata, treating their services rendered as ‘part of the job’, discarding the efforts put across by the other person.

CDM wanted to instil a feeling of mutual respect for people involved in their day-to-day life, creating heartfelt acknowledgement as well as personifying the emotion of ‘Thank You’​

We were ready with all assets to kick off the campaign on 28th March but had to call off our launch when the country went into lockdown due to the pandemic. ​

With the COVID-19 crisis gripping the country and many people continuing work as usual despite the life-threatening pandemic, the emotion that the brand wanted to evoke became more important and provided us a perfect launch-pad for the campaign.

Over a period of 6 months, we partnered with the biggest media houses in our journey to make India more thankful; they in turn supported us with outputs that are not doled out to regular advertisers.​

We partnered with Zee Network one of the largest TV networks in India. 14 popular protagonists, across 7 languages shed their on-screen avatar and thanked their assistants, make up artists and spot boys. To ensure the efforts of the staff are recognized and seen by all audiences,​

Zee Network aired Ending Credits at the beginning of the show instead of the end. ​

We extended this partnership to Star Sports, the broadcasters of Indian Premier League (IPL) who thanked their production crew and off-screen staff who helped keep IPL alive when all other live sporting events were shutdown. ​

We also partnered with Sony Network for ‘Kaun Banega Crorepati’ (Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire) where Amitabh Bachchan thanked production crews, and urged millions of Indians to be express gratitude towards those who help make our lives better. ​

News channels also became part of our initiative, with news-readers thanking cameramen.​

To further scale up, we tied up with top regional/national print partners and curated a ‘Thank You’ section, which had stories of people going beyond their call of duty to inspire the larger audiences. Jio, India’s largest telco joined forces and encouraged it’s users to thank more by allowing them to create special Thank You cards​

Limited edition ‘Thank You’ bars were created, with the brand name replaced by Thank You in 8 languages. Proceeds from the sales were to he used to provide health insurance to unskilled laborers. Further, we also partnered with Mumbai Indians, the most popular IPL franchise and committed to insure 2 people for every run scored by the team in IPL20.