Secret Messages

In India teenage romances are frowned upon, making most young love stories secret romances. With this in mind, on Valentine’s Day, Cadbury Silk wanted to help young lovers in India shout out their love for their partner, while still keeping it a secret from prying eyes.

Over the years, Silk has built itself on the pillars of love and gifting. From impressing, proposing to even apologising, Silk has always positioned itself as a medium to express one’s feelings in the most succinct way, helping young hearts express their deepest feelings for each other. The limited edition ‘Heart Pop Pack’ launched in 2018 and it allowed consumers to literally ‘pop’ their hearts out to their loved ones. It was an instant hit and, buoyed by the success, the brand decided to replicate its winning product during Valentine’s Day 2022 – this time on a much larger scale.

With the increasing spending power amongst the youth and a myriad of options available with the growth of ecommerce, Silk engages in a constant battle with products within and outside the category to maintain its relevance. With regular product innovations and excitement around the brand, Silk has managed to retain its position at the top of consumers’ mind to be considered as a perfect icebreaker that could evolve friendship to love.

Silk has been romancing romance and growing consistently through this occasion for over eight years. To catch the attention of the young in love, Silk needed to do more in their equation around Valentine’s Day, especially when the youth are trying to navigate through all kinds of complications in their romantic life – be it lockdown restrictions or societal disapproval of teenage romance.

This left us with a pertinent issue to resolve – how can we help our audiences express their deepest feelings with their loved ones, making them blush and cherish Valentine’s Day? This gave birth to the ‘Secret Message’ idea which would allow our audiences to ‘Go Far for Love’, make grand gestures and create memorable experiences while keeping a secret only they can cherish.

Due to parental and cultural fears, teenage romances are not openly accepted in India, prompting young lovers between 15-21 years of age to keep their relationships a secret. They find their ways to maintain the secrecy by operating two lives, even on social media accounts, disclosing their romantic relationship to limited friends or not disclosing it at all. This limits them from making grand gestures on special occasions. Moreover, lockdowns created more difficulties for couples to maintain their secret long-distance relationships and, once again this year, they were going to celebrate Valentine’s Day far from each other.

Addressing these two major issues of distance and secrecy, Cadbury Silk conceived the ‘Secret Messages’ campaign for Valentine’s Day 2022. A magical way to help young lovers to express their love to each other in front of the world yet keep it a secret, making their partner blush from a distance.

To cut out the clutter, we launched an industry-first tech activation idea, leveraging WebAR. This allowed users to scan a QR code on the limited-edition heart pop Silk pack, which directed them to a website to pen down their secret message for the special someone. This message could be shared to the recipient with a link.

Now, here is the catch. The eager recipient can only reveal the secret message when they click on the link to open the camera on their phone and point it to the nearest Silk ad – on print/OOH/digital. We amplified this activation across youth-centric touchpoints on digital including telecom and payment apps. The scale of the campaign was unmatched, with 400 million impressions on digital banners and videos, 225 OOH sites on 12 bus shelters across the country, seven print publications and 300 million impressions through influencer and content creator pages.