Cadbury Silk and Cadbury 5 Star - ambush marketing or Guerilla marketing - Sniping at own brands - Product Cannibalism

17-02-2020

Usually, companies try ambush marketing or Gureilla marketing on competitors or competing brands. But this is unusual! Cadbury is snipping at its OWN brand. Cadbury 5 star takes on Cadbury Silk.

Cadbury Silk says "how far will you go for love" on valentine's day and Cadbury 5 star is saying "do nothing". Creativity running wild. May be target audience are different. But if they are same, what are you trying to convey Cadbury?

Comments: 

Patrick Anthony: Cannibalism

Vijay Kumar Singh: Mom cooks noodles, as well as cereals, also considering the mood of the child but she doesn't want her child to cry for food. 😜

Vikram Aditya: It's being in a Relationship vs. Being Single. Targeting people's emotions and pushing the product line defining their relationship status.

This may decrease the sales of 5 Star, cannibalism will happen if customers take this ad seriously and will not buy 5star because of obvious valentine's day reasons.

Cadbury Maid ad - Too Clever to do any Good!

Over the years Cadbury has been known for its heart-touching advertisements! There was a time when we used to wait with bated breath for the new Cadbury advertisement! 

Recently Cadbury's creativity has taken a beating and some of the latest advertisements are leaving, much to be desired. The worst of them was the "Do nothing advertisement" where a guy refuses to help an old lady in distress and we are supposed to feel happy and consume a Cadbury after seeing it! 

Now here is a Cadbury Dairy Milk advertisement that provokes a similar thought process. 

A bai (a household help) who is about to put dirty clothes into the washing machine starts berating her owner.

She says "I keep finding things in your clothes.  License, headphones, and other miscellaneous articles. And now this" 

She holds up a Cadbury Dairy milk chocolate, "What would have happened if I had washed your clothes without checking". 

The smug youngster, says with a smile "but, I left it deliberately and it is for you". The advertisement ends with the bai looking at the young man with tear-filled eyes. 

I had almost sleepwalked through the advertisement but was stopped dead in my tracks by my wife's comment, "What nonsense, this is pure tripe. Why can't the guy simply give the CDM directly to the bai? Why this roundabout way of giving her. Why give her as if by accident and that too pretend as if he has forgotten about it". 

I totally agree, the advertisement is too clever for its own sake. Let us keep our advertisements simple and pure. Simplicity always works!

Cadbury And Spotify advertisements, Common sense is not common!

 First posted on Facebook on 12th December 2020. 

The latest advertisement for Cadbury Chocolate left me bemused. The chocolates for the grown-ups!

At 18 one is supposed the be grown up. The 47-year-old Aishwarya Rai is the model! At this rate at 60, she will be an adult and middle-aged at 85!

Find the Bollywood obsession with age or rather trying to hide their real age quite silly.

We have Anil Kapoor 63 years old and Nagarjuna 61-year-old playing 40-45-year-old father's role in Spotify ads. Quite fascinating.

The worst part of the charade was 61-year-old Nagarjuna calling Gangavva who at 58 is four years younger than him avva!

Cadbury - Do Nothing Advertisement - Absurd to say the least!

I just watched the latest advertisement for Cadbury Five Star - Do Nothing. Surprisingly Cadbury has taken irrelevance and being in-the-face to the next level!

Sad to think that this is the brand that gave us some memorable advertising campaigns like Cadbury Cricket. The advertisement starts with an old lady on a bench. Just a few feet away is an upstart youngster nonchalantly eating a Cadbury Five Star.

The old lady's walking stick falls on the ground, and she asks the youngster to pick it up. The youngster responds 'yes Maa Ji" AND DOES NOTHING.

The old lady resignedly gets up walks to the stick and picks it up. A large piano crashes and hits the bench that the lady was occupying JUST SECONDS BEFORE! The bench is blown to smithereens.

The old lady is shell shocked — the thought "what if" races in her mind. "I could have died". She looks admiringly at the youngster and says "thank you beta, For doing NOTHING."

The youngster breaks out into a smile " you are most welcome" is his cheeky reply.

I am surprised and mildly shocked. Cadbury is mocking the tradition of respecting and helping elders. And it is glorifying, condoning, justifying and even rationalizing the act. It is saying that if the youngster had helped the old lady, she would have died. This is absurdly twisted logic.

Wish Cadbury came out with a better campaign. Doing nothing and consuming Cadbury is a great concept. You don't need a reason to eat Cadbury. Brilliant idea, Eat Cadbury -Chumma or like they say in Tamil Simply like that. But the execution stinks to high heaven.

Hallmark Greeting Card Company had popularized the concept of No Occasion Day. On that day people sent each other cards chumma simply, in other words just like that!

Come on, Cadbury. You have a harrowed reputation to protect. Don't sully it with such advertisements. Give us campaigns that we are proud of and which we show in our classrooms to inspire youngsters to take up marketing/ advertising as a career. Not campaigns that mock our traditions and values.