Sweet Success
Now when we are in the midst of the holiday season, it’s time to talk about chocolate. In order to stand out among the competition in the chocolate and confectionary arena, companies have to make a lot of efforts in marketing and advertising campaigns and promotions. And we can also see that many companies are using Augmented Reality as a part of their sales strategy. As Kerin and Hartley mentioned in their book “Marketing: the Core”, “augmented reality is a live view of a physical, real-world environment with computer-generated images added to the view”. One of the brands that has been leveraging AR the best is a British chocolate brand — Cadbury, which is 196 years old. According to Kerin and Hartley, the company is in its maturity stage, and in order to maintain its existing customers, it has to come up with new and different promotions and events.
Back in 2017 Cadbury reimagined their holiday promotion, they partnered with Blippar and Design Bridge to create an Advent Calendar by using Augmented Reality. An Advent Calendar is used to count down the days before Christmas, and can be a good way for companies to promote their bestseller products. Consumers can open up a window starting on December 1 and on its each succeeding day to reveal a small reward for that specific date. Cadbury created the App so consumers could check in on the calendar day with the App. According to Blippar case study “How AR reinvented Cadbury’s traditional Advent calendar to drive huge engagement as social sharing” the calendar generated 200K interactions, which led to over thousands photos and videos shared throughout the holiday season. Cadbury offered an emotional and entertaining experience for its customers, which corresponds with Godin saying “We sell feelings, status and connection, not tasks or stuff”. The company was able to expand to younger consumers by implementing a social media campaign #Cadvent to generate interest and reposts among them. Here is the article: https://www.blippar.com/blog/2018/05/22/case-study-how-ar-reinvented-cadburys-traditional-advent-calendar-drive-huge-engagement-social-sharing
In 2019, Cadbury with the help of the VSERV advertising agency, created the “Take a bite” experience for consumers by having them taste its chocolate products. Using AR and AI, mouth and face movements were detected and the ads created an almost real life experience. Take a look at the article and the video: https://www.adsoftheworld.com/media/digital/cadbury_augmented_reality_ar_ad_for_cadbury
This year Cadbury brand leveraged newsjacking in their campaign. According to David Meerman Scott in his video “Newsjacking to Generate Media Attention and Grow Business Now” , newsjacking “is the art and science of injecting your ideas into a breaking news story so you and your ideas get noticed”. Building on the support and gratitude for the medical and essential workers during the Covid pandemic, Cadbury created a campaign “Thank You” where consumers are able to download the Instagram and Facebook filter to express their appreciation in many languages.
In conclusion, I want to say that those advertising and marketing campaigns were very successful for the Cadbury brand and helped to increase the sales revenue during the holiday season.
