Case Study: Cadbury Dairy Milk’s ‘Say it with Chocolate’ via OgilvyAction Malaysia
A low-budget campaign from Geometry Global has boosted Cadbury Dairy Milk sales in Malaysia and is taking Asia’s awards scene by storm.
‘Say it with Chocolate’ has shaken up the hard-to-crack gifting category in confectionery. It put heritage printing presses into supermarkets, enabling shoppers to customise 175g bars of Cadbury Dairy Milk with personal messages for their friends and loved ones.
At AdFest in March, ‘Say it with Chocolate’ took home a hat-trick of awards:
Silver: Design Category: Point of Sale: Small Scale
Silver: Direct Category: Direct Ambient: Small Scale A
Bronze: Outdoor Category: Point of Purchase Display
The campaign has also won big at Spikes Asia and most recently won two Silver awards at the Effie Awards Asia Pacific. Its success has already seen it scheduled for rollout in India.
Daniel Comar, Regional Exeuctive Creative Director – Asia Pacific, Geometry Global, said, “‘Say it with Chocolate’ shows that it’s the calibre of strategy and insight, not the budget, that really counts when it comes to breakthrough retail activation. As the awards haul shows, this work embodies our commitment to the twin peaks of Creativity and Effectiveness.”
The campaign achieved a five-point increase in perception of Cadbury Dairy Milk as a gift amongst the target audience of Malay and Chinese consumers aged 20-29 years. It attained a 30% increase in sales by value and unit – a dramatic turnaround in the previously declining moulded chocolates category (blocks and bars).
Tactical use of Facebook and Twitter, online advertising, PR, blogger engagement and mobile
marketing resulted in no fewer than 17 million digital media impressions.
The creative insight behind ‘Say it with Chocolate’ was the declining impact of words – due to
modern-day sensationalism – with stock greetings failing to resonate. The in-store printing press allowed customers to imprint their bar with bespoke greetings, from apologies to marriage proposals, only visible when the bar was opened by the gift’s recipient.