While the ads for Cadburys are not near the genius of the Burger King marketing campaigns they do seem highly effective. The Gorilla ad spawned dozens of spoofs and people are still talking about it:
This is the Bonnie Tyler version (The original was removed from YouTube)
And now we have the eyebrows ad and everyone is going wild for it. Fantastic:
Is that it?
Some thoughts:
- If this was an ad for Taytos would it have worked?
- Would it have worked as well if the Gorilla ad didn’t exist?
- If this ad came first, then the Gorilla ad, again would it have worked as well?
- Is this a proof that if you have enough spend, a simple ad saturated in mainstream advertising but also being spread virally (this means the people spread it and mutate it and you can’t control it, not the “we’re a viral marketing company” horseshit you see) still has massive reach.
- How much of the success of this is down to the creative and down to the coverage spend?
- With some media groups on their knees maybe going back to less social type engagement can now give a good return on the investment going in, even if it’s not very measureable. TV, radio and print is now more competitive with online for once.
- How many other companies are going to try and do the same in the next 12 months?
First time I’m seeing that eyebrow ad. I have nothing clever to add, but that little girl rocks.
“Gorillas and eyebrows = sales jumps. Gaming people is that easy?”
Perhaps this isn’t “gaming” – Maybe the smart people behind this ad are on to something that appeals to a large proportion of the population, and we can’t put our finger on it. In the absence of being able to articulate what is appealing about these ads, we call them “quirky” and “weird”.
Perhaps in a few years, Marketing lecturers will point to “the ground breaking Cadbury’s ads – The first examples of ‘Mind-F’ advertising”.
I never realised the Gorilla ad was supposed to be viral. I think that’s the first time I’ve watched it online. That’s probably also why I really liked it. It stood out because you’d never see a TV ad
1) of that length
2) go on for 45 seconds with nothing really happening
3) taking it’s time and being long (and expensive) when it doesn’t need to be.
The fact that all this tied into “a glass and a half full of joy” and dairy milk being more than the average chocolate bar made sense to me… although maybe that’s just because I work in marketing. Whether or not it helped sales I don’t know.
The eyebrows ad, on the other hand, I’ve only seen on the web. Possibly why I don’t like it as much. I enjoyed watching it but it does seem “viral” for the sake of viral. Gimmicky with no real tie in to the chocolate it’s advertising, not even a metaphor as loose as the first one.
It’s not clever
It’s not creative
It’s Different
People just crave the unfamiliar, believe me, if these sort of ads were churned out on a more regular basis people would be well sick of them.