RedKarpet.co.uk - -Cadbury & Advertising

Industry

Guerrilla marketing -

is the glass half full?

We've all seen it. The strains of Phil Collins' "In the Air Tonight" . The camera panning back to reveal the passionate, drum-bashing Cadbury gorilla.
If any TV advertisement can be said to have mutated into an event, it's this one. Even now, the popularity of "Gorilla" continues apace on the internet, thanks to Fallon, the advertising agency responsible for the ad.
Sat Bal spoke to Fallon partner Chris Willingham about Cadbury Dairy Milk's "A Glass and a Half Full Productions."

Chris, the recurrent question -what does it have to do with chocolate?

Fallon's quest is to deliver communications that engage via relevant entertainments. With Gorilla we were using a different communications model with the ad and
it wasn't an overt communication of the message.

Some people worked it out quickly and others didn't. This sparked off the debate - what does the ad mean?
A huge online debate ensued and is still raging because Gorilla polarises opinion - some love it, others hate it!

Put simply, the association with Cadbury lies in the ad's message that chocolate is about pleasure. Pleasure is about entertainment and the ad has entertained people in droves.

Chris Willingham

In our industry it'd be a bold event organiser who relegated the client's brand to a product metaphor as Fallon seemed to do with Gorilla. Was your client easily persuaded by this subliminal strategy?

It did take some convincing and it was a leap of faith on the part of marketing director Phil Rumbol because Cadbury is traditionally quite risk-averse so it was a significant leap for them. Although it was a long process achieving consensus the decision was a successful one and Cadbury has to be respected for that.

It's starting to become a cause célèbre in other areas too and Phil Rumbol is in demand from different quarters. He's already delivered talks to audiences such as the Marketing Society.

How long did the ad take from brief to execution?

We had a finished piece of advertising in May. We went through quite a lot of research and did quants testing on the bull's-eye target group; women aged 21-29 as well as other age groups and males. The feedback was unanimous with the group using words like "amazing" and "fantastic". We knew we had something significant on our hands because it's unusual for people to praise ads in these emotive terms.

We received the brief in March '07 and the ad was finally aired in August. In that sense it was a normal script-to-air timescale.

How did the ad transcend advertising boundaries to become an event?

It's true that the ad became an event. It became an event because of its creative execution and the media planning ie buying 90 second TV spots which is very expensive.
It was propelled to event status by the online medium and peoples' discussion of it on the internet and their constant replaying of the ad online.

As an example, the OTS (Opportunity To See) for a normal ad is 37% but the OTS for Gorilla hit 68% and this was driven by the viral marketing that was created through the online activity by the public. We also linked it to an actual event, the Rugby World cup and the "Come on boys" rally which portrayed Gorilla as a good luck talisman and this brought further exposure.

Gorilla didn't require much logistical event production to set up. The idea behind it isn't the gorilla - he's just an executional device - the idea is "A Glass and a Half Full Productions." Its success lies in its originality and the strong word-of-mouth current that is rare on this type of work.

“Not only is the gorilla a better drummer than me, but he’s also got more hair....can he sing too?” Phil Collins

How does Fallon use events in its marketing mix?

We've done further work for Cadbury's Natural Confectionery Company which is based in Australia. For this we've used event-based days for the research phase of the work. It's simple and involved days out with mums and kids with mums treated to coffee and nail bars while the children were happily occupied by our entertainers. It's not glossy and it is at the local level but it has put the people at ease which makes for more accurate research findings.

Fallon's ad for the Sony Bravia TV launch involved the hurling of a million coloured balls down a San Franciso hill. Was "Balls" a precursor to Gorilla?

All our ads happen so differently that I'd be worried about calling it a process.
The Balls production was more complex than Gorilla but it did capture the imagination of the locals who congregated to witness the production. They filmed the day's events on their camcorders and sent it around the globe to people who they knew and in this sense there was a Gorilla parallel because their activity exposed the ad. A good example of this was when our creative director, Juan Cabral, was sent film footage of the day's activity by a friend from Argentina!

Fallon has always had a good creative reputation and we have an unswerving belief in the power of creativity. It's then a matter of recalibrating that creativity for different clients, be they Skoda, Asda or Cadbury.

They said;

Chris Wood,
Chairman of Branding Consultancy, Corporate Edge;

At the risk of being oversimplistic, Cadbury has two tasks vis-à-vis the British consumer.

Firstly Cadbury has been, and continues to be, a British institution. However, it is important that it is an institution that feels fresh, contemporary and relevant, rather than dusty or old fashioned.

Secondly Cadbury has always produced the most delicious confectionery known
to man. It is equally crucial that every time people think of the product brands, they are overwhelmed with the desire to eat one now!

The Gorilla campaign squarely and bravely addresses the former issue giving Cadbury the contemporaneity that it had arguably lost. As such it hopefully does the difficult job of keeping Cadbury desirably in mind with a
younger set of consumers.

Beyond this brand building however, it will remain absolutely crucial to project the products and brands with mouth watering desirability to promote sales. Cadbury, as every other manufacturer of treats, can never afford to be intellectual at the expense of sensual.

Nigel Scott, Creative Director, Out of the Blue Communications;

Let's get one thing straight from the off. I love the Gorilla advert. It made me laugh and it made me talk about the product.

I think the most interesting thing about it, and what excites me, is when Chris Willingham talks about the 'leap of faith' that the marketing director took to sign off the creative. Many marketing directors take a similar

leap of faith when considering an experiential marketing campaign.

It is still seen as a high risk comms channel but when activity is executed with as much panache and original thinking as the Cadbury ad, it create massive talkability and emotionally connects people to the brand.

Mick Kluczynski, MJK Productions

I personally do not like Phil's music, but I like him as a person. As far as the ad is concerned, because I have never liked esoteric English R&R, I
think a gorilla being able to play what became a very formulaic drum sound is very amusing, and his timing is great.

Click image for MJK's Profile

Need a replay? Log on at