Cadbury ramps up real-time marketing activity

Video: Cadbury’s “Moments of Joy” ad starring James Corden

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VlQ4hhJ8fAQ

The move is the first time the chocolate maker has applied its “Storytelling at Scale”, where it amplifies social content through a mix of curated content and paid media, to its real-time marketing. Previously, Cadbury has banked on word-of-mouth to proliferate posts around events such as London 2012 or Valentine’s Day but is now adopting the strategy after it boosted sales for its Crème Egg brand last year.

Posts and other user-generated content could then be pushed to outdoor or mobile ads according to the chocolate maker, reflecting a shift to “always on media buying”.

The initiative will see Cadbury assemble social media teams, consisting of marketers, agencies, legal and corporate affairs staff dedicated to responding quickly to off-the-cuff moments at pop culture events. The model is one increasingly used by big brands around big events, however, Cadbury believes its use of paid media will pull it ahead of other brands looking to create their own moments.

Kate Wall, brand manager at Cadbury, told Marketing Week it is learning how to use platforms such as Facebook and Twitter at the same “meaningful scale” as more traditional media. Crème Egg’s 2013 Easter campaign drove the same purchase consideration shift through Facebook as TV, for a third less, the business previously revealed.

Cadbury trialled the process during last week’s Brit Awards where its own marketers gathered alongside agencies GolinHarris, PHD and Gravity Road to react in real-time during the ceremony with content from its “Moments of Joy” campaign. Quirky Dairy Milk-related posts were created throughout the awards with the most successful ones, which included references to Bruno Mars and the Arctic Monkeys (see above), targeting commuters using digital outdoor ads at 300 sites across London.

The move led to 3.3 million ad impressions and delivered an additional 10,000 Facebook and Twitter followers over four hours. While Cadbury is yet to determine the initiative’s impact on sales, it says it is “delighted” with the results “proving social media allows us to execute storytelling at scale”.

Cadbury has been tailoring its real-time marketing strategy since its “Spots vs Stripes” London 2012 campaign and has previously said it sees the technique as key to becoming an “always-on” brand.