The path of Cadbury in India 🍫
Unravelling the eventful journey of a brand that entered India in 1948 and will stay in our hearts and tounges forever.
*Self-promo alert*
If you like what I’m doing here can you tweet about it?
It would make my day if you did 👉👈
I even wrote a tweet for you to make this super smooth.
Even Linkedin or IG would do ❤️
*Self-promo ends*
Let’s dig into the meat now
The beginning
Cadbury entered India as early as 1948, just one year after independence.
Since we weren't exactly an economic juggernaut they had to figure out and build everything from scratch.
They set up their own cattle farm in Pune for milk and cocoa research centres to develop and grow cocoa at their own cost.
Cadbury entered with their Dairy Milk product line. And cut to today it is the Cadbury Dairy Milk (CDM) bar that is quintessentially ‘a Cadbury’. (That's one hell of a case study on umbrella branding)
The affluent global citizens of India and their kids welcomed them with open arms. The same way they have done with Kia and MG.
But Cadbury is FMCG not automotive, so one of the biggest issues they faced from the get-go was — storage.
Continual power cuts even in Metro made sure that the CDM bar melted way before it reached the little kid’s mouth.
Cadbury innovated.
It came up with the iconic "sheet metal" open display dispensers for retail outlets.
The product team on the other hand launched Gems and 5 star that could withstand the sub-continents harsh weather.
But the actual journey of CDM doesn't start picking up until 1984.
Huh, what changed in 1984?
Well Dr V. Kurien engineered Operation Flood and India had its white revolution.
We suddenly went from milk-deficient to the world’s largest producer.
Cadbury could now shift from powder-based milk ingredients to actual "dairy milk" chocolate.
CDM got a brand new packaging, expanded distribution and the advent of colour TV signalled the beginning of many legendary ads to come.
CDM soon became the symbol of love & reward for the children.
In short, business was good.
Here's the "Sometimes, Cadbury's can say it better than words" ad that captures the brand positioning of that time perfectly.
I noticed two peculiar things about this campaign.
First, this was aimed at the modern English speaking, nuclear family having Indian not the traditional, joint family having Bhartiya.
Second, the glimpse of the husband sharing CDM with his wife, in the end, looks forced. It tries to push the narrative that CDM was not just a children's brand. But in essence, having dairy milk was considered a childish activity, permitted for adults only in the company of children.
Cadbury main "Kuchh Khaas hai"
You saw how Cadbury was trying to persuade people that it was not just a children's brand right?
Well, they actually managed to pull it off in 1994.
Ogilvy launched the "Real taste of life" campaign for CDM. They did it so well that it won them the award of campaign of the century by Ad Club of India.
A woman ducking security and dancing on the field when the batsman hits a six might have been the Jarvo moment of the 90s.
But what it signified was a tectonic shift. A shift from the message of "for the kids" to "the kid within". This was also necessary because the lakhs of children who had come to love CDM were fast outgrowning their target market in terms of age.
You can also see the post-liberalisation effects from this ad. The jingle is no longer a copy-pasted script of the west with Indian actors. The jingle goes something like
Khaas hai …
Kuchh swaad hai
Kya swaad hai …zindagi mein
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk.
Asli swaad zindagi ka.
The BIG pivot
Cadbury was doing great. All brands combined they had more than 65% market share. Even the entry of the biggest food and drinks company in the world, Nestle, couldn't dethrone them.
Granted there were snags here and there. Like the worms controversy of 2003, where Mumbai food and drugs administration found actual worms in some samples. But Cadbury quickly dusted themselves back up with new packaging and an absolute masterclass in PR using Amitabh Bachchan. (You can see the ad below)
But Cadbury was an unstoppable machine. The only problem was that this machine was slowing down.
Sales were starting to flatten.
Introducing new products would lead to cannibalization and heavy promotion was not sustainable over the long term.
It was clear.
Cadbury needed to open up new segments and expand the market.
But how?
See there's a playbook every western F&B conglomerate has for the eastern markets. It's the same one McDonald's uses when it comes up with McAloo Tikki.
Customizing according to local taste is name of the game.
The caveat is, this takes both time and money. LOTS OF IT.
But to Cadbury's credit, they did try their hands at it, with Gems and 5star.
They were successful in their own right but it wasn't like they hit the jackpot.
You see differences in food habits among cultures are not just limited to cuisines but also the ethos behind consumption.
West is more individualistic and thus the desserts are seen more as means to self-indulgence but in the East, we focus more on the collective and desserts are shared happiness rituals.
The joy is not to be shared with others. The joy IS IN sharing with others.
One of those rituals was “mooh meetha karna”.
Cadbury realized that big money lies in making people believe that chocolates are substitutes for traditional sweets.
The fact that the sweet market was almost 20x bigger than the chocolate market was the cherry on top.
Finally, the crusade started and Cadbury came up with "Kuch meetha ho jaaye?" tagline to put CDM in every "ritualistic meetha moment".
Since 2005 Cadbury has come up with a series of ads like
"Pappu pass ho gaya" ads about the v auspicious occasion of someone passing their 12th exam with a hint of comic relief.
“Miss Palampur” was about Radha winning the beauty pageant but the slight twist is that Radha is not who you think she is.
"Khush hai zamana aaj pehli tareekh hai" was all about celebrating the first day of the month which is usually the day when salary gets credited to our accounts.
"Shubh aarambh" to me were the precursor to the Silk ads. Fun, shy and bubbly conversations between a boy and a girl to celebrate new beginnings.
If you observe closely these are not festivals per se. I would probably call them excuses to celebrate.
But isn’t that us?
Isn’t that what makes us Indians?
But Cadbury also has the “traditional” festivals like Diwali and Rakshabandhan covered with their Celebrations' assorted gift boxes.
The iconic ads
CDM is just one of the iconic products of Cadbury.
I think it will be too long than it already is if I include stories of 5 stars, Bournvita, Shots, Silk and others.
But it will be unfair too if I missed out on some of the iconic ads they have come up with over the years
Ads that are forever engrained in our collective pop-culture unconscious.
5-star came up with the Ramesh-Suresh duo.
This is the legendary "Pitaji ki patloon 1 bilang choti kardo" ad.
Bournvita had the "tayyari jeet ki" campaign to showcase the mother-child bond built over hard work in preparation to win.
While shots is an extension of CDM line but they had their own tongue in cheek "Mann main ladoo foota?" series which I think deserves special mention
Silk is a brand that has become synonymous with Valentine's day and I think the "Kiss me, close your eyes" jingle best explains it.
Lastly, this is more personal. But I'm someone who tries to keep up with every single development in the advertising space.
And one of the red hot niches is personalised videos at scale. There are companies like Adgreetz doing a million creatives for brands like Amazon and Flipkart.
YES, A MILLION.
And Cadbury is not really far behind. They amalgamated the personalised gifting with personalized videos narrative to create this magic. See for yourself
Cadbury leveraged DeltaX and Idomoo. So If you want to read more on the subject you know what to search.
If you really really loved it, and I hope you did, I would give you lots of hugs if you share it on Twitter.
Here's a tweet I have already written to help you and make it easy.
Do I sound too pushy?
Anyway, keep smiling, keep oversharing.
Until next time,
Kunaal from Overshare