Cadbury: Giant Advent Calendar
Experiential on an Epic Scale. With 24 days to Christmas, Cadbury sent 24 trucks to 24 locations across the UK to deliver 24 different experiential activations
Project:
Cadbury: Giant Advent Calendar
Client:
Cadbury (Agencies: Saatchi & Saatchi & Fallon London)
Services:
Event Production, Concept Development (Experiential), Creative Direction (Experiential)
Every year Cadbury releases a chocolate advent calendar alongside a host of their other confectionary.
But the Christmas confectionary market is a very crowded space. The sheer familiarity of a brand, that most people have been familiar with all their lives, put it at risk of being treated with indifference in a highly competitive sector.
They needed a Christmas campaign that got people talking about Cadbury and reminded consumers why it is the UK's favourite chocolate.
The Brief:
To deliver an integrated Christmas campaign across TV, Experiential, Online and Social. Reinforcing Cadbury's "joy" platform
One which delivered an evolving brand-story throughout December, and gave people a reason to keep talking about the brand throughout the lead-up to Christmas.
Solution:
To create an advent calendar on an epic scale made up of 24 huge trucks
Each truck was numbered and every day of December one of them would arrive in a different location in Britain and open its doors to reveal a different brand experience, bringing Cadbury "Joy" to the nation.
Activity:
The campaign started in November with the first of three TV ads, teasing the campaign to come
Then on the 1st of December the first experiential event was activated, marking the start of 24 days of experiential activity across Britain. Two more TV ads which aired during December, were created from content filmed at the events.
Activity:
24 experiential activations which included The Cadbury giant mistletoe event – lots of kisses and one marriage proposal...
The Cadbury white Christmas which brought a real-snow winter wonderland to a typically snow-free British Christmas. And one of the most heart-warming, a giant Christmas tree delivered to a small town that had never had one of its own. Locals were invited to decorate the tree themselves by writing personal Christmas messages on giant tree decorations, bringing the whole town together for a night of celebration.
Results:
Amplification of the experiential events across traditional press and social channels kept conversations going on about Cadbury on a national and local level all the way up to Christmas
The sheer number – and scale – of the experiential activations ensured that 1000s of people across the nation were able to be part of the experiences. This army of happy consumers amplified the events across their social channels reaching 1000s more.
The 24 experiential events, combined with the TV campaign, social and PR initiatives as well as coverage in traditional media resulted in one of the most talked about experiential activations of the year.
