It had to happen – chocolate meets social media! Most of us love chocolate but why has Cadbury delved into the depths of social media? What is the benefit of this approach to their huge marketing campaigns and why have their PR consultants used this strategy?
Well social media can enable businesses to reach out to far more customers than normal marketing campaigns – social media is a ‘here-to-stay’ method to achieve marketing, communication and branding goals in todays technological world. Social media involves sharing online videos, images or content for the purpose of marketing.
So let’s take a look at Cadbury – and how they have utilized the power of social media to increase their ROI:
Bournville Granny VS Crannies Campaign (2013)
The focus of this campaign is the new premium dark chocolate and cranberry range created by Cadbury India Ltd. The social media promotion is centered on animated videos presented via YouTube allowing the public to interact by posting comments.
Cadbury have created a story in which granny will go to any lengths to find the elusive cranberries which are very rare – thereby increasing the desirability of their cranberry range.
Bournvita ‘Tayyari Jeet Ki’ Campaign (2013)
Cadbury India Ltd has launched a massive campaign on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter to promote its new chocolate flavoured health drink ‘Bournvita’. Instead of promoting their new product their marketing ploy is based on a mother teaching her son the benefits of healthy habits in life – teaching her son to win at life and that winning does not always come easily or quickly.
The Facebook page encourages mothers to post stories with good morals to encourage children to aspire to a healthy life – and they highlight that only a mother knows best! Trending is stimulated by Twitter users who are encouraged to tweet about living a life with good habits and morals and they can win gift vouchers for doing so. The secret here with Twitter is that the hashtag will be associated with building good life habits and morals – leveraging their brand via social media using Twitter mothers was a stroke of genius!
Joyville Campaign (2013)
Currently, the Cadbury UK Facebook page is running a marketing campaign for their Joyville chocolate range with a chance to win one of eight gold bullion bars if your bar has a gold wrapper or prize code. The first gold bar has already been won by someone in Ireland! The UK Facebook has more than 400,000 fans so far!
On a smaller level, their Google Plus page is offering goody bags to winners of the 5 best recipes using their Cola Pretzel Honeycomb Marvelous Creations bar – a marketing campaign reaching thousands of people.
Olympic Campaign (2012)
Cadbury was a major sponsor of the 2012 Olympics and Paralympics and has claimed to have added 2.5 million new fans across their UK Facebook page, Twitter and Google Plus. They dedicated their social media campaigns to these Olympic events and also claimed that in total, their social media channels had 7.5 million fans.
One area Cadbury found a huge success was creating daily trends on Twitter – where once started trends can achieve an exponential growth in tweets as people chat about the trend all day long. Cadbury has claimed that this campaign was a massive success and that social media is all about testing and learning what works for your brand.
Since both YouTube and Facebook are huge social media marketing arenas, a PR firm that understands the power that social media can bring to your business is clearly an indispensable component of an effective marketing plan.
About the Author: The article is written by Susan Beaven who is an independent marketing consultant and social media specialist.