By Malay Desai
From: O&M India
The new spot for Cadbury’s bitter chocolate brand features blonde women chatting at a hen party. One of them is gushing about her new pet kitten to another who keeps exclaiming ‘so sweet’ to everything. Their onlookers, two more ladies watch them expressionless, sharing a chocolate, as a giant plant appears out of nowhere and swallows the chatter. The film ends with a shot of the bored onlookers and the brand’s logo and tagline – ‘not so sweet.’
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When Cadbury, India’s generic name for chocolate kicked off a campaign for its smoother variant of milk chocolate, Silk, it featured young and old adults licking away the product with unmindful glee.A part of the audience disliked it for its over sweet tone which made one feel like smacking the chocolate-licker. We’d like to believe this film is an antidote.
In 2009, while bringing dark chocolate to a market which won’t pay for or enjoy anything bitter, Cadbury would’ve known its limitations. The first campaign onwards, its ads have featured non- Indian faces, perhaps to give a ‘we’re bringing this international flavor to you’ feel. We thought the debut route of ‘You don’t buy a Bournville, you earn it’ was clever and unique. Another film featured African cocoa farmers and reeked of racism… and here’s the latest, which plays safe and stays funny.
There’s much comic timing in this 45-seconder. We all know people (sorry girls, mostly you) who gush at anything which borders on anything cute – shoes, pets et all and many of us also go ‘That’s enough’ in our heads at the diabetic sweetness. The ad exaggerates this well, with the Venus flytrap plant swooping into gobble down the irritant. Those who recall the ‘giant bird picking up the suited man’ at the end of the debut film will connect with the route.
Our biggest problem with the ad is the most obvious – why no Indian faces if you’re talking to Indians? Thanks for the sub-titles here but won’t local appeal work better especially if you want to push an alien idea of ‘bitter chocolate’ into our minds? Surely Cadbury wants to tap many more folks than the ones who already like dark chocolate.The inthe-face tagline is a good start.
This film was integrated well with Cadbury’s active presence on social media – the #notsosweethashtag was used cleverly. But with the unique product and an Amitabh Bachchan at hand, we’d like to see a shubh aarambh of something new.
To watch this film or the previous campaigns, visit Bit. ly/NotsoSweet
