CASE STUDY: Cadbury boosts awareness and sales of bite-sized Chocfuls

Aim

Cadbury China launched Chocfuls - bite-sized chocolates with a hard caramel coating and liquid chocolate centre - in December 2009. The new sweet targeted 18 to 22 year olds, and in particular college students. The product was designed to appeal to those who rarely ate pure chocolate, but preferred candies. Developed by Publicis Beijing, the campaign aimed to boost awareness of the new product and increase sales in the market by initially attracting 500,000 potential consumers to the Cadbury website and encouraging a minimum product trial rate of 20,000. All this had to be achieved within a budget of US$100,000.

Execution

Digital communication was a key component of the communication mix because gaming is the most popular form of entertainment among the target group. Publicis created an interactive online game called 'Happy competition - catch the candy', that incorportated augmented reality technology and offered 20,000 packets of Chocfuls as a trial. Participants were required to catch the virtual product by holding a game card with the image of a large mouth printed from the site, then face the camera and screen and try and catch as many candies as possible. Supporting components to drive traffic to the website included BBS seeding on popular youth forums such as Tianya and Chinaren, contact with key online influencers within the segment, online banners and viral videos.

Results

The campaign successfully raised the profile of Chocfuls among the target audience and surpassed the targets for site visits and trials. Over a three-month period between December 2009 and February 2010, a total of 1,081,655 website visits and 1,234,444 page views were recorded; 6,258 people signed up as registered members; and 32,000 people sampled the product. In addition, the promotional video was uploaded online more than 500 times.

This article was originally published as part of the 2010 Top 1000 Brands report.