Glass and a Half Full

It’s Monday, it sucks, i know. I’m gonna help you start the week right with 1 minute and 30 seconds of pure pleasure. The new Cadbury “commercial”, featuring a really moving gorilla playing… oh wait, just watch:

So what’s the link between this hilarious movie and chocolate i hear you say? Because, as you noticed, there is no chocolate shown in the commercial. But we can assume that the guys in the white and purple brand’s marketing department knew what they did when they wrote a £9m cheque, the biggest spend on chocolate in many years. Especially when you know that the client behind this, Phil Rumbol, is responsible for the amazing Stella Artois campaign, and that it was written by the guy who made the Sony Bravia ads (Balls and Paint).

I invite you to read this article in today’s Independent, allowing you to take a break from my poor English. Feeling lazy? I understand, you’re still hangover from the weekend. The quoted paragraphs below make a pretty good job at summarizing it:

People don’t want advertisers droning on and on about their products any more; they want to be entertained. “Cadbury traditionally did well-built ads for the interruption age when consumers had an implicit media deal with advertisers. In exchange for free TV they would allow us to interrupt their programmes with commercials,” says Green. “The nation has a massive soft spot for CDM and it is deeply embedded in the national psyche. For a brand that is so well known, it’s arguable whether the old style interruption advertising model is the best model for the future. So we are trying to engage more genuinely with our audience.”

But there is a product message in there too. In fact, the entire commercial is a product metaphor. “Chocolate is about joy and pleasure. For years Cadbury has told us that it was generous, through the glass and a half strap line. We thought, don’t tell us how generous you are; show us. Don’t tell us about joy; show us joy.”

That’s just what the campaign tries to do. “We’ve created a branded space in which Cadbury’s can be generous in bringing joy,” says Green. That may sound like adman’s blather, but it a sign of an important philosophical shift in the way that advertising agencies are beginning to approach their work.

Oh and since being remixed is a pretty good form of flattery, especially on the web, don’t miss this one, it’s almost funnier than the original! Now let me grab some more chocolate before going to bed.