Media 360 - The Propeller Perspective (Part Two)

From sugary drink to sugary food.

Next up was Lucy Evans, brand manager at Cadbury Dairy Milk. She finds herself in the spotlight these days for being the client in post for the fascinating Drumming Gorilla campaign for CDM by Fallon.

She came clean and confessed that Cadbury Dairy Milk was losing market share and struggling to maintain its traditional position when the manufacturer picked up the phone to Fallon.

Come to think of it, it’s no surprise that clients find their assets suffering if they insist on reducing global power brands like Cadbury to anodyne TLAs (three-letter acronymns) such as “CDM”.

So be it. Cadbury’s brief to Fallon was simple: “get the love back”.

Laurence Green, Chairman of ad agency Fallon, then took up the story.

He said the client has “cleared away the plaque that had built up around the brand and the brief over the years” and gave his agency the simple instruction to create the feeling of joy people get when eating chocolate.

Green claimed his agency and its publicity-shy creative head - the 29-year-old Argentinian Juan Cabral - had form in the emotion department. Its Skoda ad featuring a car made out of cake had won Autocar’s ad of the year award last year. And everyone knows about the Sony Bravia “Balls” campaign.

For those hoping for some insight into how Juan Cabral hit upon the idea of a gorilla drumming along to a Phil Collins track to advertise a chocolate bare, Green offered this gem. He was influenced by Gerald, the articulate gorilla character played by Rowan Atkinson in the 80s BBC comedy series Not The Nine O’clock News, who delivered the immortal line when captured, “Wild? I was absolutely livid!”

To those who ask what has a gorilla got to do with chocolate, Green responded: “…what’s a penguin got to do with chocolate? What’s surfing got to do with stout; cake with cars or Martians with mashed potatoes. It’s an emotional connection…. get over it.”

All fine and dandy. But some elements of the attempt to deliver joy have not been so well-received. Fallon also developed the “Glass and half full productions” concept as the “production company” behind the CDM ads. But while this concept seems to mean a lot to the team behind the ads, few would claim it’s struck a chord with the public.

The same could be said of Fallon’s follow up to the drumming gorilla. The ad featuring, lively trucks and wagons racing around an airstrip, has failed to seize the imagination. When this ad was shown, some in the audience wondered why Fallon had not gone with another exotic animal playing another musical instrument to another 80s classic song.

The drumming gorilla is hugely popular. There are some 120 clips spoofs of it on You Tube, some of which Green showed. (Check out the video wall on the right to see some examples)

Howard Watson, Group Account Director of media agency Starcom went through the media story.

Launched at 10.30pm on a Friday in Aug 2007 during the final of Big Brother.

He showed a rapid build of online buzz using tracking from Wavemetrix.

What was the effect on sales? Ms Evans

8% uplift during the campaign period, but she did not say what the sales figures were after this.

Roger Parry Chairman of marketing services group Media Square plc chaired day one. He was certainly an improvement on last year’s chair as he ventured into the crowd in a bid to whip up a bit of passion among the delegates.

Egged on by Mr Parry Coke’s Jonathan Mildenhall then popped up in the audience to compare and contrast Coke’s concept of happiness with Cadbury’s idea of joy. Clearly he believed his campaign had the better “legs” and, rather cuttingly he asked if Cadbury’s idea “was tight enough”.

Understandably caught off guard by a senior client lobbing a bomb, Laurence Green did his best to bluster an answer. But he pulled some punches saying he did not want to give too much away as “someone from Mars is in the room”.