Cadbury Dairy Milk celebrates payday

Sumedha Srivastav - Televisionpoint.com | Mumbai
Cadbury India is 'paying' a tribute to the salaried employees by giving them another reason to celebrate the payday, which falls on the first day of every month. Cadbury, the country's top confectioner, has launched another campaign for its flagship chocolate brand, Cadbury Dairy Milk (CDM).

The TVC opens in an old office where the cashier gives the protagonist his salary for the month. The young man breaks into a dance and the rest of the office joins him in no time. The man proceeds to pay the milkman and doctor on his way out. He then sees a young child and hands him a CDM.

The scene shifts to his house where his wife is all dressed up to go out for the evening. Again, amidst song and dance, they leave the house in a taxi. In the musical interlude, we see the wings and hood of the taxi open and the car begins to fly.

Cut to a movie theatre with a house-full board. Two men, obviously black ticket marketers, come out singing and offer the couple tickets for the movie. Inside the cinema hall, the man presents his wife with a bar of the chocolate.

The final shot shows the entire set with everyone jumping, singing and dancing. All this to the background score of "meetha hain khana, aaj pehli taarikh hain" (Let's eat something sweet, today's the first day of the month).

"For several years we have strived to make Cadbury Dairy Milk a permissible product among adults, which was earlier seen as children's indulgence. Now we are trying to plug the meetha aspect of the chocolate and how it is a suitable replacement to a sweet. With each of our advertisements, we try to break barriers for more and more people to experience the brand." says Sanjay Purohit, sales and marketing director, Cadbury India.

Studies conducted by the company indicate that CDM's popularity as celebratory indulgence has grown from near zero in 2003 to 13 per cent in 2007. Thus, it has decided to stick to the same theme in the latest campaign.

The ad was conceptualised by Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) India and directed by Prasoon Pandey of Corcoise Films. The brief given to the agency was to continue on the 'Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye' positioning that Cadbury has been following for the past five years. It started with the 'Pappu' series and was followed by the 'Miss Palampur' and 'Kenya' ads.

Mahesh Gharat, senior creative director, O&M, says "the idea behind this campaign was to capture moments of happiness and nothing does that better than salary day. We want Cadbury to own this particular concept." Interestingly, the team at O&M stumbled upon a song, Aaj Pehli Tarikh Hai, sung by Kishore Kumar for a movie called Pehli Tarikh, which was released in 1954.

Ehsan Noorani and Loy Mendonsa (from the Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy trio) recreated the music and the song for the CDM ad, which was sung by Kshitij. TV actor Varun Badola was selected as the protagonist as he had danced to a Kishore Kumar song, when he was a contestant for Nach Baliye, a dancing reality show for television couples.

As it has become a trademark with most advertisements today, Cadbury's TVC will be supported by a 360-degree campaign through print, radio and on-ground efforts. Further, the company has tied up with HDFC Bank, Axis Bank and ICICI Bank to send out text messages to account holders on pay day.

Besides television, a lot of activities are being done to promote the brand. A CDM was kept on the desks of employees across the offices of Ogilvy India, Cadbury's and Johnson & Johnson. CDM has also tied up with MTV to promote the campaign. MTV has produced two spoofs of the ad (Spoof-Boy, Spoof-Girl) which are currently on-air.

Five second ad spots are also being run across various network channels of Star India, which say 'Khush hai Star aaj pehli tarikh hai, Meetha hai khana aaj pehli tarikh hai'. Some innovations were done in the print media as well, including a false jacket done for Mid-Day and frontline ads on Hindustan Times and Lokmat.

For the record, Cadbury India is the undisputed leader in the Rs 2,000-crore per annum chocolate market and CDM is its warhorse. Though it is strong in bars (Five Star) and tablets (CDM), its rival Nestle has made inroads with its light offerings like KitKat and Munch.