Campaign Annual 2007: Campaign of the Year - Cadbury's Dairy Milk

Cadbury's "gorilla" raises many more questions than answers. For
example, is this a campaign or just one lucky ad? Obviously, Fallon
would argue A Glass and a Half Full Productions is the thread of an idea
that will become clearer in 2008.

But this category is not awarding next year's work. So the judges were
bitterly divided. Some argued that the disjointed outdoor executions, a
website, a few You Tube virals, a pre-match teaser and a mass of
post-match PR was simply not enough for a Campaign of the Year
shortlist.

But just say we remained open-minded, could the case for "gorilla" stand
up to its competition? Again, the jury was out. Literalists argued the
definition of campaign was "several related operations aimed at
achieving a particular goal". By these standards, PG Tips and O2 had
excelled. Both showed hard-working ideas that seamlessly translated
across channels, resulting in a wider awareness than just TV,
user-generated content or PR. PG had also marked an adland first by
successfully transplanting Monkey from ITV Digital. Could both brands
really be beaten by a single 90-second ad of a mentalist in a gorilla
suit playing his drums to a Phil Collins track?

But therein lay the rub. In adland's reductive world, where creativity
cannot exist without measurability, where a leap of imagination cannot
be made without a strategic springboard, "gorilla" defies all the odds
stacked against it. The concerns of a nervous client are all absolutely
valid. There is no reason for a gorilla to play the drums. The ad tells
you nothing about Dairy Milk.

Yet, ultimately, it doesn't matter. "Gorilla" is one of those
once-in-a-blue-moon pieces that, despite all rational evidence to the
contrary, is set to return the tracking results that most planners could
only dream of. By the end of October, value sales of Dairy Milk had
already shot up 7 per cent. Weekly sales were up 9 per cent year on year
during the period "gorilla" was on air, and the ad has already received
the highest recognition scores ever recorded by Hall & Partners.

So much of this ad's success lies in its smart execution. No massive
production budget. No multi-location shoot. Instead, some delicate
touches from Fallon helped along by some smart placement from Starcom
Media and intuitive PR from Sputnik. Posing as a real film production
company, A Glass and a Half Full Productions featured a pre-ad teaser
campaign in TV listings that resembled a film. The Glass and a Half Full
Productions website ensured a long-term dialogue with fans was
sustained. Meanwhile, 90-second slots during the Big Brother Final and
Rugby World Cup matches gave the ad authority.

TV showed it could still flex its muscles. The ad captured the nation's
imagination and a surge of interest followed. All of which was manna to
a company that had been having a pretty dismal time of it.

For until now, Cadbury had been at the centre of a number of media
firestorms. In June 2006, a series of salmonella scares had resulted in
more than one million bars of chocolate (including Dairy Milk) being
removed from shelves. Last February, its £10 million launch of the
US chewing-gum Trident had been mired in controversy after an ad by JWT
featuring an Afro-Caribbean poet was deemed racially offensive and
rapped by the Advertising Standards Authority. Then, in June this year,
news that Cadbury Schweppes was to announce a £300 million
cost-cutting exercise was another tough headline for the company.

Suddenly, barely three months later, and through "gorilla", Cadbury was
generating positive headlines again. Cuts from across the nationals,
trade press, lads' mags and radio praised and discussed the whys and
wherefores of the gorilla and it became a talisman for England's Rugby
World Cup campaign with some cultural critics even comparing it to
Dadaism - a counter-cultural piece of work going against the form of its
period.

So it's not a campaign in the traditional sense. But if one piece of
creative work is so spectacular that it can breathe new life into
television, creating its own multimedia campaign on the fly, then Fallon
and Cadbury deserve even more credit. Advertising has broken through and
brought Cadbury back into the national psyche. It's different, it's
exciting, it's fun, it worked. Sod the traditionalists. This is what
21st-century advertising should aspire to.

PG Tips

The brand got close to taking this award with a bold new campaign that
launched at the start of the year.

Al and Monkey achieved national celebrity six years ago with the ITV
Digital campaign. When the company went into administration in 2002, the
two of them seemed doomed to join other characters in advertising's
history books: Buzby, Flat Eric and the Tetley tea folk.

Resurrections have happened before. Cadbury's brought its Flake girl
back this year, and the Honey Monster got a reprieve in March. But this
was different; the campaign was the first time characters created
specifically for one brand had switched allegiance.

The first ad in the campaign saw the two reunited and discussing what
had happened to them since ITV Digital had gone, in Monkey's words,
"belly up". Al then suggests that they "get back into the advertising
game".

This approach played with advertising's conventions and let the viewer
in on the joke.

Since then, the campaign has delivered impressive results with engaging,
well-written work and some excellent through-the-line integration.

Monkey has had his own MySpace page, has been offered as an on-pack
promotion and he and Al have garnered acres of media coverage. Results
include a 15.5 per cent boost in sales that has enabled PG Tips to take
market leadership from its rival Tetley.

O2

Despite spending around £40 million on advertising over the year
across a variety of TV, press and poster campaigns, O2's 2007 was
notable for the way in which it pioneered less traditional forms of
communication.

If Cadbury and Fallon created the TV sensation of the year, then O2 and
VCCP had the sponsorship coup. The company's decision to take naming
rights for the Millennium Dome was widely ridiculed at the time, but six
months on, more than half of the UK population now refers to the
building as "the O2". More than that, the antipathy towards what had
been a notorious white elephant has been completely turned on its
head.

As well as the Dome sponsorship, the mobile operator was behind two of
the most innovative and successful uses of online across the year.
Agency Republic's "favourite place" Facebook page is the most successful
UK branded social network community - more than 20 per cent of
universities joined in, uploading photos, video and comment in a bid to
win an O2-branded party and free calls.

For O2's Cocoon handset, VCCP created one of the most impressive uses of
blogging by contacting 50 influential bloggers and encouraging them to
create a dialogue online. The response was overwhelmingly positive.

Recent winners: Sony Bravia (2006); Stella Artois (2005); Honda (2004);
118 118 (2003); John Smith's (2002)

HIGHLIGHTS OF 2007

April: Cadbury confirms it has handed Fallon a "project development
brief" under the Dairy Milk brand, moving away from its sister group
agency Publicis.

September: Fallon launches Cadbury's "gorilla" with the strategic brief
to "reignite the nation's love affair with Cadbury Dairy Milk".

October: Phil Collins' 1981 hit In The Air Tonight goes back into the
Top 20. Cadbury records a 9 per cent rise in sales of Dairy Milk
chocolate bars and reports the highest ever recognition scores recorded
at Hall & Partners.

November: Fallon announces that the second burst of the campaign will
take place in March 2008 with the aim of spreading the campaign across a
wider range of media.