Cadbury Creme Egg campaign reaches 18 million

Client: Cadbury
Agency: Starcom
Lead planners: Aimee Stokes, Natasha Camp and Leonardo Metelli

Strategy
Online activity was devised to reach a core 16 to 24-year-old audience and to herald the product's return in the build-up to the advertising launch.

Activity
The Creme Egg's return was publicised via three homepages. MSN and Yahoo were used to reach a mass audience, while MTV reached the core 16-24 market, generating 20 million ad impressions in two days.

The TV ads (created by Publicis) were placed online and synchronised display ads were run in the build-up to Easter. The creative was extended into an online user-generated cartoon series popular with opinion-formers, featuring the characters Weebl and Bob. Three episodes were produced by Wootmedia under the banner "The Goovies" (www.goovies.co.uk), parodying scenes from cult films including Pulp Fiction and seeded virally, driving more than 220,000 clicks to the Goovies site. The episodes were seeded on Go Viral's network, attracting more than 379,000 views as 14% of viewers clicked through to the Creme Egg microsite.

The campaign also tied in to Bebo's online drama Kate Modern. A fake PR event, involving a Creme Egg car and a presenter dressed as an egg, was broadcast on its Bebo and Creme Egg profile pages. The episode attracted 500,000 views, double the average for the show. The Creme Egg profile attracted 181,000 profile views and 23,182 friends.

Results
The campaign was awarded the Grand Prix at the AOL/Media Week Online Planning Awards. It garnered 82 million ad impressions, reached more than 18 million users and drove 740,000 clicks, with an average click-through rate of 0.99% (FMCG average is 0.53%). Research by Hall and Partners found that overall campaign recognition was 54% among adults. The online element was recognised by 11% of adults and 24% of 16 to 24s.

Aimee Stokes, Account manager, Starcom

This article was first published on Media Week