╠ Cadbury - Gorilla ╣

Since the Gruen Transfer has now ended I have no choice but to start using actual real adverts for my breakdowns. So it now comes down to actually critiquing stuff for what it is rather than breaking down something that at its root is more about humour than real marketing.

In order to celebrate this glorious transfer I have decided to critique this years winner of the D&AD's Creative Advertisement adward for Film and TV. From talking with a few people about it, it appeared that many people were simply perplexed as to why it won. So without further ado I shall explain as to why I think this ad was deserving.

Cadbury - Gorilla



First of all I would like to point out that it won a 'creative advertising' award. So overall the creativity is what is important. Marketers love new innovative ways to do things. So just first off you have to realize that winning this doesn't exactly transfer into 'This was the most effective/profitable ad of the year'.

The first bit of the ad I would like to discuss is the initial tagline 'A glass and a half productions'. I haven't seen this line used before as a direct tagline for cadbury so I believe that the actual intent of this ad was actually to launch this line. Now for those of you not marketing inclined, a line can be quite important. Easily important enough to create an advert like this for. When you break down that line the root message you're meant to get is that there is a glass and a half of milk inside cadbury. Now the obvious connotation here is that milk is good for you, it's healthy and it's also often something people don't get enough of. At the core of it all, what it is basically pointing out is 'Get your daily serving of milk from cadbury'. The indirectness of it works. Because if that line was simply thrown at you, you'd be pretty skeptical about it. However this single line leaves all the conclusions for you to draw. I also find it brilliant they didn't have to even use the company name, they simply attached the milk logo that cadbury uses to reinforce the line. So before the ad has technically even started you could see the message, think that perhaps you need more milk in your diet and that cadbury is a source of this all without the negativity that comes from being directly told such things.

That was one hefty paragaph for one line...Anyway on with the show. I'm not sure how many of you know but Cadbury actually has copyrighted the shade of purple that it uses. So if you're wondering why the gorilla is in front of such an odd colour, it is simply because Cadbury is showing off it's special own colour.

The way the start of the ad works is because first of all you're confused as to why is there a gorilla close up...What relevance is this to anything? Well one of the beauties I find in this is that it isn't really relevant at all. It keeps you guessing and it gets you talking about the ad and one of the most powerful marketing methods is viral marketing via word of mouth. One person mentions it to a few people, then those people spread it on. Then all of a sudden heaps of people know about it. I know I had a go at one of the Gruen ads for not using relevance to the topic at hand but I just believe this ad has handeled it so well. It's the kind of ad if you hear about it you have to see it, and when you watch it you get the cadbury tagline. It is awesome advertising simply because you're getting other people to do it for you without being charged.

The start of the ad is simply setting the scene. The music starts complacent, the gorilla looks complacent. It really starts to make you think that this gorilla is calm and not going to really do much at all, and of course all the while inside your head you're still going '...wtf?'. Music used in advertisements can cost absolutely heaps, it could have easily been the hugest expense in the creation of this ad to get just that song so you can see that it was specially chosen. The reason I find it perfect is that it starts out calm, and then the drums come in. However even after that, whilst the Gorilla gives you the sense of the song really getting into it, the sense of calm hangs around because it is still in the song despite the drums coming in.

Then all of a sudden drums appear and then the gorilla just gets into it. I must admit I laughed, harder than I can remember ever laughing at an ad, I thought it just brilliant because it was so shocking since they had just set the gorilla up to seem so calm. I'm not sure about others but this is really the kind of ad that I'd want to look for on youtube and tell others to look for simply because of how funny I found it. So there's another avenue of viral marketing taking place.

Finally the cadbury bit shows up, and even this I enjoy, because it is calm and still fits in with the music which I earlier described to hold onto that calm element. There's no talking over it, no prices, nothing invasive. Just a picture of the product and that same tagline again.

So overall I find this ad to majoritively be about the launch of the new tagline, the glass and a half of joy. The beauty is in that it's not telling you to go out and buy it. It is simply increasing your perception of the product which is perfect for chocolate because it is an item you cannot avoid in your daily life. Chocolate does not need ads to tell you to go out and buy it. It needs to increase your perception of its worth so that when it comes down to say in the supermarket where you're at the checkout faced with chocolate, you think 'Hey this has milk in it, I haven't had much milk today'.

I love this ad, I just find it to work on so many levels. I really hope I have explained them here well enough so that you all can understand why it was deserving of an award. As usual comments are all too welcome and if you liked this be sure to click the rss subscribe thing so you can get updates.