A glass half full of joy – Cadbury Egg Commercial

Advert = British slang for advertisement, much like the American "ad"




The ad above created lots of hype in Europe in 2008, but also in other countries such as Singapore. Featuring a drum-playing gorilla is pretty original. He seems to be pretty real until you realize that he’s going to play the drums. It definitely would catch the viewers’ attention and keep it, almost like sponsoring a sitcom. Talk about gorilla marketing... More like guerrilla marketing.


“A glass half full of joy” appears on a purple screen at the end of the show underneath a Cadbury bar of milk chocolate. It’s the only reason that you know it’s a Cadbury ad. I did some minor research on the effectiveness of the ad and actually even with all the hype around it, Cadbury didn’t sell as much chocolate. The advertisement won many awards and was the topic of conversation at countless water coolers, but according to TNS, a marketing research company, during the period of the advertisement’s run up to July 2008, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk actually lost ground to Galaxy (produced by rival Mars). See article here


This gorilla ad and the eyebrow ad below spawned many spoofs on youtube. Some were of kids imitating the eyebrow ad others of adults. There’s a gorilla ad spoof that is set to a Deep Purple song and many other versions, much like the David After Dentist spoofs. These also create a lot of hype around the ad when people start making their own versions.


In my Consumer Behavior class, we’re discussing the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) and it applies to the route that the Cadbury marketers took. When ability and involvement of the consumer are high, the central route works best. Cadbury sells chocolate, not yachts, so they didn’t follow this model. They went with the Peripheral route to get their message across. This is said to work best when the consumer’s ability and/or motivation to buy are low. When using the peripheral route, persuasion is accomplished through positive peripheral cues. For example, peripheral route ads typically use attractive pictures, spokespeople, or music, there are a lot of claims made and humor to get their point across. These two Cadbury ads used humor.


I would have said that they were effective but according to TNS, Cadbury’s Dairy Milk actually lost ground. Their back up plan is probably the sleeper effect, where as the ad is forgotten, the message lingers: Buy Cadbury. The next time I’m picking between chocolate in London, I probably won’t go for Hershey’s. I’ll tell ya that much.