Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad (case study)

Gifting was the fastest-growing segment until the pandemic, and Diwali gifting alone contributes nearly 50% of Cadbury Celebrations' annual revenue. However, the second wave brought challenges in the form of inflation, reduced opportunities, and lower pay.

Challenge
How can we increase the brand’s penetration against socio-economic headwinds?

Solution
Go back to our intrinsic purpose of generosity, rooted in Cadbury’s founding values to rescue it from the grip of a self-centeredness pandemic.

Insight
Our research showed us that when people helped each other, they felt more connected and together. We saw this at the height of the Covid outbreak when people helped each other find hospitals, oxygen cylinders, and care for the children and elderly. The shared adversity created an outpouring of empathy and generosity and unlocked an incredible sense of community.

Strategy
Renew the sense of community by evoking empathy. Turn Celebrations marketing into an act of unexpected generosity to rescue the business and brand from the grip of a self-centeredness pandemic.

Idea
To nudge kindness and inspire generosity, we set an example by gifting our entire advertising budget and our Celebrity brand ambassador to promote small businesses; lending them a helping hand, in their hour of need.

Execution
Imagine how millions of Indians felt when Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) - the world’s biggest movie star asked them to shop at the store around the corner by its name. Imagine how small local store owners felt to have SRK be their brand ambassador. By leveraging data, AI, machine learning, and geo-targeting, we made this possible. We created hyper-personalized SRK-My-Ads for every store - not a dozen, not hundreds but tens and thousands with SRK encouraging purchases from specific local stores close to the user. The campaign covered 500+ pin codes and was launched on YouTube and amplified on Meta platforms simultaneously.

Since we couldn’t cover all stores, we created a website NotJustACadburyAd.com – empowering users to create their own versions of the ad, for their business, or for a neighborhood store and share it on their WhatsApp groups and social media feeds.