The Gorilla in the Boardroom

So...do you get it?

The new Cadbury's Dairy Milk spot is worth taking a look at. From the agency/mind that brought you Sony's Balls, comes the first Glass and a Half Full of Milk production.

So there's a gorilla, playing the drums, to Phil Collins, and a new 'production company', which promises more content in development, to promote chocolate.

The spot brings a smile to my face. The moment the drums kick in and the gorilla flares his mighty nostrils,  the zygomatic major muscles involuntarily contract around my mouth and pull it up and open.

According to the mighty mind of Lawrence Green, this is the point. Just as a cube of chocolate causes a 'moment of joy', so the new Cadbury's strategy is about creating those moments of joy with communications.

The 'production company' website explains:

Well it just seemed like the right thing to do. There's no clever science behind it - it's just an effort to make you smile, in exactly the same way Cadbury Dairy Milk does. And that's what we aim to continue to do; simply make you smile.

There's clearly no product benefit, no USP, no reasons to believe. Does that matter anymore? Especially with a brand as well established as Dairy Milk? Is the age of Rosser Reeves drawing to close?

Green claims this is the beginning of a new model of advertising without a message:

"Advertising can be effective without a traditional 'message', 'proposition' or 'benefits'. Indeed, some of the latest advertising thinking suggests that attempts to impose them can actually reduce effectiveness. We are trading our traditional focus on proposition and persuasion in favour of deepening a relationship."

It's the old spectre of emotional vs. rational persuasion. Will this gorilla induce an associated psychologically affective state that will covertly bias cognition, altering the decision making process and increasing the propensity to purchase in the target audience? Who knows.

Perhaps more importantly in the age of ennui and clutter and that, the ad is starting a lot of conversations. Some people hate it, some people love it, but lots of people are talking about it.

And if you buy into Crispin Porter's definition of advertising - anything that makes a brand famous - then maybe that's the point.

Discuss.

Comments

[Will]

Hah, this is damn worrying - I think I wrote a post (albeit in a more rambling way) on this very topic at the same time.

I think there's a place for both conventional branding and more 'experential', conversational work like this.

Cadbury's can do the work they've done because they are Cadbury's - number one, with more of a licence to entertain. Not sure if other chocolate brands could do the same thing.

[Asi]

random is the new black...

my essay is over at mine ;-)

A.

[Ed Cotton]

It's an ad that lacks all the things the text books and the traditionalists say it should have and that's why it's good.

These days breakthrough is everything and you can either do it by copying something from culture or creating your own, Fallon has done the later.

The execution is that it's one of the few examples of a spot that works as well on YouTube as it does on TV. This is very hard to do.

However, moving beyond the execution, I want to see where "Glass and a Half Productions" goes next.

What are they doing with the "idea"?

Is there a follow up ?

What are they doing on the web?

How Transmedia is it going to be?

Perhaps once we have seen all this, we will have a different perspective.

Could it just be a good one off like Bravia, or does it go further?

[MHB]

While there is no hero product, Cadbury's color purple is one of the major players in the spot. Subtle, and in keeping with this brilliant spot.

[David MacGregor]

One of of the consequences of the argument that advertising should simply put a smile on your face (of some other emotional response) is that all of the pseudoscience of advertising can be excised. Say goodbye to planning and layers of expertise other than creative and media.

That might also mean that budgets should either be titanic or youtubic and leave the middle ground alone.

Maybe not a bad idea?

[Chris]

This is the best advert i have ever seen; the first time it came on i wudnt blink incase i missed a second of what was about to happen. Then at the end of the advert, i thort, "i don't get it" so i discussed with people who had seen the advert and they voiced their opinions and the next time it came on, sure enough, i was glued to the screen, then i realized, there is no point, and that is exactly what makes it so great, u dnt fell like your being tricked into buying some rubbish your just watching an amazing advert. Think of it like this if an advert's success was based how much it got people talking, this would be one of the most successful adverts of all time just look at all the results when googled, and its on youtube for god's sake. Infact I'm going to go out and buy a bar of cadburys chocolate right now.

[David]

I think the cleverest thing Cadbury's ever did was convince us that milk chocolate is somehow a luxury product when it's quite the opposite. They mix the cocoa butter with dairy butter to keep the price down and they aren't allowed to call it chocolate because it's so inferior, but the whole 'glass and a half' thing and the swirling milk imagery make us think we're being treated to something special.