Monday, November 26th 2007

Occupational Hazard #2

Continuing the theme of advertising on TV and how we tend to analyse the effectiveness of every advert we ever watch, the next occupational hazard has to be knowing obscene amounts about the advertising industry and scaring normal people with your knowledge. When asked over the weekend what the advert with the drumming gorilla is advertising I was the only person who knew it was for Cadburys.

In terms of the effectiveness of the advert this was pretty damning, since only the person in the industry knew the answer. Surely, as a brand awareness ad it has completely failed. However, everyone now remembers the drumming gorilla. I reckon that the problem with the ad is that Cadburys is in no way related to drumming, gorillas or Phil Collins, so the connection between cool advert and brand isn’t made by the audience.

Posted by Tasha on Monday 26th of November 2007 at 12:18pm

Tags: Media

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This is ad agency creativity gone mad. It will probably win lots of creative awards but it wont be winning any effective advert awards. I doubt very much that this will generate any additional sales for Cadbury's and it definitely falls into the 80% waste bucket for me. A BIG waste of money.

Posted by Caroline on Monday 26th of November 2007 at 2:13pm

Direct from the chocolatey mouths of Cadburys:

“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. So if a drumming gorilla’s not enough, wait until you see what else we have up our sleeves.”

I feel we should be grateful there are people out there trying advertising like this. Okay it may not sell chocolate but it will, in time, build brand awareness.

If we all approached advertising like those awful Picture Loans ads, the world would be an incredibly dull place.

Posted by Richard on Monday 26th of November 2007 at 2:44pm

What about being creative and effective? There are plenty of very good adverts that make us smile, like a lot of Guiness ads, Carlsberg ads, Honda ad. What's the point of the Cadburys advert if no one remembers what it's trying to sell.

Posted by Tasha on Monday 26th of November 2007 at 3:30pm

Most Guiness ads have been ineffective in selling the product. They were creative and won many awards but they didn't do what they were supposed to which was sell more Guiness. The new Cadbury's ad on the other hand probably did. It was quirky so it will stick in people's memory whether they like it or not. I myself now associate Cadbury's with the drumming gorilla and I'm sure when people first saw the ad they said to friends and family etc "Have you seen that new Cadbury's advert with that drumming gorilla?" Just goes to show there doesn't always have to be a clever idea behind a good advert.

Posted by Darren on Monday 26th of November 2007 at 4:47pm

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