Cadbury shines in #ShubhAarambh League

The objective of the campaign was to grow the preference for Cadbury Dairy Milk, broaden its user base and occasions of consumption.

Cadbury is both, literally and metaphorically, a sweet brand. It is not a name associated with aggression and certainly not one you'd think of if someone said 'ambush marketing'. Cadbury has nothing to do with cricket either. And yet, it has snuck forcefully into the current IPL season with a digital campaign, #ShubhAarambh League, without spending a bean on sponsorship. The campaign has been conceptualised by the digital agency, Pinstorm. The campaign took off in the week before the tournament started and will continue, albeit in a different form, even after IPL 6 is over.

The campaign has different facets of media attached to it. First is the offline part, which includes print media and TV, which mark out one set of #ShubhAarambh associations. These have been elaborated on digital. To recall, on the day that IPL 6 dawned, Cadbury took full page ads in leading newspapers highlighting the #ShubhAarambh hashtag with the message, 'T20 ka #ShubhAarambh'. Cadbury got around the fact that it couldn't use the tournament's name by associating itself with the format, T20.

The online bit is more elaborate. Pinstorm has appointed teams that sit and watch the matches live in their office, till past midnight, seven days a week. During the match, key points of celebration-worthy beginnings are noted, and are turned into tweets from the Cadbury Dairy Milk (CDM) Twitter profile (https://twitter.com/DairyMilkIn).

At the same time, graphical Facebook updates are also created in real time for special occasions such as Chris Gayle's knock of 175 or a hat-trick or a great Pollard catch. These are then sent to the client for approval. To Cadbury's credit, the agency gets the nod within five minutes, whatever the time. These then get posted, along with the tweets, and engagement with the content is encouraged on both platforms.

In the third part, the agency is also using online evangelists like Harsha Bhogle and Ayaz Memon to judge the best consumer tweets every day, and announce small prizes. At a different level, online evangelists such as Tinu Cherian, Rohan Joshi and others add acceleration to the messaging among their follower base.

An online leaderboard captures live the reach and retweet measures of each message - and those who spread the message furthest become a part of "The Shubh Aarambh Sharing League" and are rewarded. Winners are decided both on quantitative terms (how far did their updates go) and also by an expert jury which rewards the most creative updates.

According to Pinstorm, the campaign had already generated over 80,000 conversations on Facebook and Twitter, reached 47 million unique people on Facebook and 3.8 million unique people on Twitter. Besides, the campaign has also resulted in doubling the Twitter follower of CDM base and added over 250,000 fans to the Facebook page (

Speaking to afaqs! about the brief behind the campaign, Mahesh Murthy, founder, Pinstorm, says that the brief was to grow the preference for CDM and broaden its base of occasions of usage.

"The thought was to see if we could make the key phrase "Shubh Aarambh" mean more than what it has traditionally - to see if we could make it more part of youth speak, to encourage the thought of celebrating more kinds of new beginnings. The route was to see if we could be part of conversations that would naturally stem from the on-going T20 cricket tournament. And the numbers suggest that we have achieved most of that. The numbers are not bad for a brand that is not a sponsor of the tournament and the figures dwarf that of most official sponsors of the IPL," Murthy emphasises.

Murthy further says that media analytics indicated the reach of digital was in the same magnitude as that on TV, with the added advantage that messaging on social comes with. Hence the brand opted to go for a digital campaign which is supported by print and TV. Bedsides, Pinstorm is also in the process of creating live-action video ads as part of the same campaign.

A study by media agency MEC reported on afaqs! in mid-April, had named CDM as the second most talked about brand associated with IPL, where the first is the title sponsor Pepsi. "Our studies confirm the same thing, with the virality and visibility of Cadbury Dairy Milk far ahead of all other brands, and only somewhat lagging the title sponsor mentions. Given that the title sponsor mention came at a significant cost, we believe our campaign has been highly creative, impactful and cost-effective so far. However, #ShubhAarambh is a larger brand objective and the campaign will extend beyond this cricket tournament," ends Murthy.