Cadbury Silk: Caught on camera

The chocolate brand has released an interesting online video that captures the facial expressions of people while they enjoy Cadbury Silk inside a lift.

Since its launch in 2009, Cadbury Silk has revolved its communication around the pure sensory pleasure of the feel of Silk, showing kids, students, professionals and the elderly, all licking their fingers unabashedly in different ads. In that sense, the chocolate brand targets all age groups. In its latest communication, 'The Silk Effect Revealed', the brand catches up with Cadbury Silk lovers inside an elevator.

As a part of the campaign, the brand placed two actors (a man and a woman) inside an elevator of the Indiabulls building in Mumbai. The duo, with the familiar abandon of Cadbury Silk fans, ate the chocolate in the trademark messy manner. Cadbury also fitted cameras inside the lift to record the reactions of the people who came in and saw them eating the chocolate.

The protagonists acted as if they were mesmerised by the taste. All those who entered the lift were offered the chocolate bar. While some refused, others accepted and/or walked away with the bar. Cadbury captured all these reactions and turned them into a video, which is being promoted online. The brand has posted it on its Silkaholics community on Facebook ( YouTube and Twitter, and several other websites. The video contains no dialogues and only music and ends with the question, 'How would you react?'.

Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) created the video and it was executed on the digital platform by Pinstorm.

"The idea was to capture the effect chocolate can have on people - amusement, temptation, and other myriad of emotions," says Anil Viswanathan, VP, chocolates category, Cadbury India.

"The objective was to capture instantaneous facial reactions of people. The insight was that Silkaholics enjoy their chocolate at unusual places and unusual times. Based on this insight and looking through a creative lens, we chose a closed lift, which is an unusual place to capture people's reactions to a person indulging in the Silk bar."

The brand wanted to engage with its digital audience and create more conversations around it. The video has got more than 5 lakh views in just two weeks. On the back of this campaign, the brand has added more than 73,000 Facebook fans to its page. The hashtag #SilkEffect also trended on Twitter for three days.

Viswanathan adds that Silkaholics is a community created online for the fans of Cadbury Dairy Milk (CDM) Silk, who are unabashed about their love for the brand and openly share their immersive joy of indulgence with the chocolate. Silkaholics are always looking forward to a joyful experience of having a CDM Silk. The Silk Effect is an extension to this.

The Silkaholics community on Facebook has more than 2.7 million fans.

Cadbury India is a part of Mondelēz International Inc. The company operates in five categories - chocolate confectionery, beverages, biscuits, gum and candy. Some of its key brands are Cadbury Dairy Milk, Bournvita, 5 Star, Perk, Bournville, Celebrations, Halls, éclairs, Bubbaloo, Tang and Oreo.

Cadbury began its operations in India in 1948 by importing chocolates. Today, it has six company-owned manufacturing facilities at Thane, Induri (Pune), Malanpur (Gwalior), Bengaluru, Baddi (Himachal Pradesh) and Hyderabad and four sales offices (New Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai). Some of Cadbury's previous campaigns are T20 Ka Shubh Aarambh, Kuch Meetha Ho Jaye and Mishti.