Cadbury Dairy Milk launches mysterious campaign teasing two new flavours

The integrated campaign from VCCP purposely glitches to keep the new flavours under wraps

By Creative Salon

19 July 2022

Cadbury puts the nation’s taste buds to the test with the release of two new limited-edition flavours called the Cadbury Mystery Bars.

Together with its global agency of record, VCCP London, the new nationwide campaign teases two new limited-edition, cream-filled flavours of the famous Cadbury Dairy Milk bar. Putting the nation’s taste buds to the ultimate test, Cadbury is giving chocolate-lovers with impeccable detective skills the chance to win a £5,000 mystery prize for those who manage to successfully unwrap the mystery and guess the flavours.

To dial up anticipation for the mysterious new flavours, the new campaign marks a step-change for Cadbury Dairy Milk from its traditional advertising approach and the creative features disruptive, intentionally glitching media placements which playfully tease the new limited-edition flavours. Eagle-eyed chocolate-lovers and savvy shoppers are encouraged to keep their eyes peeled for crinkled bus-stop ads, ‘glitchy’ digital posters and social posts that don’t seem to fully load.

Building anticipation for the nationwide competition is central to the campaign and has been inspired by how participative modern culture is. By offering Cadbury fans the chance to unknowingly trial the new flavours taps into the spirit of solving a delicious Cadbury mystery, which adds to the iconic product experience of the Cadbury Dairy Milk brand.

Pippa Rodgers, brand manager for Cadbury Dairy Milk, commented: “We are incredibly excited to launch this brand new competition from Cadbury Dairy Milk and challenge the nation to solve the flavours of Cadbury Mystery Bars. We can’t wait to see the public’s reactions and creative guesses, as friends and family come together to solve the mystery flavours!”

Available to purchase in stores from mid-July until October 2022, Cadbury Dairy Milk Mystery Bar 01 and Cadbury Mystery Bar 02 are the Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate people know and love but with two new mystery fillings.

Choccy fans who follow Cadbury’s social channels or those who subscribe to the famous chocolate brand’s email list will receive clever clues as to possible flavours for the new Mystery Bars before they are finally unwrapped in October 2022.

Angus Vine, creative director at VCCP London, said: “Our campaign deliberately obscures the Mystery Bar flavours to drive intrigue across OOH, DOOH, radio and social, in a series of different ways that are bespoke to the individual media formats.”

‘Cadbury Mystery Bars’ will run in the UK from today for eight weeks across multiple formats including OOH, online, and social, as well as media partnerships including a digital audio campaign with Spotify. All media has been planned and executed by Carat. A consumer PR campaign has been led by Ogilvy PR.

To enter the competition, the public can purchase one or both of the Cadbury Mystery Bars, then visit https://mysterybars.cadbury.co.uk/ to submit their guesses. There will be one winner per bar and the winners will be selected at random from correct guesses. T&Cs apply. A rich reward worth £5,000 is up for grabs for those flavour detectives eager to unravel the mystery, but just like the flavours, the prize will be under wraps.

CREDITS

Client: Cadbury

Agency: VCCP

Senior marketing director: Benazir Barlet-Batada

Associate marketing director: Gemma Flanigan

Marketing manager: Michael Moore

Brand manager: Pippa Rodgers

Junior brand manager: Chrissi Bland

Executive creative directors: Jonny Parker, Chris Birch

Creative director: Angus Vine

Creative team: Abigail Williams, Whitney Tam

Planning director: Rob Estreitinho