Cadbury’s Dairy Milk

Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (CDM) has had an amazing journey in India, and is an excellent case study in how a brand can become a success story, gaining extensive market shares (it is close to 70% right now with all extensions, 30% alone) and become almost a generic name for chocolates in India. Let us follow this journey and see what things Cadbury must have done right to achieve the kind of success it has.
Phase 1:
Who here does not remember the iconic campaign below run by Cadbury:
This ad firmly established an awareness for CDM in the country. It brought together cricket, youth and a simple but catchy music in a fine blend. But that is not the most important aspect of the ad.
The most important aspect was the projected audience of the ad, the TG being targeted. The TG was No Longer limited to kids. It was about every age group of life, from kids to adults. This ad brought in adults into the ambit of TG for the product. The campaign positioned Cadbury to be seen associated with the ‘special quality’ that all of us possess and are particularly proud of (kuch khaas hai ham sabhi mein
)

Cadbury efforts were focussed on expanding the market pie simultaneously with its share in it.

Phase 2:

What next? Cadbury wanted to increase the number of occasions for chocolate consumption. They realized that CDM might be an impulse buy, but it was not an impulse consumption. When the impulse buy to impulse consumption transition takes place, the frequency as well as quantity of purchase goes up.

Hence, they did the simplest thing that can be done to do so. They gave the users more reasons to eat chocolates through the following ad:

The reasons too were such that they actually indicated that almost any reason suffices for CDM consumption.

Phase 3:

Chocolate consumption is always seen as an act of indulgence and self-pampering by the individual. Hence, Cadbury hit upon the idea of associating CDM with happiness. A range of spaced apart advertisements, such as the ones shown below talk about connecting CDM to happiness, and that too not in the form of major achievements, but as the simple things in life that brings a smile to one’s face.

Following were some of the ads:

This was followed up by positioning CDM as the means to celebrate happiness in both small and big things in life. The foundation was laid about CDM being the celebration mode, using the famous ‘pappu paas ho gaya‘ campaign with Amitabh Bacchan. This was the first connect to CDM being usable as ‘sweets’ (it was presented as substitute to sweets, but the subtlety of the same was well handled)

Phase 4:

They have now recently started going full-fledged about CDM as a sweet-substitute. Cashing in on occasions of sweet consumption, such as beginning new endeavors (shubh aarambh), CDM has put itself as a possible replacement for sweet (and a delightful one at that). The campaign sticks to the original backdrop of simple things in life that bring a smile to face.

This has been the amazing journey of CDM in India, a journey defining success by the very book – expanding market size as well as the market share. Hope to see the brand carrying on the legacy it has already developed

Note: The above journey was interspersed with some other delightful campaigns like Mehendi, Miss Palampur, India vs Kenya etc. and also the damage control campaigns after the worms scandal.

Source: http://marketingbrainstorm.wordpress.com/2011/02/16/brand-analysis-cadburys-dairy-milk-a-journey-of-success/