India has always been a diverse mix of cultures, communities, languages, religions and traditions. People have mingled, respected and celebrated each other’s way of life. Gradually, this setting has changed. As reported by Huffington Post on 14 April, 2017, India now ranks fourth in the world for highest social hostilities.

Cadbury believes that we are all inherently generous. We just need to be reminded of it, sometimes. So Cadbury created The Unity Bar. The world’s first chocolate with dark, blended, milk and white chocolate, united in one bar. Launched on Independence Day, the chocolate sold out within 2 hours. But with a global reach of 903.7 million, earned PR worth 21 lakhs and 1.6 million impressions on twitter, conversations about the Cadbury unity bar lasted much longer.

Amidst rising intolerance and communal tensions, could a chocolate brand impact the people of a country in a sweet and positive way? And could it do so on India’s Independence Day, a day that celebrates her unity in diversity? In a way that is quintessentially Cadbury?

Our idea was to reduce and distill the idea of India with her countless languages, cultures and religions into the lush shorthand of chocolate.

So, just as India's diverse peoples lived together under one sky, one nation, we crafted a chocolate made of all the colours of the chocolate rainbow, under one wrapper. Living in sweet unity.

On 15th August 2019, as India woke up to its 73rd Independence Day, Cadbury decided to present India with a sweet ode to her unity in diversity, that could be held, touched and tasted. The Cadbury Unity Bar, the world's first chocolate with dark, blended, milk and white chocolate, all under one wrapper.

Being the first chocolate of its kind, it had to undergo intensive tests on different aspects of temperature, hygiene, size and taste before it could be put on the market. Meanwhile, we closed production of all our regular chocolates for 2 days.

As profits weren't the objective, we put it on the market at a symbolic price of Rs.73 to celebrate India's 73rd year of freedom. Since we were making limited pieces, offline retail wasn’t the way to go. So we strategically chose India’s largest e-commerce platform, Flipkart, and held a flash sale to sell the bars.

We sold out in 2 hours. We were tweeted about 1.6 million times, featured in InShorts 17 million times, earned PR worth 21 lakhs and achieved a global reach of 903.7 million. The special edition chocolate was propelled through print publications like The Economic Times, Sakshi and Sakal which gave a reach of 1.46 million. It triggered 6.4k conversations on the subject globally with 4.4k from India. The launch of the Unity Bar had a differential growth impact of 0.5% to the total Cadbury Dairy Milk value generation in the month of August 2019.