In 2021, a lot of smaller, high street chocolate shops were struggling to survive. The pandemic had hit them hard. Although it might be hard to believe now, Cadbury was once a small high street chocolate shop in Birmingham and knew they had to help.

For years Cadbury has been celebrating the generosity in others through their famous ‘There’s a glass and a half in everyone’ campaign, this was an opportunity for Cadbury to demonstrate generosity themselves.

The brief was simply ‘how can we help?’.

The objective was even more simple…to stop these small independent chocolate shops from going out of business.

Our solution was straightforward - to ask all Cadbury chocolate buyers to stop buying Cadbury chocolate and buy from small, local chocolate shops instead.

We chose 6 small, independent chocolate shops from around the UK and targeted all our advertising around them.

We ran TV ads, OOH, online ads, we even invited Cadbury consumers to buy these other companies’ chocolate on our e-commerce store.

In shops close to where each of these independent chocolate companies were located, we even wrapped thousands of Cadbury Dairy Milk bars with the wrappers of their chocolate bars, literally putting our competitors’ chocolate in the hands of our consumers.

All of this was telling people about the plight of independent chocolate shops, and asking them to buy their chocolate instead of Cadbury.

In 2020 the data was all around us. After nearly two years of lockdown UK high streets, which had already been in serious trouble, were now in freefall. 11,000 shops across the UK shut for good in 2020, and a further 18,000 were forecast to close in 2021. Cadbury couldn’t help everyone, but it could certainly help those with a shared passion - the independent chocolate shops.

In terms of target audience, Cadbury is a fabric of the nation brand and we were addressing a fabric of the nation issue (declining high streets).

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Our approach was to take a powerful campaign - "There's a glass & a half in everyone" - but bring it to life outside of campaign periods. We were looking for a disruptive idea that proves there’s generosity within everyone, including Cadbury as an organisation, and makes ‘there's a glass & a half’ part of

We tweaked our famous ‘Mum’s Birthday’ TV ad, replacing the bar of Cadbury Dairy Milk with a bar of local Birmingham chocolatier’s Chouchoute chocolate instead. This then ran in and around Birirmingham for the local audience.

We placed OOH in high streets near our 6 independent chocolate shops and asked people to buy theirs instead of Cadbury.

And then instore, we wrapped thousands of Cadbury Dairy Milk bars with the wrappers of these other chocolate companies, literally putting our competitors’ chocolate in the hands of our consumers.

Unusually, the key objective of this campaign wasn’t to help Cadbury but their competitors.

By advertising our competitors products in OOH, instore and online we were able to introduce many more customers to the joys of locally produced chocolate. Chouchoute, the Birmingham based chocolatier, received more than four times their average traffic to their website, meaning thousands of potential new customers.

On the Cadbury e-commerce site, we advertised and gave away 2000 competitors’ bars, from six different independent chocolate shops, and sold out within just 22 minutes.

The PR coverage had a potential reach of 123 million in the UK, across 43 articles from national, regional, consumer, and trade press.

But perhaps best of all, Chouchote were able to re-open their store once more and become a thriving chocolate business once more. All for the love of chocolate.