The ‘Crème de la Creme Egg Cafe’ - a dedicated pop-up haven where fans could celebrate their love for Cadbury Creme Egg.

This eggstravagant and immersive Creme Egg mecca served Creme Egg toasties, amongst other recipes, on demand. But it was so much more than just a cafe. We let fans experience their favourite chocolatey treat in a host of new ways.

Everything in the café was designed to spark social sharing – from the ballpit, to eggy ‘crime scenes’ and innovative ‘push for Creme Egg’ ordering button – even the recipes were based on social trends to maximise talkability – and shares.

The ‘Crème de la Creme Egg Café’ was a three floor pop-up space in Soho, London, UK. Open for seven weeks, seats for the café sold out in just one hour - with people regularly queuing around the block to get in. Every design detail was executed in Creme Egg’s cheeky and irreverent style, and the use of brand colours and our hero product ensured branding flowed consistently through the whole experience - and translated through social media sharing. An exclusive launch party kicked off the campaign – with over 100 journalists plus key influencers turning up to the opening night. Café merchandise, including distinctive tea cosies, was seeded with superfans, ensuring excitement for the café drowned out negativity. Partnered with foodie influencer Martha Collinson to create further trend-led Creme Egg recipes to create at home, extending the reach of the pop-up.

The café launch generated over 282 pieces of media coverage, including 16 nationals and key titles that set the agenda for our target audience including Stylist, Urban Junkies and Trend Hunter. The campaign delivered a positive sentiment of media coverage over 95% - in stark contrast to 2015 where coverage was dominated by negativity. On average, 7.1million people have seen each Facebook post about the Creme Egg Cafe. The 40k (and counting) consumers, media and influencers posting about the cafe online have led to over 69 million potential earned impressions. Over 8,000 people visited the café across seven weeks, with nearly 3,000 Creme Egg Toasties sold and over £16,500 raised for The Prince’s Trust, a youth charity that helps young people aged 13 to 30 get into jobs, education and training.

The campaign used Creme Egg’s biggest assets – our fans – to reinvigorate the ‘Have a fling’ campaign, and overcome a media landscape challenged by negative media coverage and consumer criticism following a product recipe-change. The ambition was to create a fully branded experience that lived beyond the walls of a pop-up space, harnessing our fans (from media and influencers to consumers) to spread the word to those who weren’t able to visit in person. Seats to the café sold out in under an hour, whilst the campaign generated 510,000,000 opportunities to see with a positive sentiment of 95%.

Our strategy was to tackle the criticism head on, using Cadbury Creme Egg’s biggest asset – our fans – to shout so loudly, they drown out the noise.

We know that our audience of savvy 16-24 year olds trusts each other more than anyone else, so we harnessed the power of our fans and encouraged them to broadcast their enduring love for the product, via their shared experience of the cafe.

‘Fan created’ recipes have always been a big part of Creme Egg social and media conversation – the Crème Egg Toastie was the most popular organic Facebook post of Easter 2015. This activity allowed us to involve our eager audience and create real world joy that we could amplify back to the wider community at scale via editorial and social media channels.

When you’re on sale for just a few months of the year, challenges such as negative media coverage and consumer criticism can impact your targets. In 2016, we were briefed to be bolder on limited availability and product love within the longstanding ‘Have a Fling’ campaign in order to make Cadbury Creme Egg the most desirable thing on shelf in the lead up to Easter.