Dairy Milk’s ad shows unlikely forms of generosity

Dairy Milk’s new ad follows a light-hearted yet moving exchange between a daughter who gives a bar of Dairy Milk Wholenut to her father, who lives with dementia and no longer recognises his daughter, a point that leads to an unexpected disclosure about a long-running family white lie. The ad initially appears to revolve around the daughter’s act of generosity but ends up in fact revealing the father’s own act of kindness.

“I suppose everyone’s got one of those stories, right? Where someone’s told a little white lie about something,” explains VCCP ECD Chris Birch, who says the long-running campaign is about finding those relatable “nuggets” of real life. “I think that’s when the public like you and feel the effort you’ve put in.”

The ad was written and executed with help from a dementia charity partner to ensure the tone felt right. Though it deals with an emotional scenario, there is levity, too. “I think that’s what Simon [Connor, creative director], who wrote this one is always trying to do. He’s trying to marry the two: the emotional connection with something uplifting as well,” says Birch.

Memory is the seventh instalment in Dairy Milk’s brand platform, There’s a Glass and a Half in Everyone, which celebrates moments of generosity. This includes last year’s spot, which reinterpreted its well-known ad involving a daughter trying to buy a bar of chocolate for her mum, to mark the brand’s 200^th anniversary. Much has changed in those seven years, including opinions on purpose advertising. However, the creatives feel the work doesn’t fall into that category to begin with.

“‘Memory’ isn’t necessarily purpose-led, it simply focuses on a real-life, human story – shining a light on these little white lies we all tell from time to time today with a funny revelation, all in just 60 seconds,” Birch says. “That’s a complex thing to deliver in 60 seconds but [director] Steve Rogers and the actors did an incredible job to make this feel so natural.”

While the creative team are keen to experiment with the format and tone, there are no plans to move away from the brand platform. “We know it’s working, beyond the figures, because Cadbury and our lovely partners, the clients, keep asking for more, because it is working for the business,” says fellow ECD Jonathan Parker, “and that’s really important for us and our brand, VCCP: to do work that works, work that actually connects with real people and creates a positive uplift in sales, because that’s what we’re here to do.”

The long-running campaign has reportedly attracted 40 million new customers and added $1.4 billion retail sales value to the business.

Brand sentiment has also improved over time, according to Birch, who mentions surveys that show Dairy Milk is one of the nation’s favourites. “That’s really important, because our big job when we started working on it seven years ago was its reputation was struggling. There’d been a load of takeovers, and this, that and the other, but at the heart of it is this wonderful brand that stands for British values and generosity.”

“When we took on the brief originally, Cadbury was in decline,” says Parker. “Profits were down. Its reputation was [struggling], but there was this latent love for Cadbury within the British public, they just wanted an excuse to fall back in love with this brand they’d grown up with. It’s kind of why we bucked the trend of everyone else in our sector at the time. Everyone else was shouty, hyperbolic, nonsensical, and we just went the opposite way, went very quiet, more emotional and more insightful.”

It’s not immediately clear whether or how sentiment has changed in the wake of several controversies, including Cadbury owner Mondelez’s decision to continue doing business in Russia since the war on Ukraine (though not involving Cadbury products) and the King’s recent decision to drop Cadbury from its royal warrant. Though the reason for the latter hasn’t been declared, some believe there is a connection between the two after the Royal Family came under pressure from Ukrainian campaign groups.

These factors may seem to complicate Dairy Milk’s feel-good tone, however there’s a good chance the general public doesn’t pay much heed to those issues, at least in the longer term. It’s a question of which has the more sway: heritage or headlines?

Credits:
Agency: VCCP
ECDs: Chris Birch, Jonathan Parker 
Creative Director: Simon Connor
Content Production: Girl&Bear
Production Company: Biscuit Filmworks
Director: Steve Rogers