Valentine’s Day in India has snowballed into an out-of-control commercialized occasion.

Given the size of the business opportunity, every brand across category is compelled to offer something that captures the flavour of love and romance.

Everything remotely indulgent turns red, pink, or heart-shaped: from chocolates to travel packages.

But the young are looking for unique gestures to express their deep feelings.

So, given the crowed marketplace where every other brand is trying to offer itself as the perfect V-day gift, Challenge: How could Cadbury Silk relevantly reinvent itself for Valentine’s Day?

PRESENT CADBURY SILK AS A HEARTFELT GESTURE FOR YOUNG LOVEBIRDS TO EXPRESS THEIR LOVE AND MAKE VALENTINES A MEMORABLE DAY.

Objectives:

•Enhance mental availability meaning fully for Silk.

•Improve it equity defining imagery and promote consideration.

•Drive trials and improve sales for its Valentines gifting SKU - The Hear Blush Pack.

•Overall growth and bump-up penetration for premium chocolates

REIMAGINING SMALL MEANINGFUL ACTS OF LOVE ON THE BIGGEST DAY OF LOVE.

Today for the young, V-Day has become a day of anxiety from having to display their love in grand ways.

SOLVE:

To take the pressure off, Cadbury Silk, a chocolate for young love, created the most precious gift ever. A gift that converts couples’ heartfelt memories of small acts into Disney-like movies via Gen AI.

EXECUTION:

Young couples shared their special moments with us that got movie-makeovers from one of Bollywood’s biggest romantic film directors, Zoya Akhtar.

A proprietary text-to-image-to-animation Gen AI tool transformed these moments into beautiful films. Furthermore, couples got a one-of-a-kind experience of releasing their ‘Story of Us’ movie on Disney Hotstar (OTT).

WE HELPED YOUNG LOVERS CURATE THE MOST HEARTFELT AND SPECIAL GIFT BY MAKING THEIR SMALL INTIMATE MOMENTS OF LOVE GRAND.

VALENTINES REALITIES

A) The pressure to prove your love on V-Day with grandness.

B) Popular culture, especially Bollywood is the romance benchmark.

So how could Cadbury Silk help? – A mere chocolate bar.

Immersions with young and Google Lighthouse studies, unveiled concerns that were bigger than a chocolate.

- The pressure and desire to impress and express their love uniquely.

- Misrepresentation of love which didn’t resonate with their love language.

- Pocket money restrictions.

Helping them navigate these concerns would make Cadbury Silk a meaningful gift.

Strategy: Make Valentines a memorable expression of love through Silk.

Insight: Every love story has small heartfelt moments of high emotional value that are fondly remembered but cannot be relived.

Shift: Cadbury Silk – a part of gifting bundle > Gesture that turns small acts of love grand.

Idea: Story of Us for a Memorable Valentines!

RESULT: HELPING YOUNG EXPRESS FEELINGS IN THEIR LOVE LANGUAGE.

Launched an interactive experience 3 weeks prior to V-day, using our biggest asset - Silk V-Day packs.

Unique Digital Experience

The QR code enabled youngsters recreate their love story and give a movie-makeover with help from Bollywood’s biggest romantic film directors, Zoya Akhtar.

Scan pack  visit microsite  create personalised avatars of you & bae  share moments.

Result: Gen AI created beautiful, animated film. Few of which got released on Disney Hotstar (OTT) as an exclusive series.

All media touchpoints featured Bollywood’s biggest romantic film director inviting the young to create their ‘Story of Us’

• Silk’s social channels, OOH, print, radio assets and on-ground activities amplified the movie-makeover offering.

• Short videos explained the way to discover ideas to people.

Interest based hyper targeted videos enabled deeper personalization on social platforms.

Making, Silk V-Day packs a small meaningful act of love on the biggest day of love.

CADBURY SILK NOT ONLY HELPED LOVEBIRDS MELT HEARTS BUT ALSO BROUGHT TO LIFE THEIR UNIQUE LOVE STORIES THAT CREATED A TERRIFIC CHAIN OF EFFECTS.

• 2,50,000 stories created, 1094+ per hour.

• Impressions 1.56 billion. Reach 199 million.

• World’s first 100% AI generated OTT love series by a brand

• 3 million views of The Story Of Us on Disney. Amongst the most view content around

Valentine’s day.

• 4 million earned media

• 36 million packs sold, 15% growth.

• Created a new kind of gift, bringing an innovation in gifting culture.

• Recorded 2X growth over last year across all media metrics.

• 27% jump in spontaneous awareness for Silk over 2023.

• 40% jump in relevancy during Valentine’s occasion vs 2023.

• Household penetration increased from 11.5% to 16.4% (Feb ’23 vs ’24)

• Sales in ’24 with 2.2X the investment vs 2X in ’23.