ChocPlusWhat was a campaign designed to free people’s thinking when it came to chocolate flavours. The idea was incredibly simple: to come up with the absolute weirdest thing to pair with chocolate. With a few thought starters, we would set Australia’s imaginations free with the most mischievous, most eccentric, most outrageous flavours and finally, unleash a hugely unexpected flavour of our own.

With responses rolling in, we set out easily adaptable flavour memes for our fans to express their chocolate loves. They took it up immediately, creating all kinds of memes featuring all kinds of flavours. Choc Plus popcorn, wasabi peas, cookie dough and more would quickly spread from our page across Australian social media feeds.

Finally, when Australia’s imagination had been ignited with the wackiest flavours ever, we’d blow the flavour conversation wide open with our own: Choc Plus Vegemite.

The campaign started entirely on social media then exploded into mainstream media through PR and organic conversation. It used on the extraordinary nature of the idea to propel awareness forward. With minimal budgets for production and media, we encouraged mass participation with careful creative (the flavour memes) designed to be adapted by our most active and dedicated fans. The fruits of their participation then spread amongst the wider Cadbury fanbase and later to the broader community.

When we launched Cadbury Vegemite, the mere concept was enough to cause a wave of excitement across Australia. With one simple video announcement, we would be overwhelmed by the response as people wondered what it could taste like, and their reactions upon trying it for the first time.

From breakfast news to primetime talk shows, and radio to tabloids, Vegemite chocolate was on everyone’s lips in more ways than one. Australian media was awash with tastings and reactions to the unbelievable new flavour. Movie stars and even Kevin Rudd, our ex-Prime Ministers told the world about it. Vegemite Dairy Milk chocolate sold out much earlier than expected and claimed the title of Cadbury’s top selling block, outselling classic Dairy Milk, the first time this has ever happened. With the focus on flavour exploration, we saw sales grow by 28% across the whole portfolio. Our social media presence experienced an explosion of 10x the normal engagement rate and delivered 767,000 campaign impressions, and that’s just on channels we own. Over the campaign, the flavour conversation exploded with thousands of tweets, Facebook posts, flavour memes and Vegemite reactions seen across the web.