Cadbury is the UK’s biggest chocolate brand, but five years ago, the nation was starting to fall out of love with Cadbury after a corporate takeover, years of focus on novelties rather than core products and a hyperbolic advertising campaign that replicated rather than broke category norms.

Our overarching strategy was to go back to Cadbury’s core: how the glass & a half of milk in Cadbury Dairy Milk, and the glass & a half of generosity in everyone brings us closer. In doing so, we aimed to restore trust in - and love for - the Cadbury brand. Through this film (the fifth chapter in the campaign), we aimed to bring to life our brand belief that there’s a glass & a half in everyone with a small, quiet story of generosity in an ordinary British setting.

This is a simple story of ordinary people, carefully shot and beautifully acted. There is nothing else to hide behind, no technique or gimmick or celebrity cast member to obfuscate the audience, no music or special effects. They are pure storytelling, plain and simple, and as such we needed to ensure we got each aspect of them absolutely correct.

These stories live or die by the quality of the performances, the authenticity of the scene, the truth of the moment. That is all there is.

The other great aspect of this story is the real-time nature of it. It plays out as an unbroken moment, where the camera is able to remain concealed from the storytelling, letting the performance play out uninhibited by the film-making itself. There is also something about the quietness of a locked off camera, the restraint, the unblinking gaze into someone else’s life that feels both right and

The impact of the There’s a glass & a half in everyone campaign as a whole has been significant, reversing years of decline in penetration, market share and core brand metrics. Garage, the most recent film in this campaign, looks set to continue this trend. Although it’s too early to have commercial results for Garage specifically, the brand results have been excellent, achieving breakthrough results in both Kantar and System 1 testing across all our key metrics (meaningfulness, a brand that brings people closer, branding and enjoyment).