Cadbury Celebrations makes 70% of its business from festive gifting in the second half of the year, mainly August and October, but remains quiet for the rest of year.

To unlock growth, it had to grow into an all-year-round gifting brand, much like it has been meaningfully doing on festivals like Rakhi and Diwali, through its purpose of inspiring generous instincts in our close relationships.

The brief: Extend the relevance of gifting a box of Cadbury Celebrations to non-festive occasions. How?

By giving Cadbury Celebrations not only the right to play but also the right to win in personal occasions, that stokes meaningful engagement and conversations.

Which in turn helps drive preference and consideration for Cadbury Celebrations as the choicest gift amongst countless food-gifting options all-year-round.

Thereby, helping grow sales beyond festivities by 5-7% over last year H2 (July December 2022).

#MyBirthdaySong is an AI powered platform that enables people to create unique and personalised Happy Birthday songs for their loved ones.

We developed a platform that helps users to celebrate their loved ones in a simple and fun way. Users share delightful, nuanced details like nicknames and cherished memories which generate lyrics. The tool also offers customisation by letting users choose from music genres like rap or classical. People could also choose singers for their Happy Birthday songs from the different voices available on our platform. We collected all this data and passed it through our generative AI tools that created personalised Happy birthday songs.

The final product is a downloadable song that people can use to sing along, providing a new, tech-enabled twist to the age-old birthday song.

Data gathering: Our conversations with consumers unveiled a significant shift in how people want to celebrate birthdays, with individuals increasingly desiring celebrity-like experiences. Despite this, things remained largely unchanged. We noticed a common thread in all birthday celebrations, the generic "Happy Birthday to You" song. This inspired us to reimagine birthdays by offering a unique experience: a box of chocolates that enables you to craft personalised birthday songs for your loved ones.

Target audience: We were targeting a mass public audience, primarily 20-35 year olds.

Approach: Our approach involved understanding the nuances of birthday behaviours and tailoring our communication to meet consumers at various stages of the celebration journey. From pre-birthday planning to post-celebration reflections, we orchestrated a seamless campaign that guided consumers through each step while reinforcing the emotional connection with Cadbury Celebrations.

Call to action: CREATE NOW

Implementation: We used four generative AI tools to design Cadbury Celebrations #MyBirthdaySong—a platform for creating personalised birthday songs. We reached consumers via brand partnerships, digital and traditional media platforms.

Placement & Touchpoints: We utilized various platforms like Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, delivery apps, and PVR cinemas to ensure maximum consumer reach.

• We collaborated with Bollywood icons Karan Johar and Kajol to boost campaign credibility.

• When someone wrote "Happy Birthday" on messaging apps, they saw our ads.

• We partnered with a major bakery chain and put our QR codes on their cake boxes. This way, people could enjoy their cake and personalised birthday songs too.

• We conducted an in-cinema activity with PVR cinemas, wherein people could have their loved ones’ personalised songs play on the big screen.

• Our ads aired during cricket World Cup breaks and on two of India's top reality TV shows.

Scale: The campaign achieved remarkable scale and engagement with the generation of ~1.2Mn+ birthday songs and 2 billion impressions.

Brand Relevance: All along, it's been in the name! While Cadbury Celebrations has been a top choice for gifting during festivals, we aimed to join in a celebration that happens every day around the world—birthdays.

Materials, style elements, design choices: The platform's design takes cues from music apps, incorporating birthday elements like candles shaped as sound waves. It utilises two Cadbury Celebrations' pack colours, namely purple and golden. Users receive a karaoke-style downloadable song where the album cover can be personalised to make giftees feel truly special.

Methods and process: Our platform used four generative AI tools—AI-generated lyrics, music, vocals, and real-time song generation. Users answered questions about the recipient, and the platform crafted lyrics sung by custom vocal models. After selecting a genre, the song was mixed with AI-generated music.

Timeline: 27/07/2023-31/12/2023

Celebrations evolved from a festive-only gift to now also an unforgettable Birthday gift.

An average of 1min 38secs spent by ~1.2Mn+ people to create the personalized song. ~1.2Mn+ songs created and shared with ~1.2Mn+ giftees acted as a media channel creating a snowball effect of discovery and free media for the brand.

This happened on the back of a multi-media campaign that:

reached 84 million people,

scored 35% higher than planned VTR of 212 million on YouTube,

prompting 10.2 million clicks to website (20% higher than planned),

guiding 1.2 million pack QR scans (biggest evidence of actual sales),

and recorded a 42% higher than planned engagement, adding 587k FPD (First Party Data) to the Cadbury database.

This unprecedented connection created a wave of conversations on digital editorials – earning $3.48 million in media value which further drove discovery.

AND THE BEST PART, WE MADE MILLIONS FEEL SPECIAL ON THEIR BIRTHDAY.