Cadbury 5-Star chocolate’s long-running "Eat 5-Star. Do Nothing." campaign is well-known for its counter-intuitive take on the world. Every ad in the campaign proposes new and twisted reasons for why we’re all just better off doing nothing, and the ads have gained immense popularity over the years, so much so that the audience can’t wait to see what the brand will come up with next. Our objective was to build on this campaign and spark off yet another conversation about the joy of doing nothing. Indian families have always given a lot of importance to higher education, and in most Indian homes, discussing universities and future prospects becomes an obsession when students reach high school. Lately, AI has created a lot of panic and confusion about what the future workplace will look like, and if the most sought-after courses now will still be relevant and useful in a few years.

Every week, a new AI platform comes along and adds to our collective anxiety about the future. In the middle of this frenzy, how did a chocolate ad become the most-shared video? We joined the raging debate by shining a light on the bright side - that if AIs take over all our jobs, the only job we’ll really need to be good at in the future workplace is doing nothing. True to our tagline ‘Eat 5 Star and Do nothing’, we declared that the only future-ready and AI-proof skill one can hope to learn anymore is the skill of doing nothing. So we built Nothing University, with the first ever ‘diploma in doing nothing’. But this was no joke. We had admissions, 6 interactive video lectures, guest lectures by well known former-CEOs, Student ID cards, diploma certificates upon completion of the course - we went the whole hog.

AI has constantly been in the news for its potential impact on jobs across industries. While most news reports have been painting a grim picture of the near future, we seized this opportunity to put a positive spin on it. The topicality of the campaign, and its unusual stance resonated with people from around the world, and the story broke the internet within days of the launch.

We didn’t just stop with declaring ‘doing nothing’ as the most future-ready skill left for humans. We built an entire university experience around it. We created a university website with 6 interactive video lectures on subjects like ‘Pretending to be busy’, ‘Buying time’, and ‘Inventing Designations’, guest lectures by well known former-CEOs, Student ID cards, and diploma certificates upon completion of the course. We even built a physical university campus in Mumbai, with a research lab, a lecture hall, admission kits, research grants for ‘innovative ways to survive having nothing to do in the future workplace’, and a graduation ceremony for our graduates. Graduates could even flaunt their allegiance with Nothing University branded jerseys available on campus.

Within no time, the story broke the internet and became the most widely-shared ad in the country, garnering 3.5 billion impressions and 360 million organic views, and the video was trending on every platform out there. Surprisingly, users went far beyond just sharing the video - millions of users visited the university website to check out the courses, 300,000 of them completed the diploma program, and over 17,500 graduates proudly posted their certificates online. The campaign was reposted by over 1.2 million users, including celebrities and popular tech-industry titans, and was even a topic of discussion on international podcasts.