Cadbury's 2012 'Goo Games' Reaches Closing Ceremony

As Easter approaches, UK chocolate consumers and Olympic fans are nearing the end of the Cadbury Creme Egg ‘Goo Games’ season.

Last week saw the release of the final ad, The Closing Ceremony, in a series of seven Goo Games spots.

Running from the beginning of the year to 8 April, the Goo Games campaign, part of Cadbury’s umbrella Spots vs Stripes London 2012 initiative, revolves around crème eggs race their way to their inevitable sticky end.

The Goo Games spots, created by Aardman (the studio behind Wallace & Gromit) and agency Fallon, began with Opening Ceremony, and continued through Hurdles, High Dive, Hammer, Javelin and Velodrome, before finishing with the closing ceremony.

All the 100-second online films (each turned in to a 30-second TVC, can all be seen on the Creme Egg website at www.cremeegg.com.

They were all filmed in just four weeks. This was an impressive achievement that only involved a lot of hard work from the agency and production team, but also from a slew of students wrapping and unwrapping eggs.

Working from the scale of a real Crème Egg, the production team built an 800-egg capacity athletics stadium and a 300-egg capacity velodrome, both filled won’t only with chocolate eggs, but also with vuvuzelas, flags and cameras.

This year’s normal Cadbury multimillion-pound Easter campaign has been tied tightly in to the brand’s ongoing and much discussed tier two official treat provider sponsorship of the London Olympic Games.

Another element of the campaign offered crème egg fans the chance to fight one another in their own ‘Goo Games’ on Facebook. Prizes are available each week for the winners of the five different games available to play online.

Comment:

Cadbury’s Spots v Stripes Olympic work has probably been the most discussed London 2012 ad campaign amongst marketers and sponsorship professionals.

Initial tech and strategic enthusiasm was replaced by a scepticism over its bottom-line benefits.

But recent weeks have seen the company itself defend the initiative and trumpet its success.

Rather than simply measuring the number of chocolate bars sold, Cadbury’s believes that the campaign’s real success lies in the number of British and Irish it has inspired people to take part in sports.

From school sports and community football matches, to board game and interactive online games the breadth of games, engagement opportunities and interaction platforms offered up by the brand since Spots v Stripes kicked off back in 2010 has certainly been astonishing.

And Cadbury’s says more than 120,000 people have taken part in 1,800 Spots v Stripes sports events during this period. With 906,022 participants watching the fun.

Furthermore, an independent evaluation of the programme says that more than three quarters of a sample of 1,115 participants and spectators said they were more likely to get involved in community activities, while 49% revealed they were more likely to play games and get involved in sport after taking part.

One in three claimed they are more likely to consider volunteering in their local area after attending a Cadbury Spots v Stripes community event.

The assessment was conducted by the Sport Industry Research Centre at Sheffield Hallam University and research outfit Ecoys.

It also stated that for every £1 invested in the campaign, the return on social investment, or benefit to the community is £1.90.

Way to change consumer behaviour Cadbury!

Norman Brodie, General Manager of Cadbury London 2012 at Kraft Foods, explains that its sponsorship of London 2012 is about more than a hard return on investment.

“As a business we have used the opportunity to try new, bold approaches, and through our Cadbury Spots v Stripes Community Programme we have used game playing to bring people together and build stronger communities in areas that need it the most.”

Links:

http://www.cremeegg.com/

http://facebook.com/cadburyCremeEgg

http://www.cadbury.co.uk/home/Pages/home.aspx

Opening Ceremony