cadbury wispa marketing case study

Cadbury’s Wispa Relaunch: A Twitter Campaign That Exploded

In this post we will show you how Cadbury’s relaunched their Wispa chocolate bar and got amazing results on Twitter with 25% increase in engagement. You will also learn how you can apply what they did to your social media campaigns and get great results too.

Global confectioner Cadbury boasts a number of popular chocolate sweets. But it is the infamous Wispa that is one of the brand’s most popular products. Cadbury’s Wispa candy bar was first launched on a trial basis in 1981 in North East England.

After resounding success in the trial launch, Cadbury went on to launch Wispa nationally in 1983. Over the course of the next 20 years, the Wispa went on to become a beloved favorite among British chocolate lovers.

In 2003, however, Cadbury rebranded as Cadbury Dairy Milk. The Wispa was subsequently discontinued and relaunched as Dairy Milk Bubbly, reshaped as a standard molded bar similar to other Dairy Milk products as opposed to the traditional whole-bar count-line.

The move did not sit well with Britain’s many chocolate lovers. Fans wanted the Wispa back. Internet campaigns championing the return of the candy bar went viral, an online petition garnered thousands of signatures, and at one point Wispa fans even stormed the stage at Iggy and the Stooges’ 2007 Glastonbury Festival performance, armed with signs that read “Bring Back the Wispa.”

Bring Back the Wispa! How Did Cadbury Respond?

Although the standard Wispa bar was back, the Wispa Gold, a fan favorite, still hadn’t been put back on shelves. Having successfully lobbied Cadbury for the return of the Wispa, fans set their sights on the Wispa Gold.

Cadbury was astounded by the tremendous amount of public support for the chocolate caramel version of the Wispa bar. “The outcry for Wispa Gold was tremendous,” Cadbury’s social media manager, Jerry Daykin, explained. “There was a huge demand from the public to bring it back on the market.”

“Since the impassioned voices that helped bring Wispa Gold back were so effective, we decided to use similar voices to help spread awareness of its relaunch,” Daykin said.

The Cadbury Wispa Social Media Campaign

The results of the campaign were impressive, to say the least. Cadbury saw a 25% increase in engagement rate, a 116% increase in product mentions, and a 1,800% increase in positive product mentions. So what lessons can be learned from the Cadbury Wispa case? Be sure to consider the following:

• Make use of incentives. One of the biggest strengths of the Cadbury Wispa Gold relaunch campaign? Cadbury’s excellent use of incentives. The chocolatiers not only launched a mass awareness campaign with a Promoted Trend, they also created the clever “Retweet for Sweets” challenge. Twitter users could win a box of Wispa Gold if @wispa retweeted their completed tweet: “I love #WispaGold because _____.” The bottom line? Users are much more likely to engage with social media content when there is a clear and relevant incentive, as the Cadbury Wispa case demonstrates.
• Make use of media-rich content. As part of the Wispa Gold campaign, Cadbury leveraged relevant media and linked to this media in its tweets. “The new version of ‘Gold’ – inspired by #WispaGold – is remixed by none other than the legendary @pauloakenfold!” one tweet read. The success of the tactic is clear: Paul Oakenfold’s remix of “Gold” became the most watched in Cadbury’s “Keep Singing, Keep TeamGB Pumped” video series.

All in all, the engagement rates the Wispa Gold Twitter campaign facilitated were a surprise even to Daykin. “For the most part, chocolate bar consumption is an impulse buy, and it is difficult to gauge purchase intent.

However, we saw numerous tweets with an intent to purchase Wispa Gold — this is because Twitter satisfies the immediacy of disseminating temporal thoughts and information. Friends reading these tweets could be influenced to also make an impulse buy, especially since many users are already out and about checking their tweets on their mobile,” he said.

And really, when it comes to talking about Wispa Gold success, the numbers speak for themselves.

A staggering 41 million Wispa Gold bars sold out in a mere 18 weeks.

That translates into four Wispa Gold sales every single second.

The return of the Cadbury Wispa was a success and the social media campaign surrounding it can only be an example to us all!

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Cadbury Leveraged Digital Marketing To Relaunch Wispa Chocolate Bar In Olympics 2012

Cadbury is a British multinational confectionery company wholly owned by American company Mondelez International (originally Kraft Foods) since 2010. It is the second largest confectionery brand in the world after Wrigley’s. Cadbury is headquartered in Uxbridge, Greater London and operates in more than fifty countries worldwide. It is famous for its Dairy Milk chocolate, the Creme Egg and Roses selection box, and many other confectionery products.

Cadbury’s objective is to become the world’s biggest and best confectionery company. Cadbury has always believed in inventing, inspiring and investing for chocolate lovers across the world nearly for 200 years now. At the same time, Cadbury aims to consistently achieve a revenue growth of 20% per year, increase earnings by 15% annually and dividends per share by 7% per year.

A brand with a rich history and products enjoyed by millions, Cadbury has enjoyed great returns from its investment in social marketing. Cadbury not only utilizes common social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter, but its marketing strategies on other networks such as Instagram, Youtube and Google+ are equally as innovative and successful.

Cadbury’s presence on Facebook and Twitter

It is no surprise that Cadbury has established separate Facebook pages for each of its most popular products, including Dairy Milk, Wispa, Crème Egg, Bourneville and Hot Chocolate. The first thing to note is that all the pages are updated on a daily basis with brand-related content, ranging from straightforward product promotions to recipe ideas. In general, each post attracts thousands of likes and comments, which the social media team does a good job of responding to.

Cadbury has established separate Twitter feeds for its different products. It has been observed that most of the tweets are either re-posted from Facebook or are re-tweets of other users that have mentioned the brand. However, the 25% increase in engagement on Twitter while re-launching their Wispa chocolate bar during the London 2012 Olympics is worth a mention.

Cadbury’s use of Instagram

One of the first big brands in the UK to use Instagram sponsored ads (along with Waitrose, Channel 4 and Rimmel) Cadbury has a clear strategy for marketing its brand and products on the social network. Cadbury posts to Instagram sporadically. The posts are a mix of videos and images that are highly polished and professional, often showing Cadbury products being used in recipes or arranged into creative pictures and patterns. These posts are accompanied by hashtags taken from Cadbury’s marketing campaigns such as #FreeTheJoy and hashtags used more generally such as #Friday and #Dance. The videos shared by Cadbury’s Instagram account are taken from their various advertising campaigns and are shared from the Cadbury Youtube account.

Cadbury’s presence on Youtube

Cadbury’s use of Youtube is highly structured and is very successful. The content posted on YouTube is a mixture between advertisements that are shared across all social media platforms and other marketing channels, along with content created specifically for the YouTube account. Thanks to Cadbury’s use of the playlists feature which has been used to segment videos into specific campaigns and features such as ‘CDM What’s the Choc? #FreeTheJoy’ and ‘Its Friday Lets Dance #FreeTheJoy’

Cadbury also has a YouTube specific campaign called ‘The Week Unwrapped’, a collection of videos billed as “Our weekly round-up of joyful news”. These videos are a compilation of humorous and happy videos collected from around the internet and presented in the form of Cadbury’s news program.

YouTube is also used in conjunction with Google+ by the Cadbury marketing team as there is a section on the YouTube profile where viewers can re-watch previous Google hangouts.

Cadbury and Google+

Cadbury is one of the only brands to really adopt a clear marketing strategy for use on Google+ instead of simply sharing repurposing content from other platforms. In fact, Cadbury’s use of Google+ was so impressive that Google decided to produce a case study to show others how to make best use of the social network for digital marketing.

One of the key things that have led to Cadbury’s success on Google+ is the way the brand listens to its audience and incorporates this feedback into its strategy. Cadbury quickly realized that its Google+ followers wanted more than content copied from its other social networks and worked hard creating unique content for the network.

In particular, Cadbury employed the unique Google Hangouts feature as a way to generate different content for its profile on the site. The Hangouts feature on Google+ means that a brand can interact with its fans on a much more personal level and it has proved to be incredibly effective for Cadbury.

Cadbury’s Google Hangout campaign around the London 2012 Olympics attracted over 150,000 new followers on the platform alone and consisted of video chats with Olympic athletes, chocolate connoisseurs and fans of the brand.

• Cadbury’s strategy of re-launching their Wispa chocolate bar during the London 2012 Olympics got amazing results on Twitter with 25% increase in engagement
• So far Cadbury has recorded 2,89,000+ followers on Twitter and 47,800+ tweets,  over 45,000+ subscribers  following the channel on YouTube and 83,900+ followers on Instagram

Cadbury’s strategic move of shifting from traditional media to social media channels in 2012 witnessed visible results. Cadbury ran campaigns on Facebook and Google+ in order to build up awareness and engage with its fans. Cadbury’s most famous and successful campaign was its celebration of reaching the milestone of one million fans on its UK Facebook page and YouTube.

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

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Wispa Chocolate Bar Relaunch

New products, product launch, integrated marketing communications, promotion, brand management, positioning, teaching notes.

In this video-based activity, students will review an overview of a marketing launch of a chocolate bar that has been reintroduced into the market in the UK. The video provides a good overview of the launch campaign.

Review the activity below or download the PDF student worksheet

• Student Worksheet:  Wispa Chocolate Bar Relaunch
• Instructor Solutions (Members Only):  Wispa Chocolate Bar Relaunch = Solutions

Student Discussion Task

Wispa is a brand of a chocolate bar owned by Cadbury. It was originally launched in the 1980’s but was later withdrawn from the market in 2003. The main reason for its withdrawal at the time was because Cadbury wanted to rationalize its range of brand and move towards stronger umbrella brands, such as “Cadbury Dairy Milk”.

In 2007, following growing consumer “demands” for its reintroduction, the Wispa chocolate bar was relaunched using a mix of traditional advertising mediums while leveraging social media support. The following video highlights the launch campaign…

S t udent Discussion Questions

• What were some of the launch tactics used by the brand? Which ones do you think were probably the most effective? Why?
• What were some of the marketing metrics listed in the video? Do you think that they were any important metrics that were not listed?
• Do you think that this relaunch would have been so successful without the use of social media?
• What would have been the likely new product feasibility questions that Cadbury would have considered before deciding to relaunch the Wispa brand?
• Do you think that there would have been a business case to NOT reintroduce the brand?

Related Activities

• New Products Process MCQ Revision VIDEO
• KFC Zinger Launch (Updated)
• IMC Tools for a Major Campaign

External Information

• Cadbury brings back Wispa permanently

• Resources & Initiatives
• IPA Effectiveness Awards Case Studies

Cadbury's Wispa: How Cadbury spread the Wispa

Cadbury Wispa Gold: The Gold Standard in Customer Engagement

• Confectionery
• United Kingdom
• Ladder and tools
• 1 - Influential Idea
• 2 - Behaviour Breakthrough
• 3 - Sales Spike
• 4 - Brand Builder

Campaign details

Creative assets, read the full case study here.

Ladder scores were given during judging and reflect the case study contents before any confidential information was redacted....

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