The entertaining world of Creme Egg

From How Do You Eat Yours? to the more recent Creme Egg Hunting Season, the gooey Cadbury's treat has been embracing creative marketing for years.

And in 2020 the brand has gone so far as to create, EATertainment, its own video on demand platform that feature a host of eggscellent (sorry) content based around the iconic chocolate snack. 

We know from experience that the great British public love the quirky, creative marketing we’re famous for.

Below, David Yates and Neale Horrigan, Strategic Managing Partner and Creative Managing Partner respectively at ELVIS, discuss the importance of thinking differently and explain why this year's EATertainment idea was the only way to crack (sorry. Again) the brief.

FMCG brands such as Creme Egg tend to focus their attention on more traditional approaches; why did an online content channel feel like the right idea for Cadbury Creme Egg this year?

DY: We’re always looking for new ways to reach our audience. Traditional TV and broadcast channels still play a crucial role for many brands, but we wanted to try something different to really stand out.

Video streaming has become core to our consumer culture, and we knew 2020 would see it become an even hotter topic of conversation – from Netflix crashing the Golden Globes party, to the buzz of new entrants such as Disney+ and Apple TV+. Creating the world’s first chocolate VOD platform seemed like the perfect disruptive solution.

Above: The trailer for Cadbury's Creme Egg EATertainment platform.

Cadbury Creme Egg has embraced more creative thinking before this campaign; what makes them different?

DY: Cadbury Creme Egg has always had creativity at the heart of its brand and its advertising campaigns. It’s a national treasure, and we know from experience that the great British public love the quirky, creative marketing we’re famous for.

It’s not enough to buy the eyeballs, you have to entertain and satisfy them too.

But, more importantly, we also know that this creativity delivers business results. Last year’s hunt for the fabled White Creme Egg inside other brands advertising helped grow total brand sales by a whopping 9%. That belief in commercial creativity, shared by agency and client, is what makes stand out campaigns like EATertainment possible.

With the fragmentation of media and seemingly lesser impact of traditional channels, will other food and beverage brands need to embrace more expansive creative thinking?

DY: Media fragmentation has been a consistent trend over the last decade, and it will continue well into the next. Both the way brands use those channels, and the content they put on them, will need creativity to stand out. It’s not enough to buy the eyeballs, you have to entertain and satisfy them too. All brands need to be unexpected and unforgettable in their communications to stand out and stay salient, which is essential to drive consumer business. 

Above: Creme Egg's EATertainment VOD hub.

Do you think that FMCG brands are less inclined to be more creative in their approach to advertising? 

DY: Every category has brands with a range of approaches to advertising: some are less creative (playing to conventions and easily forgotten by consumers); whilst others are more creative (delivering unexpected and unforgettable ideas that stay with people).

If you believe in the commercial power of creativity, then you end up with world class creative campaigns such as Tide's genius Super Bowl ads.

We usually find that it's driven less by the category you're in, and more by your particular brand and internal culture - do you embrace and believe in the power of creativity? If you believe in the commercial power of creativity, then you end up with world class creative campaigns such as Tide's genius Super Bowl ads, or Marmite's enduring Love/Hate platform, or Stella Artois being 'Reassuringly Expensive'. If not, then you end up forgotten like... well... everyone else.

Above: Tide's It's a Tide Ad.

In terms of this campaign, did Cadbury immediately see the potential in such an idea?

NH: Yes. Cadbury appreciate that a pivotal part of Creme Egg’s brand appeal lies is its cheekiness and the licence it has to playfully push the boundaries. They understand the importance of new news to our target audience, and having just wrapped up a very successful, award-winning three-year campaign called Creme Egg Hunting Season, encouraged us to explore ideas as unique as the product itself. Taste and desirability were at the heart of their brief to us and so we set out to create snackable content like never before.

Over the last five years of working with Creme Eggs, I thought we'd literally done everything possible to them. It turns out I was wrong.

Creating an entire content platform gave us the opportunity to not only entertain our audience, but to give them a rich and varied plethora of tongue- in-cheek content that was solely focussed around the product itself.