Watch the video above or read below.

Stephen and Matt take a look into a campaign that saved Cadbury and put a song back on the charts!

Stephen Semple:
They did not want to do this ad.

Matthew Burns:
I found something. We were talking about creativity the other day and I found a video of an old ad and I want to see if you remember this one. You ready?

Stephen Semple:
All right, let’s see it.

 

Matthew Burns:
So?

Stephen Semple:
That ad is so awesome, so unbelievably crazy awesome.

Matthew Burns:
Where was the product?

Stephen Semple:
Nowhere until the very end. It’s nuts. It’s nuts when you think about it. And it’s funny. When you actually time it out, that’s a long ad. That ain’t a 30-second ad, it’s 90 seconds long. And for a full minute, the gorilla just sits there.

Matthew Burns:
You know what’s better than that, is they have an extended version of that ad that’s four and a half minutes.

Stephen Semple:
Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me. I’ve never seen that.

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, four and a half minutes. So when I went and found it, I was like, “Okay.” The first version on YouTube, the first version’s not so good, and you find a nice clean version, but four and a half minutes and tons of views.

Stephen Semple:
And you know what I love about that ad is, and we’ve talked about this before and you’ve heard me quote from the book, The Case for Creativity from James Herman. When you started to show that ad, I grabbed the book and you can see it’s a book I use a lot. I’ve got lots of bookmarks in it, and there’s one I refer to all the time, so I was able find it because it’s highlighted.

In this book, this was a study that was done I think by McKinsey and Company. Anyway, if anybody wants to buy the book, it’s on page 157. And basically here’s what they discovered. They discovered that more creative advertising, regardless of whether the creativity was at all relevant to the selling message, had a far greater impact than less creative ads. And this is a great example of that because I know a little bit about that campaign. When Cadbury ran that campaign, they actually had a problem. They had just had to do a big recall and sales were down.

Matthew Burns:
Oh, that’s right.

Stephen Semple:
And all these problems were going on and they had record sales for the next two years following this ad. It blew Cadbury up and yet the ad had really nothing to do with the chocolate.

Matthew Burns:
Okay, but it’s a really cool gorilla. Come on. He’s cool. He’s cool. And here’s the interesting part about that is that you have no idea even why it’s about a gorilla or what the song has to do with the gorilla or why it’s being played. There’s nothing that sets it up.

Stephen Semple:
There’s another part here about this. So not only does this ad prove the whole idea that if you create something creative and it has nothing to do with the product, it still works. And look, this was a hard ad to get on the air. I forget who the person was who had basically become the head of Cadbury marketing, whatever. It took him six months to convince the board to run this ad.

Matthew Burns:
Oh wow.

Stephen Semple:
He kept coming back at them, back at them, back at them. They did not want to do this ad. But here’s the thing. There are a couple of elements in this that we can all learn from, and one is you get intrigued. It’s these shots of this gorilla and you’re like, “What the heck? What’s going on here? What’s happening?” And that pulls you in, right?

Matthew Burns:
I watched the four-and-a-half-minute version, just so you know, right? And I’ve already seen the one-and-a-half-minute version.

Stephen Semple:
Here’s the wild thing. Phil Collins sent a thank you letter to Cadbury because “In the Air Tonight” went back on the charts when this commercial came out. It had such an impact that not only did it blow up Cadbury sales, but “In the Air Tonight” went back on the charts,

Matthew Burns:
Steve, the song went out of the memory bank and all of a sudden they get this, and a gorilla going crazy doing this thing. Everybody’s air drumming that. The shared emotion that everybody has on that, because everybody, we know that feeling. Everybody has that feeling in their head, and it doesn’t make a difference about how old you are. If you’ve heard the song, you get that.

Stephen Semple:
Why did the ad work? That’s what we need to share here. Why did the ad work? Okay, we get that it was creative and creative ads work. We get that it had mystery because that’s what pulled us in. You had to watch to the end because you’re just like, “What the heck’s going on? I need to watch this to the end.” It’s like driving by the train wreck. I have to look.

Matthew Burns:
That’s right.

Stephen Semple:
But why did the ad work?

Matthew Burns:
I’m going to put a thing out there. It worked because the gorilla had a transformation.

Stephen Semple:
And here’s the thing, and you even understand it when you see what Cadbury’s slogan before that was, “A glass and a half of full cream milk in every half pound” and they changed it to, “A glass and a half full of joy.” Now, what they did was, yes, the gorilla went through a transformation, but the gorilla had this joy when he was drumming and that joyous, fun feeling got transferred to the product.

Matthew Burns:
That’s it.

Stephen Semple:
Right? And that’s why this worked. And that’s also… It’d be easy to look at this and go, “It’s not a story.” Well, it is a story because there’s a beginning, the gorilla’s annoyed, and there’s an end, he’s happy. Think about it. That ad would not work if the gorilla started happy.

Matthew Burns:
Right, and I don’t even know if annoyed’s the right way to say that, but everybody who listens to that song, they’re just vibing with Phil, right? That’s what he’s doing. He’s just vibing. He’s not happy. He’s just vibing. And all of a sudden you can see him build up and he gets this pleasure moment right before he makes that first strike. Bam. And you can see just the elation that comes out of the gorilla and it’s what we feel and all of a sudden he makes us feel it. Wait a second. If Cadbury’s promoting this, man, I hope I get that same feeling when I bite the chocolate bar. It doesn’t say what chocolate bar to buy. It doesn’t say where to buy it. It doesn’t even tell you to buy the damn bar at the end of the ad. All it does is show that it’s a Cadbury ad.

Stephen Semple:
It’s Cadbury, Cadbury for joy. It was attaching that positive emotional feeling to the product and it worked. They had record sales for the next couple of years. But I can just picture somebody going, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That works for chocolate bars. I don’t sell frickin”… And chocolate bars are an impulse buy and they’re a small dollar amount, and a tiny investment and they’re the thing I get when I’m taking my cart through the grocery store, “Oh, there’s one, I’ll grab it, stuff it into the cart,” right?

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
I can see somebody going, “I get how this whole idea of creating this positive feeling could work for a candy bar.”

Matthew Burns:
Right.

Stephen Semple:
Do you have any other examples?

Matthew Burns:
I’ve got an easy example actually, and it’s not cheap and you’re not just strolling through the grocery store and you’re making a conscious decision to purchase this item. Hang on, let me just load this one up. Hang on. Here we go.

 

Matthew Burns:
You see?

Stephen Semple:
Right, the Apple ad for the launching of the iPhone. Yeah.

Matthew Burns:
Right?

Stephen Semple:
And again, mystery. What’s going on? There are people just answering the phone. Now, one could sit there and say, “Well, the product’s kind of in there because it’s a phone,” but I can tell you if you’re sitting at Apple, there were no fricking cell phones in that.

Matthew Burns:
Black and white.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, black and white dial one, one that you could actually use as a weapon, they’re so big and heavy.

Matthew Burns:
Well, and transformation, we talked about this, right? Mystery, transformation, and then a simple, I mean, very simple product shot, yes or no to answer the phone. That’s it.

Stephen Semple:
Yes. Now, what’s really interesting about that ending, if we go back to the time, cell phones were kind of complicated to use, and smartphones were particularly complicated to use. And what I do love is at the end of it, they showed ease of use. In many ways, they embedded a really interesting thing because what did we all want? I want a phone that’s as easy to use as a phone that’s at home where I can just pick it up and say hello, and all of a sudden you’ve got a phone that all you have to do is hit accept, “Hello?”, right?

Matthew Burns:
That’s it.

Stephen Semple:
So there was an interesting ease-of-use message embedded in that. But look, it was the same technique. Mystery. It was fun. Especially seeing all those characters, you’re recalling the movies.

Matthew Burns:
Right. Absolutely.

Stephen Semple:
And then basically attach that to their product, right? And you’re right, it’s not a cheap product, not an easy purchase.

Matthew Burns:
Stories sell. Everybody wants a, “My name has to be in the first five seconds of the ad, and then I have to tell about where we are and why we are, and when we are.” No, if everybody wants your product, they’re going to get it. They’re going to find it. They’re going to get you.

Stephen Semple:
And stories sell and how you make it sticky and memorable is with embedding these emotions in it. There’s all sorts of research out there that emotion is what makes things memorable. Those are two great examples. We’ve got Cadbury in one end, a simple impulse purchase, and then we’ve got Apple iPhone, which was big bucks, especially… Oh, they’re still big bucks.

Matthew Burns:
The very first.

Stephen Semple:
Yeah, the very first. And look, instead of going, “Here are the features, here are the benefits,” they just simplified it right down and even made it a little bit mysterious because I think it was, if I remember the end of that ad, it was-

Matthew Burns:
Yeah, it was coming out in June. It was a pre-ad.

Stephen Semple:
But that would be enough to make you go, “I want one.”

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