Saturday, September 29, 2012

Chapter 3.2: "Video goes viral" Cadbury's Gorilla & Analysis

Welcome back, Still talking about viral videos!
Before we start, let's look at the photos below and refresh our memory of the videos!!




Yes! It's the viral marketing campaign by Cadbury's Gorilla. Let's look at the video now and also the numbers related to this marketing campaign!



  • The 90-second advertisement  
  • 500,000 page views in YouTube for the first week 
  • Shown in 850 cinemas across Canada in November 2007
  • 70 Facebook groups appreciating the ad have been set up
  • Cadbury reported that sales of Dairy Milk had increased 9% from the same period in 2006

The numbers speak for themselves, the marketing campaign was very successful. But when we compare with the Burger King Freakout campaign, it was not as remarkable as the Burger King's one in terms of the boosting of sales. Why?

In terms of advertising strategies, we can analyse both of the advertisements in different aspects. 

The first one is whether the advertisement is attractive? The Burger King advertisement makes use of the hidden cameras and show the angers of customers, in this way audience find it hilarious and interesting for looking into others' reaction. However for the Cadbury's Gorilla, it makes use of the intertextuality elements. The Gorilla in Cadbury's advertisement is the main character from the Planet of the Apes (2001 film). It is more remarkable to the audience as most of them have seen the movie before. So that makes it more interesting to watch the advertisement, Gorilla in the advertisement is cool and funny, unlike the one in Planet of the Apes which is fierce and horrible. This makes it interesting for the audience to share on Facebook and makes it viral in the end. 

The second aspect is the recall of the brand name, for burger king one, the words "Whooper" and "Burger King" are always mentioned in the advertisement. Hence, the recall of the brand - Burger King is quite well done for this advertisement. 
While for the Cadbury's one, you can only see the brand name from the start and till the end of the advertisement. Most people only recall the Gorilla and its relations with the 2001 movie Planet of the Apes. When audience cannot recall the brand, no matter how good the call to action part is done, this can hardly push the audience to purchase the product. This is one of the reasons why Cadbury's advertisement is not too successful for boosting the sales. 

The last aspect is comparison with other brands. For Whooper Freakout two, Whooper burger is replaced by its competitors Wendy's and McDonald's burgers. But people refuse to have other brands instead of Whooper burgers. This makes Whooper more stands out for its importance to the audience. For Cadbury's one, no comparison with other brands, no mentioning of the brand throughout the advertisement either. 

Of course, this is only a very general analysis by observation, a detailed analysis included statistics, recorded reaction of audience and other analysis. 

I hope this gives you a brief idea of how viral marketing works nowadays! 
Thanks for reading! See you next time 

Jennie <3


3 comments:

Nice incorporation of statistics! You're right that social media marketing and advertising are emphasized in the business sector nowadays. That's why they open up job positions that exclusively manage and maintain the company's social networking sites. I'd say the first person and company ever adopted social media marketing is really insightful and innovative, as it's challenging to implement such a proposal.

Thanks for your comment Kelvin! I worry a lot it would be too long and too boring for most people! Glad that you like it! I find it very interesting to know about the brand strategics and their ad campaign! Always good to know more as a customer or future media workers ah hah.

I don't really understand the connection between the chocolate and the gorilla. But somehow this video attracted me! I guess it is how advertisements work- catching attention, in any ways.

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