In the Age of Social Commerce; Who’s Really #following Who…?

In which he confessed that, riding high on the success of their world famous drum playing gorilla ten years ago, Cadbury went on the lose their way, largely because this success lead the brand to believe that they knew their consumer better than their consumers knew themselves, that Cadbury knew what their consumers wanted, and how to engage them. In short Cadbury were blindly brand and product focused, at a time when their consumers had access to increasing platforms to make their interests heard…

Skip forward almost a decade, and the brand have totally reverse engineered their strategy, not only putting consumers at the heart of their approach, but empowering their online community to actively influence everything from their product development, to their marketing campaigns, via the ‘Cadbury Inventors’ initiative.

The campaign, which ran across digital and TV, invited brand fans to ‘invent’ a new Dairy Milk chocolate product, and asked their audience to propose new flavours, a product name, and even the marketing strategy. The initiative is not yet completed, so the results are yet to be seen, but Cadbury seem confident that their new approach is the right recipe for future success. Therefore with audiences now expecting this level of involvement with the brands they engage with, we have to ask, are your followers really following you? Or is it now the other way around?

If you’re looking to revamp your social strategy too, get in touch with us - hello@matterofform.com - and we’ll be happy to discuss!