History of Cadbury
Did you know how your favorite chocolate company Cadbury was formed well the obvious answer would be to make chocolates but you won’t believe it, It was to stop people from becoming alcoholics. so in the early 19th century UK there was a social movement called temperance movement being led by religious groups it basically endorsed that alcoholism is bad and over consumption of alcohol is gonna lead to Poverty economic decline immorality Etc so John Cadbury was also part of this but he contested that instead of just opposing binge drinking a better strategy would be to offer people tempting drinks that they can have in place of alcohol so he started a grocery Cafe which served and sold hot cocoa and hot chocolate and that is how the company Cadbury was started wait things only got more interesting so hot chocolate business started booming but as it was scaling manufacturing what would happen is a lot of cocoa butter was always left behind from the whole process of making cocoa now of course he could choose to throw this cocoa butter away but he was an entrepreneur and entrepreneurs always know how to spot opportunity even if it is waste so Mr. Cadbury was like Hey this leftover cocoa also tastes damn good what if I solidified this leftover cocoa and sold it as chocolate
It worked and that is how a beloved dairy milk came into existence in fact not just dairy milk have you seen the new Cadbury flakes is this fat and soft flaky version of dairy milk that’s also actually created from another waste product that is those thin flakes that fall out from the chocolate molds while making chocolate the whole story is full of twists and turns and finding opportunities where there’s non-visible
Cadbury in India
Cadbury first entered India right after Independence in 1948. India had no shortage of sweets from gulab jamun, barfi, peda the list of Indian sweets is literally endless there was no essential need for another sweet snack especially chocolate but Cadbury very strategically created the need for its products Through The Years so when Cadbury was initially introduced in India right it was considered as a product mainly created for children because this is notion that only children eat chocolate when a child is crying you give it chocolate or when a child does something well you give it chocolate as a reward so this was a general sentiment in the market when it came to chocolates so while the kids Market can be very very lucrative because this kid has the potential to become your customer for life if she likes your product it can also be very tricky to crack.
Target Audience
I actually ran a starter for nine months where we built and sold products for kids so I had the opportunity to understand this kids and parents target audience very well while your end user is the kid your buyer and decision maker 99 of the time is going to be the parent and the buyer journey of a parent right it’s much more complex as compared to other Target groups so while some of these parents are reactive and make impulse purchases a lot of them are proactive what I mean by that is they’re not going to look at a chocolate and be like ‘Oh chocolate yummy’ let’s buy it just for that hit of dopamine and instant gratification which is what a lot of us do for parents the purchase decision goes more like okay what is the product what are its pros and cons how is it going to benefit my child does it make me a better parent you see the rational brain the prefrontal cortex gets actively involved and now your brain is evaluating this decision through a list of parameters So it’s much more tougher to convince the buyer to make the purchase and parents literally hold the keys to the small humans well-being and future right so they’re biologically wired to be protective and paranoid to an extent and this is what was happening with Cadbury on one side Cadbury was promoting children gorging on chocolates happily on the other side there was also a lot of noise in the market about the ill effects of over consumption of chocolates tooth cavities too much sugar being bad for health was making parents paranoid and wary of chocolates and once this parents audience is convinced that something is bad for their child and could potentially harm their child they will not buy it so in the process Cadbury started losing a lot of consumers.
Positioning and Messaging
Positioning it’s basically the story you’re telling your audience about your products utility for example wait look at this pen okay now I can either position this pen as a tool that A student uses to write or I can say this is a pen engineered using the most Innovative technology created specially for leaders and Visionaries of the world and sell the same pen to businessmen CEOs positioning dictates how your product is perceived and messaging is the means by which you amplify your positioning so this is what Cadbury did they took the same dairy milk chocolate and created a new target audience for it through different positioning and messaging it launches its famous ad Campaign “asal swad zindgi ka” which targeted the Youth of India and show this young pretty girl Frolicking and dancing in a cricket stadium with joy this position Cadbury is something that youth loves and and consumes this campaign was such a big hit that every guy and girl started giving each other Cadbury dairy milk but this was not it Cadbury’s understanding of the peculiarities of the Indian market were unmatched and they leveraged the insights they had about Indians to capture the new markets Cadbury understood that India is a country of festivals and communities and celebrations and Sweets played a very important role in Indian culture in fact my granddad till date gets me sweet every time I visit my parents house so Cadbury launched more campaigns to become a part of these small family instances they were “shub bharam” “kuch meetha hojaye” “pappu pass hogya” they’re very cleverly capitalized special moments and occasions like starting a new job starting a new relationship celebrating passing an exam “raksha bandhan” basically wherever there was a scope of celebrating something and consuming something sweet they captured that market through their messaging.
Gillette example
I want to give you another example of an organization that has captured a very large market doing the same thing so in the 19th century Gillette the Razer company was supplying lasers to every Soldier and had become a household name in the U.S now the sales for growing but king cam Gillette the founder of Gillette wanted to increase the market share further now here two options right either he could launch more new products for his current target audience or he could create a new market for his existing product at that time the razors were only being sold to men so he came up with a strategy now women’s passion back in 19th century had just started to transition from those long fully covered conservative gowns to sleeveless dresses for dancing and going out in summers now they see this dresses exposed more skin which gave Mr. Gillette more hairy real estate to make money from so you’re like what if I sell the same razor to women by new strategic positioning and messaging I’ll tell them that having hair is bad and they have to get rid of it and they can use my Razor to do so so that is exactly what he did he positioned this razor which was originally created for men as a tool to enhance appearance for women and advertise it everywhere he ran Arts across newspapers magazine distributed Flyers enough so that people started believing what he said and through this he captured a new billion dollar market.
you repeat something enough time to someone it becomes the truth in their head exactly what Cadbury did to become synonymous with the word “meetha” as of today Cadbury has a product offering for literally every single consumer class in India from their five rupees dairy milk to Cadbury silk they have captured 65% market share of India’s chocolate Market through their calculated marketing moves and won India’s heart through the tasty products.
Leave a Reply