Social Media Strategy Review: Cadbury Perk

This review is a part of our ‘Social Media Strategy Review’ series, where we do a 360 degree analysis of a brand’s entire social media activity. You can read the reviews of more brands here.

Introduction:

Cadbury introduced Perk in 1996. It is positioned as a quick snack made with wafer covered layers of chocolate.

Overall Strategy:

Cadbury Perk positions itself as an instant battery recharge, that is neither a chocolate nor just another energy snack, but a combination of both. Since it serves two purposes, this proposition differentiates the chocolate cum energy bar (Perk) from its competitors.

Maintaining this theme the brand’s overall communication on social media, also revolves around the promise of “Double Maza”.

Platform-wise strategy:

Facebook

As said, the focal point of Perk’s fun and quirky communication is the word ‘Double,’ as can be seen from their Facebook updates.)

Perk exploits the fact that sometimes humour can be an effective vehicle for building relationships. On facebook we can see how Perk is trying to use humour from a marketing standpoint, while also ensuring that their updates speak on the benefits of the brand.

Gamification

The brand has also uses ‘gamification’ to engage its audience. Take the double game challenge for instance. This game gives you a time limit of 5 minutes, till when time you have to race against the clock to collect as many points as possible. At the same time you have to move pacman, while eating up the dots and gobbling up perk, before time runs out in your tetris.

Cadbury Perk has also built an interactive app named Perk Funstar, which is a digital extension of their television commercial. After the participants allow the application to access to their personal information, this user information is used to create a personalized TV Commercial, starring the user.

The purpose of the app seems to be, engaging the fans in a fun video where there is also scope for ‘virality’, as they post the video ad, in which they are starring to their friends.

Bur even after all this, it seems the brand finds it difficult to maintain high engagement levels

Analytics support courtesy: Simplify360

So where are they going wrong?

Perk should make the effort to understand what exactly their audience finds the most engaging, by posting different content on different platforms. To start with for instance, the brand SHOULD respond to user posts on its wall, BUT most comments from their fans get ignored.

Analytics support courtesy: Simplify360

No Twitter presence

Another thing Perk is doing wrong is that the brand has no Twitter presence at all. I am really surprised! I only hope that they are at least monitoring the conversations on Twitter. Since lots of people are tweeting about Perk as you can see below...

Youtube presence:

I also find that Perk could have designed their Youtube channel better. The brand uploads only TVCs on its Youtube channel. They do not create original video content for digital media. Brand specific Video Content could have been an excellent way for Perk to engage with its audience .

Comparison with the competitor:

Nestle Munch

Nestle Munch uses the brand proposition - Crunchiest Ever. Promoting its new brand ambassador – Virat Kohli

Even though ‘Munch’ has a smaller community compared to ‘Perk’, it has a far better engagement rate than Perk. As you can see in the figures below.

Analytics support courtesy: Simplify360

Analytics support courtesy: Simplify360

Analytics support courtesy: Simplify360

Even though Nestle Munch is not on twitter, Balakrishnan Vaali-(who is its new brand ambassador and a look-alike of cricketer Virat Kohli)- has a Twitter presence. He Tweets regularly and his tweets are funny.

You can see the personalized brand communication, which is funny and witty, with a human touch in its tweets.

I have also observed that Nestle Munch’s TVC has the twitter handle displayed on screen (Meet Vaali at Facebook and Twitter.) In this way they are trying to integrate traditional media with social media.

Instead of paying celebrities and brand ambassadors so many dollars per tweet, the brand has done a very good job by creating a twitter handle for Balakrishnan Vaali. This adds personality to the brand and a human touch, which is missing in Perk. Yet like Perk, Munch too has no youtube content apart from TVCs.

Feedback on Perk strategy:

Perk’s Facebook updates are timely, relevant and witty to some extent but there is a lot more that the brand could do.

I would rate their Social Media strategy as average since Perk focuses all its efforts towards Facebook and it is not right to put all your eggs in one basket. What’s more, they should work on other channels other than facebook and could integrate these channels better.

Another shortfall is that the brand is not conversant at all and there is still plenty of room for improvement:

Perk should keep in mind that Social Media is a major, ‘’two-way communications channel – plan for that and deal with it. Having no conversations may prove suicidal for Cadbury Perk.( Since its plain rude to avoid interaction with fans.) Always remember, the more interactions you have, the more exposure you will get. Lastly, Perk should also invest in more content – including video.

Conclusion

I would like to end this article by pointing out that, since Cadbury dairy milk, Cadbury Celebrations and Cadbury Bournville have been doing an awesome job on Social Media, we expect a much better strategy from Perk, which is also a Cadbury brand.

Expert Opinion:

Perk on social media suffers from the classic case of broadcasting and not engaging the community its built. While it does well in creating many engaging apps and properties it does little to make an effort to do one to one communication.

Also an energetic brand like perk not being on twitter is a little absurd. We all know brands like that are impulsive and craving oriented and getting a reminder via twitter while you are on the go could do wonders for not only its engagement but also have an influence on its sales.

Expert View by Rajiv Dingra Founder & CEO of WATConsult – An Award Winning Digital & Social Media Agency.

Analytic  support courtesy: Simplify360