Inside: Cadbury Silk's content marketing campaign - Does Sang Rahiyo hit all the checkboxes?

'Sang Rahiyo' call it an ad campaign or an age-old smart product placement tactic? Social Samosa gets talking to the makers and industry experts who examine the latest Cadbury Silk 'I Missed You' campaign.

Weaving a musical ad campaign might not be a novel concept, but the way you create it certainly can be. Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk joined hands with Wavemaker to collaborate with Jasleen Royal as she launched a music video 'Sang Rahiyo', for its Heart Pop ‘I Missed You’ campaign.

This is a manifestation of ‘How Far Will You Go For Love’ campaign.

The video features Ranveer Allahbadia (as Jasleen’s partner), as they take efforts to keep their relationship alive with Dairy Milk Silk at heart, despite many difficulties.

Karthik Nagarajan, Chief Content Officer, Wavemaker India informs us that the end goal was to launch the limited edition Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk  ‘I Missed You’ Heart Pop bar in a way that generated a lot of buzz around the young TG.

Campaign Insight

You can’t think of love, without love songs. The brand owned “Kiss Me” jingle is also deeply ingrained in people’s minds, Cadbury and Wavemaker wanted to see how they could take music as an interesting area for the TG to another level. 

Conceptualisation & Execution

When quizzed about executing the campaign in the form of a music video amidst the pandemic induced restrictions, Nagarajan states, “In Mondelez we had a client who had adapted to the lockdown as fast as we did. Shooting amidst various lockdown-related restrictions was certainly an experience. Everyone from Jasleen and Ranveer, to the production team, pulled out all stops to ensure what we were all envisioning came to life. Sang Rahiyo took on a whole new meaning for us.”

The Filmmaker’s Cut

“When Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk came in, I really didn’t have to try hard to incorporate the brand into the narrative,” exclaims Taani Tanvir, Filmmaker.  The brief was simply to make the product part of the rituals people have when together.

Tanvir’s
interpretation was to give Cadbury Silk a back story by placing it in the
memory box. “There was a proper reason for the couple to have the product in
their hands or surroundings so the integration works both for the brand and the
storyline,” she says.  

Brainstorming while social distancing

According to Nagarajan, the slowing down of life also helped gain new perspectives and we have all been richer because of that. Replacing the whiteboard for a content team was almost unthinkable.

“The lockdown opened up new avenues for all of us, both in terms of collaboration as well as inspiration. They today come from the sound of the pressure cooker during a brainstorm as much as from watching humankind battle this virus from multiple corners of the world,” he adds.

For Taani, social distancing made creative brainstorming a little tedious & charmless. She prefers to have her team together in one space when jamming on ideas and creatives. According to her, it is more organic to go back and forth over coffee and randomness from where the creativity emerges.

She says, “But since I had to work over zoom calls with Vishal Vittal my DP & Adelaida Pardo his assistant, it was more clinical and time-bound. I missed the proximity in which narratives are created.”

Also Read: Inside: #WeOweYou: Reliance Jewels & Scarecrow M&C Saatchi’s musical ‘Aabhar’ for customers

Social Media Play

Apart from the music video and leveraging the quirky social media presence of its brand ambassador Kartik Aryan, Cadbury Silk also tied up with Terribly Tiny Tales (TTT) to try a hand at content marketing too.

The objective was to associate the #HowFarWillYouGoForLove campaign with the age groups 15 to 25 and make the brand a core part of the conversations and special moments of love shared by this younger TG, thereby playing an important part in uniting them.

As part of the association, TTT created a mini-series called ‘Butterflies’ which was hosted on it’s YouTube channel; each episode captured a unique kind of love story across a specific age group. Three different episodes were written for three different age groups and the story was in line with the "going out of your way for love" idea.

Every episode had a different theme, and hence the promotional activities were tailored to bring those themes to life and many other engagement activities were carried out.

Video Production amidst lockdown

Taanir notes that due to the times we are living in, it was almost an Everest mission. “From COVID tests to bottles of sanitizers and masks, we did feel like being in an ICU ward of a hospital than a shoot set. But everyone was so happy to be out of their homes in months that the set ended up having a party vibe. The storyboard artist was quarantined because his building was under lockdown,” she shares.

Taani informs that the team literally had to ask the assistant editor to stay put for 3 days because he had to travel 4-5 hours just to reach Madh. For grade & online, they booked Nube & Famous as the quality as it needed an expert hand. “Navin Shetty & Bhibash Goswami managed to accommodate us and did a brilliant job of giving us a great polished output,” she highlights.

As social distancing becomes the new normal, how has outdoor shooting changed? Taani reiterates that COVID testing & insurance is important. Food needs to be prepared to maintain the highest standards of hygiene. Creating a safe space for the crew and the actors is a priority. Keeping meetings in a sanitized environment and working over video calls as much as possible is the only way forward. 

On the sidelines of the music video cum campaign launch we spoke to a few creative experts collecting their thoughts on the concept and how does it help achieve brand objectives.

Experts Take:

Karthik Srinivasan, Communications Consultant

I quite liked the approach. It not only merely shows the product in the video but also ensures that the theme of the video reflects the theme of the current campaign of the product. Whether people too make that connect or not is a question, though.

I believe it may work better for impulsive purchases like chocolates. Where the product category is such that not too much thinking is required (high involvement categories like smartphones, real estate, financial sector, etc.) and the entry cost (purchase price) is low, it makes sense to evoke the feeling of, "Hey, I could be eating/buying that too!" through an engaging combination of audio and video that plays longer than a 30-second ad, but shorter than a TV show episode or a movie.

For high involvement categories, the same effort perhaps needs to be performed multiple times, for it to register and make an impact.

Shourya Ray Chaudhuri, Managing Partner & Creative Head, Tonic Worldwide

I do not think this is particularly a
new thought or idea. What I do like is the target audience used and relevance at
a time when you cannot meet your sweetheart in person. 

Let's be honest, this is product placement. It's not about whether the medium works or not, it is whether the idea is strong enough to break the clutter. In this case, it is not. Sure, it is NOT an ad but is that our only barometer? I would look at this as an also-ran collab mainly due to the song, lyrics, and story of the video. It was the mantra for most 90s indie-pop videos and continues to be one, albeit with influencers etc.

Pranay Bhan, Associate Creative Director, 1702 Digital

Cadbury Dairy Milk Silk invested in internet-first influencers for this music video and from a reach perspective, that decision has paid off with good consumer engagement numbers. As opposed to typical content marketing formats, music videos with cute visual narratives do tend to have a higher shelf-life with the young TG, and repeat exposure over time might work out in the favour of the brand.

However, given that good songs do tend to be played in the background minus the video, Silk’s product not playing a major part of the narrative leaves the brand integration perceivably less impactful. The content and the creators overpower the brand due to the comparatively higher screen-time and the lack of product integration with the lyrics. Almost none of the engagement visible mentions the brand, and that is not a very positive takeaway.