Cadbury 5Star promises to ‘cure’ seriousness

Cadbury India has launched a multimedia campaign for its chocolate brand 5Star. The TVC conceptualised by Ogilvy & Mather went on air on 11 February.

A voice over narrates that there was a time, ages ago, when children were born happy. It shows a child born in a cave laughing out loud. One fine day, a dangerous disease changes everything – and it spreads in all four directions. Children are born ‘serious’. One of them, in a school uniform, says, “Sorry papa, I am late for school.” Several others are shown behaving and speaking seriously, like grown-ups, even as the film also portrays them as grown-ups. A doctor enters the scene and introduces the cure to this ‘serious’ condition: 5Star. As the chocolate bar ‘cures’ a grumpy old man, the film ends with the super ‘5Star andar, seriousness bahar.’

Abhijit Avasthi, national creative director, O&M, said, " For many years the communication in and around 5Star has been providing people with a sense of levity and lightness. The whole thought of ‘Jo kaye kho jaaye’ has been to tell people that they can switch off thanks to the product. We have been doing this for the last eight to nine years and wanted to move the bar a little higher in terms of what the brand can mean to youngsters. And we thought it would be nice to take up a cause which 5 Star can legitimately try and address. Our belief is that people have become too serious in India and they take things too seriously and get rattled about small issues. Therefore, we are trying to show a mirror to society and tell them not to take themselves so seriously. And should you ever find yourself getting serious there is a cure at hand.”

“Basically, we are seeing seriousness as a disease and there will be various cuts on it. This TVC is on the origin of the disease and we will take this whole thing forward and show how it spreads, how it can be prevented and so on,” he added.

On not using the brand’s popular characters ‘Ramesh’ and ‘Suresh’, Avasthi explained, “Had we launched the same campaign using ‘Ramesh and Suresh’, there could have been a chance that the campaign would not have registered with people as they are such powerful characters.”

The campaign will straddle radio, TV, print and digital media.

Credits
Client: Cadbury India
Creative agency: Ogilvy & Mather
Creative team: Abhijit Avasthi, Amitabh Agnihotri, Samir Sojwal
Servicing team: Sonali Sehgal, Mallika Raina, Sunayana Gopal
Production house: Corcoise Films
Director (film): Prasoon Pandey
Producer: Cyrus Pagdiwala
DOP: Kartik Vijay
Music: Dhruv Ghanekar