Cadbury has long been known for its chocolate – from their traditional Dairy Milk to the crumbliest Flake, the Creme Egg and now its mischievous mutated form, the Creme Egg Twisted. As of late, Cadbury have turned their attentions to promoting the Twisted Bars through two competitions. One being available to the public and another made up of not so highly trained ‘Super Agents’ tracking down notorious ‘Goo Attacks’ around the UK and reporting back through different methods of social media.
What is ‘Goo on the Loose’
Operation ‘Goo on the Loose’, setup by the CIAÂ (Cadbury Intelligence Agency), holds its base at the ‘Goo on the Loose’ microsite. This website provides the latest scheming clues from the devious Creme Egg Twisted whilst also providing access to the public competition.
The Super Agent competition began on Friday 12 June 2009 with Cadbury drafting 10 winners of the Phase One competition as their new Super Agents. The aim, from what I have read and seen of the Super Agents so far, is to receive the most exposure across all platforms of Social Media in an attempt to win £20,000.
Agent Prince Cleton seems to describe this best on his blog:
“I am Prince Cleton one of ten super agents taking part in the Cadbury Creme Egg ‘Goo is on the Loose’ competition to win £20,000. By solving clues leading to famous landmarks the agents have to make witty videos, photos, blogs and recruit followers to earn points to take them to the No 1 spot.”
How Does Operation Goo on the Loose Work?
Now the Super Agents have worked for the CIA for a few weeks, their humorous reports have been flooding out across YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and their own personal blog, all linked together with Twitter.
Each agent was briefed by the CIA and provided with their tools for the venture including a Flip camera and a set of novelty disguises. The Flip camera plays a large role in the Super Agents intelligence reports and although Cadbury are seen as a mainstream quality brand, this campaign allows Cadbury to have fun through the agents and amateurish style of entertainment being brought to our screen.
It is also interesting to see the different techniques of each Super Agent as their quest unfolds and how successful each agent has become.
Examples of Operation Goo on the Loose
Super Agent Dean Stokes gives us amusing updates of his progress through (mainly) YouTube, a free WordPress blog and via Twitter. Other agents have been throwing their message out over local radio and even through Celebs too. Agent Stokes has been clever with the way he has set up his videos, his Agent name and personal URLs appear on his videos at the right moments. Speaking with a colleague of mine, we both remembered his name after watching his first YouTube video which is priceless in value. Along with Toby Tully, he could be a favourite to win the £20,000.
On the other hand, Super Agent Spud Hartrey has gone for a spammy technique which has gained her (strangely enough) a fair amount of followers on Twitter. However this technique will no doubt aggravate a lot of users and lead them to un-follow her at the same time.
It’s an interesting and relatively amusing campaign to keep an eye on and I’ll write another post specifically on the Super Agents once the competition comes to an end.
Goo on the Loose Gone Public
Let’s not forget about the public competition! Although not as mainstream or entertaining as the Super Agents, you sign-up, create your own agent name based on two random questions. Through signing up, my new alias became ‘Agent Crunchie Whitesmith’(?!). Follow CremeEggTwisted on Twitter and look for the ‘ATTENTION – YOUR NEXT TARGET IS:…’ for the latest clue. The aim is to find ‘Twisted’ on the interactive Google Map based on the clue provided. Two clues are given each week, cracking eight clues or more will enter you into a prize draw to win a trip to Morocco. Good times!
Personal Thoughts
Through both campaigns Cadbury have attempted a viral campaign and I stress ‘attempted’ as it hasn’t really taken off…. yet. Viral campaigns generally require two things to launch. A genius idea which catches the attention of a few, turning the few into more until the number becomes great enough for the conformative momentum to pick up and result in the word spreading with minimum effort. Cadbury’s idea is a good one and still has five or so weeks remaining but I think it will be a struggle for this to become large-scale.
The campaign is not perfect, it’s a little too spread out and hard to follow. The microsite isn’t very user-friendly and information is hard to find (but maybe that’s part of being an Agent, right?). From what I’ve seen and read, however, it has been enjoyable to follow through posts, videos, tweets and pictures and lay a superb foundation point for Cadbury in the future. By engaging the public too, they will promote the Super Agents antics for nothing.
Overall, it’s win-win for Cadbury. They promote one of their latest products through others via a social media experiment and then use and analyse the successful techniques used by the Super Agents to gain the most attention on each YouTube, Twitter, blogs etc. I would bet after some fine tuning and maybe a little more testing, you’ll be seeing more campaigns from Cadbury to promote themselves, if not their new products, and endorse themselves as a social media marketing force in the future.
Hello,
Only just came across this post – and a good one it is too! Thanks for the nice mention.
Just to let you know, I won the £20,000! Can’t quite believe it!
So this is just a quick thank you for your support
.
Dean
[...] in social media means that the word can reach many more people than traditional media. One analysis of the campaign stated, “Overall, it’s win-win for Cadbury. They promote one of their [...]