Client: Cadbury; Alan Palmer, marketing director
Campaign: Exhibition stand at Ideal Home, NEC
Agency: Shelton Fleming Associates
Budget: Undisclosed
The Brief
This was always a simple but demanding brief; create chocolate
heaven.
The job was for an exhibition stand at the Ideal Home event at
Birmingham’s NEC. Cadbury, which also has its home in Birmingham, wanted
a stand that would reflect the quality and luxury associations of its
chocolates. It was the first time that Cadbury had ventured into
exhibitions as part of its marketing mix. The idea was that the
exhibition stand would create ’the world’s first chocolate supershop’.
Cadbury, which has its Cadbury World theme park in Birmingham, wanted an
eye-catching stand.
The Campaign
Shelton Fleming came up with an exhibition stand that created a
tunnel-like entrance, and sought to be both a fun event and
informative.
The entrance was an eye-catching hole that seemed to have been burned
into a giant bar of Dairy Milk. Inside, visitors found a 100-screen
video tunnel and a display featuring 50 years of Cadbury’s advertising,
merchandising and marketing.
A live jazz band, and light and water displays, also featured.
Every visitor to the tunnel was handed a free bar of chocolate. And at
the end of the exhibition stand was a massive chocolate shop with a
display of 9000 chocolate bars.
The Result
The success of this exhibition and campaign can be easily shown by the
clutch of awards it picked up earlier this month at the Marketing
Exhibition Effectiveness Awards. These included the Grand Prix, and Best
First Use of Exhibitions.
A staggering 112,000 people entered the exhibit and people were prepared
to queue to get in. In total, visitors to the stand bought seven tonnes
of chocolate.
