How Cadbury used AI to advertise thousands of local shops for free
During the pandemic, a chocolate brand used machine learning to put its celebrity ambassador to work for neighbourhood stores. The idea is a lesson for every local business.
By the DigitalHelp4U team ·
When COVID-19 hit, small neighbourhood stores across India lost footfall to big chains and e-commerce. Cadbury Celebrations, with agencies Ogilvy and Wavemaker, asked a simple question: what if a big brand's advertising could promote the small shops instead of itself?
What they built
The campaign, known as #NotJustACadburyAd, used machine learning to recreate Shah Rukh Khan's face and voice so that the actor appeared to name individual local stores. The ads were geo-targeted, so people only saw shops near them. A microsite let shop owners generate their own version with their store's name and share it on social media.
The results
- More than 2,000 local stores were featured across groceries, clothing, electronics, furniture and jewellery.
- About 130,000 personalised ad versions were created.
- The ads drew around 94 million views on YouTube and Facebook.
The case study does not report sales figures, so we can't say how much extra business each shop got. The reach alone, though, is something no single store could have afforded.
What a local business can learn
- Hyper-local beats broad. People respond to ads about places they can walk to. Google Maps, local search and area-targeted ads do the same job at a small-business budget.
- Personalisation scales with AI. One idea became 130,000 versions. Today, AI can create festival creatives, product posts and ad variations for your shop in minutes.
- Make sharing easy. The microsite let owners share their own ad, turning them into promoters.
How we would apply it
For a retail or restaurant client, we would combine a fully optimised Google Business Profile, area-targeted Meta and Google ads, and AI-generated festival creatives in Tamil and English, so you look like a big brand while spending like a local one.
Sources
- WPP case study: #NotJustACadburyAd and Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad
- Outlook India: How Cadbury is using AI to turn Shah Rukh Khan into a brand ambassador for local kirana stores
Figures are as reported by the sources above at the time of publication.
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