‘Bournville – Not So Sweet’ by Ogilvy Mumbai

Ogilvy & Mather Mumbai were briefed to create an intregrated campaign around the ‘Not So Sweet’ TVC for Bournville.  he challenge was to do something in the online space that would perfectly showcase what ‘Not So Sweet’ is all about, i.e. the feeling people get when someone is too sweet. The other challenge was the same as every other challenge in the online space. We had to generate ‘buzz’, tap social media and go ‘viral’. 

The agency decided to stage a proposal in a mall. Why? Because public proposals are weird, gooey, silly and most importantly, entertaining. An essential part of this idea lay in the execution of the activity. They used only theatre actors because for realism. Also, everyone at the mall was as clueless as an online watcher and apart from the Bournville Not So Sweet train, there is no overt branding. To enhance the realism, they used a single camera that captured the entire thing in a single take. 

 

It was posted on YouTube, uploaded by a random user. In less than 4 days, it had upwards of 3 million hits on YouTube. On Facebook as well, the video went absolutely crazy. Shared separately on a bunch of different pages that feature funny videos, it reached South East Asia followed by America in a matter of days. As of now we are looking at well upwards of 10 million views. It featured on TV in the US on a channel that was covering funny videos (with a special mention about Bournville), TV in the Philippines, blogs across the world, the cover page of the Daily Mail UK, featured in The Huffington Post, another article in the Daily Mail telling people that what they had featured was NOT a proposal but an ad for Cadbury Bournville, The Mumbai Mirror and the Mid Day (in print) and many many many more.

The key to the conversation surrounding this video, apart from the obvious LOL factor, was its authenticity. At the same time, every comment thread (and there are a lot of comment threads) bear comments that berate the rest of the people for fussing over an ad that is clearly done by Bournville. Also, the level of interaction in terms of comments across online platforms was completely unprecedented. And through all this fuss we’ve just kept quiet. Until now…

Abhijit Avasthi, National Creative Director, Ogilvy & Mather, said: “Creating a hit on the internet is like creating Sholay – you can’t process knowledge and trends in order to create success. It just happens. Having said that, the Bournville viral does have some science and creativity by design. Executed, of course, to near precision. 

“Another person’s misery and the voyeuristic nature of the piece are intentional and make it immensely watchable and sharable. The realistic nature of it makes it believable. The suspicious nature of the realism makes it debatable. All adding up to the massive buzz it whipped up on the internet. We hope to take the learning of this exercise to make even more evocative/provocative communication for Bournville as well as other brands.”

Credits

Creative Directors: Manoj Shetty, Vijay Sawant
Creative: Siddhartha Menon
Client Servicing: Bhavna Thakur, Smita Padmanabhan, Shruti Paranjpe
Plannning: Divya Bahirwani, Manasi Rajagopal