How Cadbury Brought the Spirit of Generosity to Canada
Easter egg hunts are brilliant. Scavenging around is great fun, there’s usually prizing of some kind involved - often in the form of a tasty treat - but perhaps best of all is the knowledge that someone took the time to choose hiding spots and setup clues, all for your entertainment. It’s fun, optionally festive, and no matter how old one gets, the magic never really wears off.
But, traditionally, there has been a caveat to Easter egg hunts. They require an in-person get together. After all, how’re you going to hide an egg for someone if they’re not physically there to find it? It’s a systemic weakness, and one that became extremely apparent during the restrictions of the pandemic. Or, at least, it was a weakness. On February 27th, following successful launches in the UK, South Africa and Australia, Cadbury launched ‘The Cadbury Worldwide Hide’ in Canada, allowing users to set up egg hunts for each other, even when separated by distance.
Made possible through the use of Google Street View, participants were given the option to hide an iconic ‘Purple Cadbury Egg’ anywhere in the world for a loved one to find with the assistance of a personalised clue. Serving as a chance to embrace the spirit of the upcoming Easter holiday, and an opportunity for the brand to embrace its value of generosity, the Worldwide Hide will run until April 10th.
LBB’s Josh Neufeldt sat down with Cadbury Canada’s director of marketing, Stacey Biggar, to discuss how Canada was chosen to get in on the action, how the activation has gone, and why this is an initiative that Cadbury cares about.
LBB> How did ‘The Cadbury Worldwide Hide’ come to pass? Where did the idea come from, and why was it right for Cadbury?
Stacey> The idea originated from the Cadbury UK team during the pandemic, as they felt it was important to create something that would help people feel close, even when they could not be together. There is something so generous in taking the time to hide an egg at Easter for someone else - creating that special moment - and the team wanted to capture that in a way that allowed everyone to participate. As such, ‘The Cadbury Worldwide Hide’ (WWH) allowed people to take the usual egg hunt and make it virtual. VCCP worked closely with its customer experience (CX) team to build the WWH platform and bring the vision of a virtual egg hunt to life.
Generosity is at the heart of the Cadbury brand, so this year in Canada, we adopted the WWH. We wanted to provide a platform to share the egg hunt virtually, as family and friends are often spread across the country and are not always able to come together for Easter celebrations.
LBB> The ‘WWH’ allows players to hide eggs via Google Street View. How did you develop the platform/software, and how long did it take?
Stacey> Using Google Street View, hiders can place a virtual Easter egg anywhere in the world, and then share a personalised clue with a loved one to help them find their egg.
VCCP used cutting-edge technology to create a brand new platform that immerses the public into a unique egg hunt - using a scalable cloud platform that ensures a seamless user experience. Following this user-centred approach, the VCCP team mapped each point of the user journey, and the CX team integrated several platforms to design a seamless end-to-end journey. From there, discovery to the roll-out of the solution took about seven months.
LBB> What inspired the decision to bring the campaign to Canada? And did the campaign have to be adapted in major ways for the Canadian audience?
Stacey> After successful launches in the UK, South Africa, and Australia, we are excited to bring this work to life in Canada. In terms of adaptations, we are the first region to deploy a multilingual WWH platform - ensuring the site is welcoming to all Canadians by making the platform available in both english and french.However, because Canada was the first market to deploy a multilingual site, it took some extra time to develop, in order to ensure the platform ran smoothly in both languages.
LBB> Thus far, how many people have used it, how many eggs have been found, and how are the Canadian stats looking?
Stacey> So far, 116,000 eggs have been hidden globally, and 73,500 eggs have been found.
As for Canada, we’re just getting started! However, we’ve seen that mobile is typically where users are participating in the WWH. We’ve heard from consumers that eggs are being hidden all over the country, and even overseas for family and friends that are far from their loved ones.
LBB> Were there any lessons learned from running it in other countries that were applied to the Canadian launch?
- Assume anything is possible.
- The ‘Mobile First’ approach allowed consumers to access the platform from any device with consistent, engaging brand experience.
- Think big and beyond the traditional use of Google Maps and treat it as a foundation platform to build upon.
- Test, test and then test again. We created a technical proof of concept which enabled us to test using ‘real’ Google Maps and real people early in our design process.
- Don’t assume everything is accessible to everyone. You may need to build upon the ‘out the box’ functionality to ensure as many people as possible can use the platform.
LBB> What lessons have you learned in the making of this campaign?
Stacey> As we’ve developed the WWH for Canada, we’ve made sure to put our Canadian consumers at the heart of every decision. Whether it was making all the assets and copy more relevant to Canadians, or ensuring a smooth consumer journey experience, it was important that we truly understood the needs and wants of our consumer in the creation of the platform.
LBB> How have people reacted to this campaign? And how has the Canadian response compared to that of other countries?
Stacey> Canadians are very excited to see the WWH come to Canada. We’re seeing the hashtag ‘#CadburyWorldwideHide’ used across all social channels as users share their hiding spots online. We’re thrilled to be able to bring acts of generosity to all Canadians, and couldn’t be happier to see the response from consumers as they partake in the virtual Easter egg hiding experience.
LBB> How does this campaign fit into Cadbury’s branding for 2023?
Stacey> Generosity is at the heart of the Cadbury brand, and the WWH provides a perfect opportunity to show our generous side. By digitising this Easter ritual, we demonstrated how hiding an egg can be a generous act for a loved one - helping people feel close even when they aren’t physically together.
This generous spirit is not in the finding of the chocolate, but the journey towards it. It’s the thoughtful acts that go into creating the special moments – the effort, the time, and the care. As such, this campaign serves as the continuation of our efforts to get Canadians behind the notion of hiding eggs for one another, not only physically, but virtually as well.
LBB> Is there anything you’d like to add?
Stacey> Our advertising campaign leads with a message of ‘Hide Them with Love’, a reference to the Cadbury spirit of generosity. There is something heartfelt about taking the time to hide an egg for someone, to create that special holiday ritual – whether live or virtual - and that's the true generosity that Cadbury embodies.
