Campaign name: The Golden Goobilee, Cadbury Creme Egg’s 50^th birthday

Campaign objectives: To celebrate Cadbury Creme Egg’s 50^th birthday in a style true to its cheeky and bold tone of voice.

Mondelēz used Cadbury Creme Egg’s 50th birthday, ‘The Golden Goobilee’, as an opportunity to create an inclusive ad that was truly reflective of its broad audience in the United Kingdom, inviting the whole nation to join in the celebrations by eating a Cadbury Creme Egg any way they wanted. Mondelēz went in search of a genuinely diverse group of people who could add authenticity to the film’s playful vignettes.

The casting brief was kept open across the roles as they looked for the best talent for each scene, regardless of age, gender or ethnicity. But there were two roles where they chose to be more specific.

The first called for a real-life couple to share a Cadbury Creme Egg. The team chose to sidestep antiquated expectations of a traditional family brand in search of a same sex couple to improve the representation of this often overlooked and underrepresented community within advertising. A real-life couple were cast to ensure authenticity and genuinely reflect the community. For the second, Mondelēz selected a person with a physical disability to help normalise the conversation around this traditionally underrepresented group, letting their personality lead the concept for the scene.

Mondelēz also engaged diverse talent behind the camera: 54% of the team identify as female and / or Black, Asian, or minority ethnic. This included the traditionally male-dominated roles of 1st Account Director, Focus Puller, and Grip.

While the talent in the ad was selected to represent real diversity (gender, age, ability, sexual orientation, racial and ethnic background) press and consumer interest zeroed in on the scene featuring a same sex couple (including over 2000+ comments on dailymail.co.uk and trending on Twitter). While the campaign received significant levels of positive PR, with influential platforms such as Attitude magazine and Gay Times supporting the approach, the Advertising Standards Authority received a petition against the ad signed by 30,000 people, and over 40 complaints about the sharing scene specifically. It ruled that the ad did not break any rules, and so could remain on air. Meanwhile, the campaign unintentionally kickstarted a global conversation highlighting how much progress still needs to be made. A Change.org petition titled, “DO NOT CANCEL The Cadbury's Creme Egg Advert With Two Men Kissing – In Fact Amplify It!” attracted almost 50,000 signatures, and the ad has also recently been nominated for the British LGBT Awards.

Mondelēz shared that one of the key learnings from the campaign was the duty of care brands need to ensure for the talent in their advertising. As such, the team has implemented a framework that considers a number of key areas, including: ensuring the team has talent emergency details; making talent aware of support options available to them; understanding how comfortable the talent feels with any attention; allocating budget for media training and press requests; and engaging with DE&I communities early on, and often throughout the process.