Are you Cadbury or Milka ?

Since Cadbury was bought by Kraft Foods in 2010, both brands compete in the same group. Lots of similarities between Cadbury and Milka: the basic products (milk-chocolate based), the packaging (purple background, round font), and the love of consumers.

My question is : how do they make themselves different from each other? How can they co-exist without eating each other out? And, which has the best communication ?

First of all: their products are not that similar.

• These last years, Milka has developed its range of products towards more luxurious products. For example: chocolate mignonettes, and biscuit products. They have also developed more elaborated products, close in idea to Lindt's famous chocolate. For example, the tender moments, with chocolate mousse inside the chocolate squares.

• Cadbury, besides being the "only company in « sweets» to commercialize products from organic agriculture and fair trade" (according to their website) has a more festive range of products than Milka. But isn’t this also linked with the British sweets market, on which you can find lots of these types of products ? Cadbury is also present on the biscuit market, with yummy products such as Fingers or Cadbury luxury cookies.

A different positioning
• Milka: tenderness (their slogan is "dare tenderness") VS Cadbury's "pump it up" attitude. These two different attitudes are very well conveyed in their publicity.

Cadbury's eyebrows

Milka's marmot

Milka’s publicity is at the image of their positioning: tenderness, always and always. Even if they use humour, humour is not at all the central value of their ads.

Last year, they tried a new type of publicity by creating the “Milka dance”. I found that ad quite deceiving: lots of clichés, a bad music, and it’s not at all like Milka to do such an ad.

Maybe my opinion on the Milka dance is biased by my personal musical tastes, but I  think it could have been used differently (especially on the official clip of the milka dance, below)

Official clip of Milka Dance

Those dance steps were also relayed to Milka teams (specially ski animation teams) and they are quite an odd example of communication.

You can see on the following video some ski animators doing the milka dance, so I’ll let images speak for themselves. 

Milka dance - ski version

• A commun element: sports communication

Both brands promote sports but in different ways. Milka: the existence of an official milka ski team “milka ski stars”. A team which exists since and has had quite a lot of sportive achievements (11 Olympic medals for example). When you ski, depending on the resort you’re in, you can see milka cows, or even “milka slopes” (violet coloured slopes)

Cadbury is the official treat provider to the London 2012 Olympic Games and has launched a humongous campaign to support the British team for Olympics.

Keep GB team pumped up

In support for their campaign, they created a dedicated website : www.keepourteampumped.com where you can see the official videos sponsored by Cadbury. A very dynamic staging of interactive marketing: on the website you can “sing along” to the different songs (“Final countdown”, or ) and, as they say “add your voice to the next production or grab some friends and start a karaoke session”. This device is also subtle in encouraging consumption. And it does keep you (or get you) pumped up. In short : a great communication.

• Social media ?

Both brands are present on Facebook, but neither of them has a globally unified communication. In the case of Cadbury, fan pages are organized around either products (2 051 226 fans for Cadbury crème eggs) or countries (65 384 fans for Cadbury Malaysia). On the other side, Milka does have an official global page (944 032 fans). But there also exists other un-official pages, at least 10 of them, and all of them are named "Milka". Quite difficult then to find your way. 

Only Cadbury is present on Twitter, again by product/country division. I also noted the presence of a “Twitter Cadbury friends” which shows how much people love Cadbury chocolate.

• Applications and games ?

Milka's use of applications is approximate for the moment, I didn't find (yet) any really inventive applications.When searching for application, I first found a Spanish one (Milka oreo, which I understood as a promotion tool), then a Russian one (Milka game). And after the third trial a French application: Milka Snax buddy. The principle is the following: you turn on your computer camera, and start chewing. In the same time, the Milka cow will start chewing.     

On the other side you have:

 Cadbury' spots v stripes

What’s the principle ? I’ll let Cadbury talk : “So how do you take part? First, pick the side you want to play for - Spots or Stripes. Then whenever you play a game against someone from the opposing side, the winner scores a point for his/her side. All the points will be logged right here and updated live on our Score’o’tron. Score enough points and you could even become one of your side’s all-star heroes.”.

An internet website counts all the points you added up for your team during a real game, to which you can add points by playing games online.

The prizes you can win are of course tickets for London 2012

My conclusions ?

I both love Milka and Cadbury as products but I think that their communication is not equal. Cadbury's communication has clearly taken a turn with the 2012 London Olympics, which have dynamized their use of dedicated websites, applications and social media. 

Milka's communication around tenderness and a certain point of view on humour could be well transmitted through their communication. For now I have been quite critical of their current ads and tools but I think they have the potential of taking a step further into new technologies devices. The question is: will they do it?

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