In the summer of 2002 , on 15th Aug. the 55th anniversary of Indian independence , Cadbury made one of the biggest advertising blunders. What they did was they made an ad, promoting company’s temptations brand of chocolates, appeared in the copies of Times of India distributed in and around Bombay which included a map of India, highlighting the state of Jammu Kashmir plus “Azad Kashmir” region the one under Pakistani control.
It read as follows:
”I’m good, I’m tempting. I’m too good to share. What am I? Cadbury’s Temptations or Kashmir?’
A picture portion of the Ad published in Times of India 2002
Reasons for such controversy:
Cadbury made a huge mistake in a sense that it overlooked the perceptions & views of an average Indian national towards Kashmir and what it actually meant to him. Kashmir being a very sensitive issue between India and Pakistan over the past several decades has been the cause of three full fledge wars between the two countries in past. Thousands of soldiers have lost their lives on both sides of the border defending it.This press ad directly intended to offend the sentiments of the public at large.
To good to be shared ?
More badly for Cadbury, the year 2002 was the time when two countries were at the verge of war due to recent dispute of Extremist led attacks on the Indian National Parliament. In the past it has been observed that most of such “political Ad” campaigns have gone bad. In general Companies must try to avoid indulging in politics or advertising regarding the sensitive issues. If we see from Cadbury’s point of view they did not encode the message with the intention of attacking peoples’ sentiments, all they thought was that people would be less skeptical and they would “enjoy it as a joke” that just as Kashmir is too good to be divided or shared, its chocolates are also too good to be shared. The basic problem in such encoding was that Cadbury failed to understand:
- Sensitivity of the Issue considering Indo-Pak history.
- Indian audience’s lesser receptivity to open minded thinking as compared to the West where such an idea could have been accepted (still can’t guarantee).
- A cold war between the two nations was on the go after the recent attacks on the Indian parliament.
- Geographically speaking they targeted the wrong segment, If they had introduced Ads with such description to the Kashmir segment of their market in the subcontinent then the results would have been different.
Cadbury Chocolates
People on the other hand decoded the message according their views on the conflicting issue at hand. Moreover, I think the reason why people went so far and made it a much bigger issue that resulted in the national outcry was that Indian’s think of Cadbury as being a “British brand” since it’s a British multinational company and therefore people viewed it as after all , it was British colonial rulers who drew boundaries between India and Pakistan during 1947 Partition.
In short, the lesson that customers take home from such Ad campaigns depend entirely on customer’s frame of reference and I think this basic point must be kept in point by all the Marketers out there while indulging in such Marketing campaigns.
Well enough of my views :p ,What do you guys have to say regarding Companies Ad blunders such as this ?
4Gmarketing 