Who hasn’t heard about the Cadbury worm incident? It started
in October 2003 when Mumbai customers complained about finding more than just
“kuch meetha” in their chocolate bars. In response, the Maharashtra Food and
Drug Administration seized the chocolate stocks manufactured at Cadbury's Pune
plant. What followed this were allegations and counter-allegations between
Cadbury and FDA. The negative publicity reduced Cadbury's sales by 30 per cent,
at a time when it sees a festive spike of 15 per cent because of Diwali. As a
result, for the first time, Cadbury's advertising went off air for a month and
a half after Diwali, following the controversy.
Cadbury's revamped the packaging of Dairy Milk. The metallic
poly-flow, was costlier by 10-15 per cent, but Cadbury didn't hike the pack
price. Simultaneously, Cadbury's roped in brand ambassador Amitabh Bachchan to
do some heavy duty endorsement putting his personal equity on the line for the
brand. The company increased ad spends for the Jan-March quarter by over 15 per
cent. The recovery began in May 2004, and by June, Cadbury's claimed that
consumer confidence was back.
Experts believe that the reason for Cadbury's success was
that it took crisis head-on. And the consumers were more forgiving, because the
brand enjoyed an emotional equity in India. It continues to lead the Indian
chocolate market with over 70 per cent market share.
No comments:
Post a Comment