Cadbury helps singles avoid Valentine’s Day with time-zone trip /

Romance is dead / By positioning itself as a Valentine's Day denier for the past five years, the brand has dodged the typical narrative of romantic gestures and instead embraced the anti-Valentine’s movement. This not only sets Cadbury 5 Star apart from traditional chocolate brands but also aligns perfectly with the product’s essence – it's not a luxurious chocolate that you’d give a partner, but rather, an indulgence meant for personal enjoyment. It’s a smart strategy to help it stand out during a crucial consumption occasion for chocolatiers – by carving out a distinct niche for itself in the crowded chocolate market on Valentine’s Day, Cadbury 5 Star shows that, sometimes, going against the grain is your brand’s best bet.

Dedication to you / This campaign underscores the importance of finding a compelling idea and sticking to it, a strategy exemplified by the brand's focus on catering to singletons during Valentine's Day. Notably, Cadbury 5 Star’s previous campaigns in 2022 and 2023 provided an alibi for singles seeking to skip the celebration and offered assistance in avoiding Valentine’s Day hot spots through a GPS-enabled web app. The brand’s commitment to helping singles on 14 February, reinforced with each activation, isn’t just a way to drive sales for its product on the day, it emboldens its image in the long term, making it appear cheeky, relatable and loveable.

Erase Valentine’s Day is a fresh execution on this strategy – but it’s also its boldest and most eye-catching one yet. By dispatching a vessel in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, enlisting a legendary space scientist and broadcasting the event online to a wide audience, the brand shows it is ready to go above and beyond to land its anti-Valentine’s joke. The brand’s consistent presence around Valentine’s Day also means that people now expect it to show up and deliver a worthwhile experience and the level of dedication that the brand shows with the ‘time-travel’ vessel is a huge PR coup for the brand that is unlikely to leave anyone disappointed.