Cadbury Creme Egg - Advertising

Advertising

In recent times, the Creme Egg has been marketed in the UK and Ireland with the question "How do you eat yours?" and in New Zealand with the slogan "Don't get caught with egg on your face". Australia and New Zealand have also used a variation of the UK question, using the slogan "How do you do it?" Over the years, there have been several major Cadbury's Creme Egg campaigns.

• "Shopkeeper" campaign of the 1970s in which a boy asks for 6000 Cadbury Creme Eggs.
• "Irresistibly" campaign showing characters prepared to do something unusual for a Creme Egg, similar to the "What would you do for a Klondike Bar?" campaign in America.
• 1985: The "How Do You Eat Yours?" campaign begins.
• 1985-1996: "Don't get caught with egg on your face" advertisement in New Zealand
• 1990-1993: The first television campaign to use the "How Do You Eat Yours?" theme, featuring the zodiac signs.
• 1994-1996: Spitting Image characters continued "How Do You Eat Yours?"
• 1997-1999: Matt Lucas, with the catchphrase "I've seen the future, and it's egg shaped!"
• 2000-2003: The "Pointing Finger" campaign.
• 2004: The "Roadshow" finger campaign
• 2004-2007: The "How Do You Eat Yours?" campaign
• 2008: "Here Today, Goo Tomorrow" campaign
• 2009: "Release the Goo" campaign (New Zealand & Australia & Canada & UK)
• 2010: "You'll Miss Me When I'm Gone" campaign (UK)
• 2011: "Goo Dares Wins" campaign (UK)
• 2011: The "Get your goo on!" campaign (Australia)
• 2012: Gooing For Gold" campaign (UK)
• 2012: "It's Goo Time" campaign (Australia)

In North America, Creme Eggs are advertised on television with a small white rabbit called the Cadbury Bunny (alluding to the Easter Bunny) which clucks like a chicken. Ads for caramel eggs use a larger gold-coloured rabbit which also clucks, and chocolate eggs use a large brown rabbit which clucks in a deep voice. The advertisements use the slogan "Nobunny knows Easter better than him", spoken by TV personality Mason Adams. The majority of rabbits used in the Cadbury commercials are Flemish Giants.

In the UK, around the year 2000, selected stores were provided stand alone paperboard cutouts of something resembling a "love tester." The shopper would press a button in the centre and a "spinner" (a series of LED lights) would select at random a way of eating the Creme Egg, e.g. "with chips". These were withdrawn within a year. There are also the "Creme Egg Cars" which are, as the name suggest, ovular vehicles painted to look like Creme Eggs. They are driven to various places to advertise the eggs but are based mainly at the Cadbury factory in Bournville. Five "Creme Egg Cars" were built from Bedford Rascal chassis. The mirrors are taken from a Citroën 2CV.

For the 2009 season, advertising in the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Canada consisted of stopmotion adverts in the "Release the Goo" campaign which comprised a Creme Egg stripping itself of its wrapper and then breaking its own shell, usually with household appliances and equipment, while making various 'goo' sounds, and a 'relieved' noise when finally able to break its shell. The Cadbury's Creme Egg website featured games where the player had to prevent the egg from finding a way to release its goo.

A similar advertising campaign in 2010 featured animated Creme Eggs destroying themselves in large numbers, such as gathering together at a cinema before bombarding into each other to release all of the eggs' goo, and another which featured eggs being destroyed by mouse traps.

In 2012, Cadbury mocked the Olympic Games by using Creme Eggs instead of athletes. The first advert was 31 seconds long and consists of an Opening Ceremony, performed by stripped and packed Creme Eggs. Each other advert contained a Creme Egg trying to ‘Release the goo’ whilst in an Olympic event. An online game was created by Cadbury, so the public could play the ‘Goo Games’. Six events were available to play and each of them were shown as a cartoon/sketch.