Background
Gorilla formed a major part of the pitch by Fallon London to secure the contract with Cadbury Schweppes in 2006. Their proposal was to step away from pushing the product through traditional advertising means, and instead produce "entertainment pieces" which would appeal to a broader range of consumers and spread through viral marketing – that is, through word of mouth. To this end, Cadbury ended its ten-year sponsorship of the popular soap Coronation Street. All of this was master-minded by Chris Palengat, the Worldwide Account Director, whose inspiration was encapsulated in the brief and who navigated all the stages of approval and consumer research feedback.
Public perception of the Cadbury brand had slipped through 2006-7 after a series of public relations blunders and product recalls. In mid-2006, a number of Cadbury lines were found to contain salmonella bacteria, originating from a leaking pipe at the company's factory in Marlbrook. The incident was widely reported in the media, and had a number of knock-on effects: 40 people became ill, and a product recall costing £20 million was initiated. The failure of Cadbury to inform the Food Standards Agency for five months after the problem was discovered resulted in a £1 million fine from Birmingham's Crown Court, and the Food Standards Agency advised the company to improve their "out of date" contamination testing procedures.
Other public relations blunders in the run-up to the campaign included the distribution of a number of Easter eggs containing traces of nuts without nut allergy warnings, a £5 million campaign for Trident chewing gum which was cancelled after complaints that it was offensive, and the temporary closure of Granary Burying Ground, an historic cemetery near Boston, United States, as a result of a treasure hunt organised as a sales promotion. In mid-2007, Cadbury announced that it would be cutting around 7,500 jobs. An internal memo which later leaked revealed that many of the jobs would be moved to Poland, causing an outcry from the manufacturers' trade unions.
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