Brands need to give people a reason to choose their products over and over again, and preferably over competing alternatives. While price and quality play a significant role in consumer decision-making, the way in which a brand connects with its audience also has some footing in how it's perceived and remembered in the market.
Thabang Modiba knows this well. As Interim Senior Brand Manager for the well-established Cadbury Dairy Milk SA, he and his team developed a campaign designed to capture consumers' attention. Modiba discusses the strategic thinking that went into the campaign's development and what considerations were involved in creating commercially effective brand experiences.
What tension or consumer insight did the 'Made to Share' campaign solve for, and how did you identify its potential for multi-channel activation?
The 'Made To Share' campaign is built around a simple but powerful human truth: in the moments we share, everyone contributes something, but not every contribution gets recognised.
Think about a family grocery trip. One person pays, another remembers the loyalty card and someone else pushes the trolley. The same dynamics play out at a braai, around the family table or during a celebration. We all play different roles in bringing people together and each contribution deserves to be recognised.
For Cadbury Dairy Milk, a brand with generosity at its heart, we see an opportunity to celebrate these everyday characters and the different ways people show up for one another. The 'Made To Share' Campaign brings this insight to life by playfully challenging the traditional idea of sharing a chocolate slab.
Through packaging that recognises different contributions to everyday occasions, we create a new way for consumers to experience the brand's long-standing association with generosity.
For South Africa, we have developed 16 scenarios inspired by familiar family routines, parenting dynamics, braais and traditional celebrations. These are situations consumers can immediately recognise, relate to and have an opinion on.
We identified the campaign's multi-channel potential because the idea naturally extends beyond the pack. Packaging sparks curiosity at the point of purchase; creators bring the scenarios to life; PR amplifies the conversation; activations and a weekly cash-prize mechanic encourage direct participation; and digital platforms invite consumers to share their own experiences.
Commercially, this creates a connected consumer journey: from noticing the product and engaging with the idea to participating and making a purchase. Rather than relying on media exposure alone, we have built a campaign with multiple opportunities to connect with consumers and influence behaviour.
The result is a campaign that takes a relatable human insight and turns it into a brand experience capable of building emotional connection, encouraging participation and creating opportunities for business growth.
The 'Made to Share' packaging effectively turns the product into a social currency. How does leveraging packaging for this kind of consumer recognition outpace competitors in generating earned media and organic brand advocacy?
Packaging is often seen as the final branding layer, but with 'Made To Share', it becomes the starting point for consumer engagement. Rather than simply communicating a campaign message, the packaging creates opportunities for conversation and personal connection.
By reflecting familiar South African situations and relationships, each pack gives consumers something they can relate to. They might recognise someone who plays a particular role in their lives, debate who deserves the bigger share, or share a laugh over a familiar family dynamic.
The packaging encourages engagement that feels natural rather than prompted. This creates an opportunity for earned media and organic advocacy because the product itself becomes part of the story.
With 16 distinct scenarios, the campaign offers multiple storytelling opportunities for media and content creators, while giving consumers the freedom to interpret and share the scenarios in their own way. It moves the conversation beyond simply showcasing a product to encouraging people to participate, share their opinions and create content based on their own experiences.
While competitors can invest in similar levels of media exposure, what sets the 'Made To Share' packaging apart is its ability to spark conversations that do not rely solely on paid media. The packaging takes the campaign from retail shelves into homes, social gatherings and online conversations, creating opportunities for the brand to remain relevant long after the initial purchase.
That is the real shift: something as simple as sharing a chocolate slab becomes a moment of recognition, and each moment of recognition becomes another reason for consumers to talk about, reach for and advocate for the brand.
Beyond top-of-funnel metrics like reach and engagement, what commercial KPIs would you use to measure the true ROI of the 'Made To Share' campaign? Specifically, how would you isolate its impact on actual business performance and sales growth?
As the campaign is still live, we are tracking its performance closely and continuing to evaluate how consumer response translates into commercial outcomes.
Our key measures include incremental sales value and volume, rate of sale, market share, distribution and in-store execution across relevant retail channels. Together, these indicators help us understand whether the campaign is influencing purchase behaviour, strengthening our competitive position and contributing to business growth.
We are also focused on the quality of that growth. We need to understand whether we are generating incremental purchases, rather than simply shifting sales between our own products, and whether the returns justify the investment behind the campaign.
To further assess the campaign's contribution, we will compare performance against historical benchmarks and, where data permits, comparable stores or markets. We will also account for other factors that could influence results, including pricing, promotions, distribution and seasonality, to better isolate the campaign's incremental effect.
Alongside commercial KPIs, consumer participation, earned media and engagement help us understand how effectively the idea is resonating and which touchpoints are contributing to the overall consumer journey.
Ultimately, our ambition is to demonstrate how a strong consumer insight can do more than build brand affinity. It can create a platform for measurable, incremental and profitable growth. That is the standard against which we want to evaluate the campaign's commercial contribution.
For marketers managing legacy brands, what lessons does this campaign offer about uncovering novel creative opportunities within familiar consumer habits and mature product categories?
One of the biggest lessons is that established brands do not always need to reinvent themselves to remain relevant.
Sometimes, the greatest opportunity lies in looking more closely at the behaviours consumers already exhibit and finding a meaningful way to make those moments matter.
For Cadbury Dairy Milk, generosity and sharing are already at the heart of the brand. The 'Made To Share' Campaign builds on these familiar behaviours by recognising the different personalities, relationships and contributions that shape our everyday experiences.
What is notable is that we did not need to change the fundamental product to create a new consumer experience. By rethinking the packaging and how the chocolate slab could facilitate sharing, we found an unexpected way to engage consumers with a product they already know and love.
Local relevance was equally important. The lesson is that adapting for a market goes beyond adjusting language or messaging; it means drawing on the specific routines and relationships your audience already lives. For us, that meant braais, family shopping trips and the dynamics that play out around the table. These are experiences that made the idea immediately relatable while staying true to the brand's core purpose.
The campaign also demonstrates the importance of building creative ideas that work across the full consumer journey. A strong platform should not exist only in an advertisement or a social post. It should have the flexibility to come to life at every touchpoint, from shelf to screen, with each one contributing to a cohesive brand experience.
There is a commercial lesson here, too. When innovation starts with a genuine consumer need or behaviour, it can create new reasons for people to notice, engage with and choose an established brand, while opening up pathways for growth beyond the base.
Ultimately, The 'Made To Share' campaign is a reminder that innovation does not always mean creating something entirely new. Sometimes, it means looking at something familiar through a different lens and finding a more meaningful way for the brand to participate in consumers' lives.
Did you enjoy this Q&A? Let us know in the comments section below.
*Image courtesy of contributor and Canva