Gorilla (Cadbury)

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Gorilla
A promotional image from the Gorilla campaign.
Client:	Cadbury Schweppes
Product:	Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate
Agency:	Fallon London
Directed by	Juan Cabral
Production company:	A Glass and a Half Full Productions
Starring	Garon Michael
Music by	Phil Collins ("In the Air Tonight")
Release date(s)	31 August 2007 (television)
Running time	90 seconds
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Budget	£6.2 million (campaign)
Official website

Gorilla is the first advertising campaign produced by Cadbury Schweppes' new in-house production company A Glass and a Half Full Productions. The 90-second television and cinema advertisement formed the centrepiece of a £6.2 million campaign to promote the Cadbury Dairy Milk-brand chocolate within the United Kingdom. The advert was directed by Juan Cabral and starred actor Garon Michael. The campaign itself, which comprised appearances on billboards, print newspapers and magazines, television and cinema spots, event sponsorships and an internet presence, was handled by advertising agency Fallon Worldwide, with the online segment contracted out to Hyper.^[1]

The advert, which first appeared on national television on August 31, 2007, was well received by the British public – a version uploaded to video sharing website YouTube received 500,000 page views in the first week after the launch.^[2] British polling company YouGov reported public perception of the brand had noticeably improved in the period following the launch, reversing the decline experienced in the first half of 2007 caused by a series of crises and product recalls.

[edit] Sequence

Gorilla opens with a credit sequence acknowledging A Glass and a Half Full Productions over a trademark purple Cadbury background. Phil Collins' 1981 hit "In the Air Tonight" begins to play, and the camera pans right to a closeup of the eyes of a gorilla (Garon Michael), and alternates between detailed close-ups and full head shots. The gorilla makes a series of small movements such as twitches, lip curling, taking deep breaths and opening and closing its eyes. The camera then pulls back to reveal that the gorilla is sitting at a drum kit. As Collins' drum solo kicks in, the gorilla begins enthusiastically drumming in time with a look of concentration and passion on his face, at times closing his eyes and looking skywards. The performance continues for thirty seconds, until fading to a computer-generated product shot of a Dairy Milk bar over the strapline "A glass and a half full of joy."

[edit] 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.^[3] To this end, Cadbury ended its ten-year sponsorship of the popular soap Coronation Street.^[4]

Public perception of the Cadbury brand had slipped through 2006-7 after a series of blunders and product recalls. In mid-2006, a number of Cadbury lines were found to contain salmonella bacteria, caused by 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,^[5] and a product recall costing £20 million was initiated.^[6] 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,^[7][5] and the Food Standards Agency advised the company to improve their "out of date" contamination testing procedures.^[8]

Other public relations blunders in the run-up to the campaign included the distribution of a number of Easter eggs without nut allergy warnings,^[7] a £5 million campaign for Trident chewing gum which was withdrawn after complaints that it was offensive,^[3] and causing the temporary closure of Granary Burying Ground, an historic cemetery near Boston, Massachusetts, from a treasure hunt organised as a sales promotion.^[9] In mid-2007, Cadbury announced that it would be cutting around 7,500 jobs.^[10] An internal memo later leaked that revealed that many of the jobs would be moved to Poland, causing an outcry from the manufacturers' trade unions.^[11][12]

[edit] Production

It was hoped that the new campaign would serve to boost sales within the UK and prompt higher brand engagement from the public. Much effort was put into making the first advertisement of the new marketing strategy a hit. Fallon hired director Juan Cabral, with whom they had created the immensely successful Balls for Sony's BRAVIA line of high-definition television sets, to write and direct the piece. Actor Garon Michael was hired to fill the central role for his previous work in similar roles, having played great apes in the feature films Congo, Instinct and the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes.^[13]

The gorilla suit was created by Stan Winston Studios in California. It took three months to produce, though pieces had been used in a large number of other projects prior to Gorilla. The "fur" of the suit is composed of knotted yak hairs. The exposed facial features are silicone, and are moved animatronically, through 27 remote-controlled motors and several levers. Two technicians were needed, in addition to the actor inside the suit, to produce the range of motions displayed in the commercial. The suit was cooled by ice-water tubing and a handheld fan pointed at the mouth between takes. While much of the suit had existed prior to the project, several adaptations were made, including custom-made hands for the drum sequence, foam muscle around the chest and shoulders, a new styling for the pelt, and the addition of a gold tooth, grey hairs, and a studio earpiece to give a more "wizened rock star" appearance.^[14]

Shooting took place over several days in a London studio. Michaels spent forty hours practising the drumming beforehand, but with vision inside the suit limited to a camera feed piped to a small screen inside the head, precision was almost impossible. Many takes ended with the wooden drum sticks broken against the rims, sending shards of wood flying off-camera. This, combined with the difficulty of choreographing the delicate movements of the gorilla head with Garon's acting, meant that 35 takes were required to produce the final 90 second scene.^[14]

[edit] Release and marketing

A variant of the commercial was broadcast in a single spot, directly before the final of the 2007 Rugby World Cup, at an estimated cost of £700,000.

The television premiere of the advertisement was on Friday August 31, 2007, during the finale of the eighth series of the United Kingdom reality television show Big Brother, watched by around 14% of British viewers. Additional 90-second spots were commissioned through September, switching to 10-second cuts in October.^[1] The 90-second version was rebroadcast as the final commercial in the break before the final of the 2007 Rugby World Cup between England and South Africa on October 20, with the face of the bass drum emblazoned with an English flag and the slogan "Come On Lads". The spot cost Cadbury an estimated £700,000.^[15]

Billboard and print campaigns were set up to run alongside the television commercial, and a sponsorship deal with the "Great Gorilla Run" charity fun run through London on September 23, 2007 was set up through Sputnik Communications.^[16] An online presence was established with a competition on the Glass and a Half Full Productions website offering tickets to Las Vegas.^[17]

Following the positive reception of the commercial in the United Kingdom and online, Cadbury Canada arranged to show the advertisements in 850 cinemas across Canada throughout November 2007. Further online tie-ins were launched, including an online game and a competition to win a gorilla suit, a purple drum kit and a year's supply of bananas and Cadbury chocolate bars.^[18]

[edit] Reception

A comparison of two frames from Gorilla with their respective versions in the untitled Wonderbra parody

The campaign was well-received by the British public. The commercial was uploaded to video sharing website YouTube shortly after it first aired, and was viewed over 500,000 times in the first week. As of November 2007, it has been viewed over six million times across a large number of video sharing webhosts.^[19][20] 70 Facebook groups appreciating the ad have been set up,^[19] with one, named "We love the Cadbury's drumming gorilla", boasting 200 members.^[2] A number of spoofs and parodies were quickly uploaded by amateurs with the tacit approval of Cadbury,^[21] and the British branch of Wonderbra created and uploaded their own version of the advertisement, replacing the gorilla with Wonderbra model (and musician) Jentina^[22][23] with the Cadbury strapline "A glass and half full of joy" being replaced with "Two cups full of joy." While Cadbury tacitly permitted limited display and modification of the commercial without authorisation,^[21] the Wonderbra spot was later removed from YouTube following notification from Phil Collins Limited that the piece infringed their copyright to "In The Air Tonight."^[24] Gorilla was further parodied as an introduction to the second half of the 2007 Children in Need special, with an actor dressed as Pudsey Bear taking the central role.^[25]

There was much speculation when the advert first appeared on how it was made – whether the gorilla was real, animatronic, or a man in a suit. Many believed that Phil Collins himself was the drummer. When asked about Gorilla, Collins jokingly commented that "Not only is he a better drummer than me, he also has more hair. Can he sing too?"^[26][19] "In the Air Tonight" became a popular online download following its appearance in the commercial, reaching a chart position of 14 within the UK Singles Chart despite not being given a physical re-release, and becoming the third-most-downloaded track of the day on the iTunes Store.^[19]

Despite reservations that the campaign might prove too abstract and have little effect, Cadbury reported that sales of Dairy Milk had increased 9% from the same period in 2006. Measurements of public perception of the brand carried out by market research firm YouGov showed that 20% more people looked favourably on the brand compared after the advert's general release than before.^[27] Spokesmen for the company have expressed amazement at the success of the campaign.^[2][21] Notwithstanding the fact that the spot was only broadcast online and within the United Kingdom, the commercial appeared in the news in many English-speaking countries such as Canada and Australia, and plans have been made for limited expansion of the campaign into these markets.^[21][18]

The advertisement won the D&AD "Black Pencil" design award in May 2008.^[28]

[edit] Sequel

On 30 March 2008, A Glass and a Half Full Productions began rolling out the sequel to the Gorilla campaign. Using many of the same ideas, Airport Trucks features pimped airport ground support equipment racing at night to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now".^[29]

[edit] See also

• Gorillas in popular culture

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Glass and a Half Full Productions website showing the Gorilla advert and its sequel.
• Gorilla direct download from the above site (in WMV format)
• GoGorilla.ca, the website launched as part of the Canadian cinema campaign.
• The WonderBra "Gorilla" spot at CollegeHumor.com.
• Children in Need tribute at YouTube (watermarked)
• GaronMichael.comThe homepage of the gorilla performer