Cadbury MY to promote selected local kuih vendors via paid social ads

Cadbury Malaysia is extending help to local kuih vendors by creating a digital presence for selected vendors. Under the #MYCadburyFlavours initiative, Cadbury will promote their businesses through paid ads on social media and aims to drive this through the hashtag. This comes as local kuih vendors have been impacted during the pandemic and many local businesses struggle to survive. 

The Instagram-led campaign builds on Malaysians' affinity towards food by welcoming individuals to share their favourite kuih stalls in a collaborative effort to curate an easily accessed feed that ultimately works to create awareness and support for them. Consumers are encouraged to share their favourite local kuih stalls or vendors with the hashtag #MyCadburyFlavours and tag Cadbury Malaysia on Intagram. They will then be required to pin the location, where applicable, or include the name and location of the stall in their caption. Alternatively, consumers can also check out the feed via the hashtag and discover local kuih stalls near their homes. 

According to its spokesperson, Cadbury Dairy Milk’s brand purpose is generosity and it believes that inherent generosity exists in everyone, including fellow Malaysians. The Cadbury Dairy Milk Pandan Coconut is inspired by the classic kuih muihs such as Seri Muka, Ketayap and Onde-Onde, which are synonymous with the nation’s identity, said the spokesperson. These stalls and their kuihs continue to preserve iconic flavours such as the Pandan Coconut through generations and is the inspiration behind the new Cadbury Dairy Milk Pandan Coconut. Therefore, Cadbury Malaysia said that it wants to give back to the community by putting their businesses on the map and help promote them.

The spokesperson told A+M that the selected vendors and stalls will be from the submissions on the hashtag, and subsequently, be promoted as paid ads on the different social media platforms. Aligning with Cadbury Dairy Milk's brand purpose, the brand aims to support as many stalls as possible through this campaign.

The objective of this campaign is long term, seeking to build local relevance with the Malaysian consumers, said the spokesperson. Targeting the 18 to 44 age group as its core audience, the brand hopes to reach out to those who are financially independent and able to support and lend a hand to these stalls within their capacity.

At the same time, the brand is also introducing its new Cadbury Dairy Milk Pandan Coconut to evoke the attribute of generosity amongst Malaysians to support local kuih vendors. The Cadbury Dairy Milk Pandan Coconut is the third limited edition localised variant from Cadbury Malaysia since 2018, following the Cadbury Dairy Milk Kopi C and Cadbury Dairy Milk Durian in previous years. 

While Cadbury declined to comment on the monetary value of the initiative, its spokesperson told A+M that the spend will enable the company to achieve its goal in reaching at least 10 million Malaysians in terms of reach across Facebook, Instagram and Youtube. This is in hopes that locals can also get to know and support these kuih sellers as well as other similar local small businesses.

The spokesperson also said that the company chose to focus on Instagram as it has “conventionally been a more visual form of communication”. The brand also felt that the campaign’s nature was better suited for Instagram seeing that social media movements, whether branded or community-focused, do get more traction via the relevant hashtags. The ads will be running in tandem on Facebook and Youtube in order to reach a larger audience, which “is essential when spotlighting these stalls”, said Cadbury’s spokesperson.

Sharing on the marketing initiatives for the campaign, the spokesperson said that marketing has shifted towards social media and digitally-led campaigns in order to “continue delivering the right messages to the right consumers”. This has largely been driven by targeted influencer engagement, extensive PR efforts, strategic media partnerships and effective digital ads on online channels added the spokesperson.

"As a brand that champions generosity, we are excited to launch not only a product but a campaign that goes beyond to spotlight our local kuih sellers who continue to preserve these classic flavours and we hope we can come together as a nation to continuously #SapotLokal and help our local business owners pull through this challenging time,” said Arpan Sur, head of marketing for Mondelez International, Malaysia and Singapore. 

In 2018, Cadbury MY launched a limited-edition flavour Kopi C exclusively for the Malaysian market, with sleeves of selected products featuring hand-drawn illustrations by cartoonist Datuk Lat to highlight something that most Malaysians grew up with. Also in 2020, the brand also launched the #SaluteTheGoodness campaign which called on Malaysians to share their generosity story and celebrate the heroism of front-liners. 

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