Cadbury’s tasty augmented reality game

Cadbury’s augmented reality

This week he’s choc-a-hoop with confectionery giant, Cadbury whose latest activation turned heads at London Waterloo station. 

Cadbury commandeered the UK’s largest digital screen for a crowd pleasing experiential activation that used a mixture of augmented reality and sleight of hand to trick people into believing they were interacting with the objects displayed there.

Commuters could see themselves on the screen as they walked across the station concourse. As obstacles appeared in front of their screen-selves, people were encouraged to ‘burst’, ‘swipe’ or ‘kick’ them to win chocolate bar prizes.

What seemed like a huge motion sensitive game was actually controlled by Cadbury staff who surreptitiously manipulated the action from the crowd.

I think this is a great example of an experiential campaign that excites the senses and uses the real and virtual worlds to engage the consumer. Reinforcing the Cadbury, 'Win your joy in chocolate' positioning, it also made good use of social media by displaying tweets tagged  #freethejoy directly onto the big screen, as well as providing a consumer generated commentary on the action.

This big screen activation comes hot-on-the-heels of Cadbury’s pop-up, 'Joy Boutique' which saw Brand Ambassadors posing as shop assistants alongside shelves of giant chocolate shoes. The life-sized creations, by food artist Prudence Staite, were a natural shoe-in for a Twitter campaign allowing visitors who posted a photo of their favourite pair the chance to win them. Once again, Cadbury succeeded in delivering an imaginative experiential activation that linked seamlessly with complimentary social media activity.  

Of course this isn't the first time Cadbury has used experiential marketing to demonstrate its sweet side. The Fabulous Creations Funfair used a touring troupe of performers and fairground-style attractions to whet the appetites of chocolate loving families and showcase its new Dairy Milk range. Once again, the brand demonstrated a playful creativity with themed games such as the Jelly Orchestra, POPcatcher, Cookie Crusher and Hazelnut Fountain.   

This in store activation in Korea was a less dynamic but equally novel way to highlight the brand's caring credentials for the, 'Say it with chocolate' campaign. Employing the services of an artisan printer, Cadbury invited consumers to have a personal message of their choice embossed onto a Chocolate bar which could then be gifted or enjoyed by the author.

A neat concept that allowed customers to quite literally eat their words!  


Joss Davidge is managing partner of brand experience agency BEcause, an award winning brand experience agency which has been helping brands been getting brands talking for over 20 years.

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