A Glass Half Empty for the Internet

Cadburys South Africa are on a campaign to do with Monks. Mediaholic still don't know what it is and we feel that they are almost on the right track but have excluded a major area for advertising, The Internet...

Above is the ad, many of you may have seen on TV in South Africa. I like teaser Videos and this one does what it is supposed to do and prompted my wife to Google "Cadburys May 15." An international search renders results that are not even relevant to the brand. Urban Dictionary, a YouTube Channel and some reviews and blogs. For me there is an ad, only one, that leads to a website, www.glassandahalf.co.za, which has a countdown, and a teaser video.

Poor SEO

The website has shocking Search Engine Optimisation. My check returns 6 keywords. Google's Keyword tool will generate 266 keywords for the phrase Cadbury's chocolate. In fact the phrase we searched for isn't even one of the 6. This means that all the traffic to this site will have to be direct, referred or via paid search engine marketing. One doesn't need to necessarily use all 266 keywords as some may be negative to the campaign, but when compiling keywords the basic question is, "what will my target market search for?"

Mobile Media Forgotten

When one searches online for any info you get nothing of interest either. A few HelloPeter complaints and other irrelevant nonsense. There was an ad for a YouTube channel that had no link to the SA campaign at all.

Credible Social Media Follow Through

Any advertising campaign that makes use of traditional media needs to follow through to Social Media. That means the brand must be sufficiently represented online and that the campaign must be prominent in all forms of social media. Cadbury has ignored all aspects of this. They didn't even bother creating a Cadbury SA YouTube channel, but uploaded the ad to "TechSys100."

Ignoring Facebook is just Silly

There were 1.9 Billion page views on Facebook in South Africa for April 2011... That is 38 times the population of SA. They have a 69% reach into the market. It would also have cost a lot less that a week's worth of TV ads on all channels.

Free Options that Make a Big Difference

Getting SEO right, creating YouTube, Facebook or Twitter accounts is free and easy. Monitoring them is obtaining feedback in real time which is great for any marketer. Any good brand manager will tell you that your branding needs to follow through to every campaign. Otherwise there is no point to it...

The big question then is, Who are you partnering with that will help you get the best results out of your campaign?