Ogilvy and Wavemaker: #NotJustACadburyAd and Shah Rukh Khan-My-Ad

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a particularly severe impact on smaller businesses in India. So Ogilvy and Wavemaker, together with Cadbury Celebrations, worked side-by-side in 2020 on the #NotJustACadburyAd campaign to lend a helping hand.

In 2021, the team updated the data-driven campaign, using machine learning to create advertisements that served both Cadbury and thousands of local businesses, all given support with the enthusiastic help of Cadbury’s brand ambassador and Bollywood’s biggest star, Shah Rukh Khan.

Ogilvy produced ads for small stores that ‘featured’ the famous actor asking passers-by to shop locally for Diwali. The AI-powered, hyper-personalised ads featured more than 2,000 grocery, retail, consumer electronics, home décor, clothing, furniture and jewellery stores across the country. Wavemaker developed the media plan and worked with Google and YouTube to optimise ad reach and engagement.

Ads were targeted to consumers based on their geolocation, promoting only nearby small businesses. Since it’s impossible to cover all the stores across the country, the team created a microsite that allowed small business owners to generate their own versions of the ads, with Shah Rukh Khan ’himself’ using owners’ stores’ names in ads that could be easily posted on social media and other platforms.

A total of 130,000 ads were created featuring 2,000 stores which gained 94 million views across YouTube and Facebook.