This post is a response to Shivaji Dasgupta’s article in BestMediaInfo, titled, “Is tokenism the latest variant of Dairy Milk?“.
Let me summarize Shivaji’s arguments (but please do read the full article before reading my response).
1. The new Cadbury’s Dairy Milk ad is ‘tokenism’, with ‘no genuine impact’.
2. The ad is ‘an insult to everybody’s intelligence’.
3. There is nothing wrong with the ad, but it gets projected as cause advertising and that is wrong.
4. If ‘the company would be comfortable with sourcing from lady suppliers, committing a chunk of recruitment to ladies, indulge in valuable CSR in this sphere, incubate women entrepreneurs and allied activities, then the contribution to the cause would be meaningful’ (meaning: the ad alone, in isolation, is tokenism)
5. This is the 2nd attempt at tokenism by Mondelez/Cadbury’s after their Unity Bar in 2019.
6. Shivaji likes Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate and continues to enjoy it.
I think it would be fair for me to start with the last point: I, personally, do not prefer Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolates. As someone who is consciously giving up sugar, I find almost all of Cadbury’s chocolate range in India to be cloyingly sweet, and I generally prefer the less-sugar, bitter and dark chocolate varieties from Amul.
Let me also address the previous ad’s perspective. I agree with Shivaji that the Unity Bar was tokenism. At a product level, it did a poor job of communicating unity in diversity through a bar of chocolates where the colors were segregated. However, the communication to announce the Unity Bar was very smart. See:
Now, having addressed those two unrelated points, let me come to the new Dairy Milk ad.
This seems unlikely, but in case you haven’t seen the ad, here it is.
Let me start with the 4th point since I seem to be addressing the points in reverse.
Here is at least one credential from Mondelez India that addresses one of Shivaji’s suggestions: ‘committing a chunk of recruitment to ladies’.
I wonder if this could permit Mondelez to indulge in creating the new Dairy Milk ad where they show a woman cricketer.
On point no. 3, about the ad being projected as ’cause advertising’, consider this.
Does the ad ask you, the audience, to celebrate women in sports/cricket? No. It simply does so, itself.
Does the ad even celebrate women in cricket? No. A friend of the lady cricketer in the ad does, in a simple reversal of the much-loved 90s ad. The ad ends by wishing the Indian women’s cricket team success in the upcoming series… not very different from any other brand (a number of brands, at that) wishing the men’s cricket team success before they start a new series.
So what cause is the ad advertising? That women are playing cricket? That’s hardly a cause anymore. Women’s cricket is probably seeing its best time now with a lot of visible, vocal, and active interest, though definitely not as much as men’s cricket. That a brand chose to highlight that interest is simply a reflection (and recognition) of that larger fact.
In the ad’s script, the women’s cricket is incidental – there is no showy focus on that. The product is not instrumental in her playing the game well. She plays, he cheers and celebrates, as simple as that. The focus is entirely on happy moments in life and how people tend to celebrate such moments, exactly as it was in the original.
Even the Mondelez spokesperson quoted in media, Anil Viswanathan, says that the idea was to recognize the changing times and offer their support to the women’s cricket team.
I’m not entirely sure if this ad could fit within the ’cause advertising’ frame.
If so, where would you place this new Kellogg’s ad that features two daughters and their mother playing hockey?
Or this new ad for Boost featuring Dhoni and a spunky young girl obsessed with cricket?
Or the Horlicks ad from last year where a young girl changes a flat tyre?
Are they all ’cause advertising’ and hence should be criticized?
As for ‘insulting everybody’s intelligence’, I would disagree with that too.
It’s a simple ad. In fact, way too simple at that, since it reverses the gender roles of the older ad in a very linear way. There is no other intelligence infused into it to make it different or unique. It’s almost a frame-to-frame reproduction of the earlier ad with just one twist and that seems to be an intentional decision, to not tamper with the original script in any other way.
I consciously look for counterpoints of most things that go viral and this ad is no different. Usually, when something is being universally liked online, you just need to give it under 24 hours for the counterpoints to surface. In the case of the new Cadbury Dairy Milk ad, here are some of the counterpoints I gathered from assorted people:
1. the woman cricketer is not wearing a helmet – it is dangerous and helmet rules have changed since the 90s
2. her batting and pull shot did not seem convincing; she could have done better
3. it seems patronizing
4. it’s too simplistic, they could have done something differently
5. they could have changed the song
6. the guy should have done a bhangra step
7. why is the guy stealing the limelight from the girl?
8. the camera work was not as good as the earlier ad
9. this works only because of nostalgia. If someone has not seen the earlier ad, there is nothing for them in the new ad.
You can add Shivaji’s entire post as the 10th point.
Whether these are valid concerns or simply ‘it could have been different’ variety is a totally different argument that probably does not warrant separate posts.
The 9th point surfaced more often in LinkedIn comments and on some WhatsApp Groups I’m part of so I gave it some thought and engaged on that point. I believe the ad works at 2 levels (refer to the ‘working at two levels’ equivalent from the Volvo ad featuring Jean-Claude Van Damme) – for those who are aware of the older ad, it’s a reliving of the iconic original and smile at the simple, charming, timely twist. But for those who have do not have lived-in experience about the older ad (and hence may not understand the ad’s cult appeal), it may still work for the simple novelty of it showing women’s cricket in a normal, non-hyped way – not many ads show women’s cricket being played, at that! And not many ads show a man wholeheartedly applauding a woman being successful at that either.
Incidentally, even the model who plays the cricketer in the ad, Kavya Ramachandran, had not seen the original before starring in the remake!
But tokenism, as an allegation, is quite common in Indian/global advertising as a counterpoint to brands showcasing something akin to a cause and that deserved a longer response simply because Shivaji had taken the time and effort to articulate his point of view beyond a fleeting tweet or a comment.
There are brands that have done horrendously on this front, also referred to as ‘woke washing’ (riding on a topically relevant cause frivolously, usually via marketing/advertising, without doing anything about it in the real world, or worse, by doing the opposite of that cause in the real world). The crux of both is the same – ‘tokenism’ and ‘woke’ (used as a pejorative) – that someone or something is being done insincerely.
Pepsi is perhaps the first name that comes to people’s minds on this front – the infamous Pepsi ad. Here is that ad in all its full glory.
When it comes to brands that say one thing and don’t walk the talk, Unilever is the brand that is cited often – it’s Dove says all the progressive things about race and body positivity while its other brand, in India, Fair & Lovely, continues to fuel regressive ideas about skin color.
The new Cadbury’s Dairy Milk ad or the Boost, Kellogg’s, and Horlicks ads (see above) don’t fit in this ‘woke-washing’ category simply because they don’t pitch the respective products as being instrumental in changing a scenario, and they don’t even highlight a specific cause. They are simply reflecting a change that is prevalent right now in India even though we all understand that a whole LOT more needs to be done.
But one brand (or the few brands) that dares to add its communications weight to reflect a new reality need not be saddled with the entire weight of changing our entire society. We seem to be far more forgiving with our elected representatives that we let them walk away with a phenomenal amount of rhetoric and duplicity, and keep falling for their words again and again while seeking scathing accountability and asking all the tough questions to the brands that sell to us.
It may be useful for the Indian ad industry heads to come to an understanding about what their stand is on ‘woke’ and ‘tokenism given how contrasting their publicly held views are – consider the views of vs. .
Even the media perhaps need to contemplate when and where to use the word ‘woke’. The word is supposed to mean that someone has a heightened awareness of the injustices and prejudices around them, usually related to race and representation, but has since included more things that society loves to brush under the carpet.
Observe how women’s hygiene and air pollution are clubbed under ‘woke’!
A related read from the same publication (Hindu BusinessLine):
