When I first saw this new AR (Augmented Reality) activation by Cadbury Silk for Valentine’s Day 2022, I did not get it. The idea is by Cadbury’s agency in India, Ogilvy.
Teen romances are frowned upon in India? Yes, of course.
This, even if Paytm’s Valentine’s Day 2022 ad film makes it seem like everyone and everyone’s extended family adores the lead teen couple while in reality all of them could be taking pics of the couple and sending them to their parents or Bajrang Dal.
I digress. Yes, teen romances are broadly frowned upon.
But because they are frowned upon, do they become ‘secret romances’? Hmm, ok, you could say that.
So ‘secret messages’ via Cadbury Silk AR activation? How… or why?
A basic fact remains that ‘secret romances’ are already thriving despite the country/society frowning upon them. How? Earlier, it used to thrive because of friends who gave the teen couple some privacy. And secret notes that were passed on via friends and the few well-wishers.
But now, ‘secret romances’ thrive because of smartphones. I cannot even begin to count the number of ways couples share secret messages between them using smartphones, regardless of whether society frowns on them or not.
There’s the latest feature from WhatsApp—View Once—that allows the receiver to view the message (photo or video too) just once and then they disappear after they have been viewed once.
Signal too has the same feature. You can opt for anywhere between 1 second to 4 weeks for the messages to remain after they’ve been viewed. You could even set a custom timer on Signal for the amount of time a message should disappear after being viewed.
Facebook Messenger allows ‘secret’ messages too. Just tap the compose button and ensure that the padlock toggle switch is on. Anything you say here will disappear after it has been viewed.
There’s Instagram, of course, with the feature called ‘View Once’ (no surprise).
And then there is Snapchat, the app that popularized disappearing messages and is most associated with this feature.
These are just the ones I know – I’m reasonably sure today’s teens would know a lot more ways to send secret messages to each other.
AR activation requires a smartphone and internet connection. Smartphone and internet connection allows teens to already send secret messages daily.
So why would they want to send ‘secret messages’ via Cadbury Silk?
I believe that’s where this campaign wrongly frames the core idea.
The idea, at its most basic, is akin to this 2019 Valentine’s Day outdoor, offline activation by the Canadian Jewellery outlet, Peoples Jewellers (agency: Juliet).
The brand allowed a few couples to express their love through a digital billboard the brand owned on top of its store. Since it was a digital billboard, it can change the messages after a few minutes/hours and give a chance to more people (and inform them when their messages would appear).
This is not very different from lovers sending their messages to newspapers (special classifieds section) and it getting published.
Cadbury Silk’s idea is the augmented reality version of the same basic idea.
But in all these, the crux is this: one proclaims the love for the other not directly to one another using a one-to-one communication tool (say, a letter). The proclamation is done using a publicly visible tool (billboard, newspaper, radio, etc.).
However, in an AR activation, it is a hybrid between a public tool and private viewing. What seems like a generic Cadbury Silk advertisement (in the newspaper) or a billboard/bus shelter (in public) to everyone else, it could transform into a private message to just one (targeted) recipient.
Framing it as a ‘secret message’ perhaps misdirects the intent and moves it closer to already popular ‘secret message’ tools that are easily available to the same target audience.
It’s not even, as the video says, ‘express their love in the grandest way without the world finding out‘. This can even be achieved by sending something grand using a ‘view once’ WhatsApp message, for instance.
Instead, the framing should have been on the potential to turn an otherwise public tool into something only one person can see. That’s not just ‘secret’.
It’s the ‘Billboard for one’ (or ‘Hoarding for one’, to use the Indian equivalent to a Billboard). Meaning: the entire world can see a billboard, but this idea allows just one special person to see what no other person can see on the same billboard.
It’s the newspaper for one. Meaning: the entire world can see the newspaper, but this idea allows just one special person to see what no other person can see in the same newspaper.
The gesture that this AR activation allows is to turn a public platform into a private message for just one person. That’s not the same as sending ‘secret messages’, a thoroughly commonplace idea now, thanks to many smartphone apps. If we use the ‘secret message’ framing to communicate this idea, this AR activation seems rather forced given that this involves way too many steps to achieve what the teens have been already doing effortlessly on their own anyway. Plus, why would teens want to send a message through something that opens them and their loved ones to receive marketing spam from Cadbury?
But when you reframe this idea as a ‘Billboard for one’, that conjures the imagery of a large billboard in a public space/busy road, but only one person can see the message on it!
It conjures the imagery of a grand gesture existing in public, hiding in plain sight and viewable by only one person. The world can see the platform on which the gesture will show up, just that they cannot see what the target recipient gets to see.
In other words, this becomes a ‘secret message in public‘. Or, a ‘secret message in a newspaper‘! That context—and contrast—of something secret, but in the public glare, would make it more appealing to the target audience. That presents the idea in better context, for something that is pitched under, ‘teen romances are frowned upon in India’. The appeal for ‘secret messages in public’ comes from the fact that the world around, the teen couple could continue frowning, but right in front of them, the couple could be communicating without the world realizing it.
So, why position the idea in a way that seems to compete with already famous ‘secret message’ options (and make it seem like the ability to do something in one more way) when it can be presented in a far more exciting way so that it seems totally unique and exclusively available via Cadbury Silk?