Why does Cadbury’s 5 Star sound like Bajrang Dal?

With this year’s Valentine’s Day anti-campaign, Cadbury’s 5 Star is sounding like Bajrang Dal! The campaign description says, ‘We tried to survive it. We tried to escape it. This time, we’re ending it for good’. The campaign is called ‘Destroy Valentine’s Day’! That does sound like Bajrang Dal, right?

So, what’s the plan? Has Cadbury’s 5 Star and its agency, Ogilvy, enlisted the help of Bajrang Dal to “disrupt” (to put it mildly) couples who are celebrating Valentine’s Day this year or force couples to tie rakhis? Thankfully, no. Cadbury’s is a law-abiding organization that uses a perfectly legitimate way to feed excess sugar to young people. So, how does Cadbury’s 5 Star plan to ‘Destroy Valentine’s Day’ this year?

Here’s the gist!

So the whimsical plan involves enlisting Uncles to water down the significance of Valentine’s Day itself, huh? This is actually cleverer than what Ogilvy might have considered.

Uncles are not mere trend-killers. They also have other reputations.

For example, from The Hindu: “Indian Uncles! They ‘protect’ everything from tradition to their apartment block’s paint colour. But beneath the bad jokes and loud voices runs patriarchy, control, and a generation-defying sense of entitlement”.

Or, consider the 2-part series in Mint: ‘The tyranny of the Indian uncle‘, and ‘The sex lives of India’s Power Uncles reveals a crisis of small heartedness‘.

(If you do not have subscription to The Hindu or Mint, and are unable to read the full articles, try this.)

So, Cadbury’s 5 Star and Ogilvy are actually putting the notorious ‘Indian Uncle’ to good use, for a change. There are a few second-order benefits here.

1. Uncles, compared to 5 Star’s usual Gen-Z target audience, would have a considerably better purchasing power and disposable incomes. If Uncles start becoming active participants in Valentine’s Day celebrations, then the resultant economic activity would be far more impressive than that of a Gen-Z only Valentine’s Day! Instead of merely gifting Cadbury’s Dairy Milk (with the heart-shaped piece) to each other (because that’s what they can afford), Uncle couples would be gifting bigger, more expensive things! This is all-round good for the Indian economy.

2. Uncles have a terrible reputation when it comes to “love” (read the 3 articles above, for context). But when enlisted into Valentine’s Day, that too by a reputed brand like Cadbury’s 5 Star, Uncles would have no option but to embrace the magic of love. That is bound to have many secondary effects. For starters, Uncles may be a lot less condescending and more considerate towards singles wanting rental accommodation in one of their many properties. They may also start becoming more open to younger people looking for love.

3. And yes, this whole plan gives Uncles a great chance to turn into better humans and shed their dour, earlier avatar. They could finally become people to look up to, instead of people to avoid, in our society.

Having explained the (adequately whimsical) positives of the campaign, let me turn to a far more basic question: why is Cadbury’s 5 Star and Ogilvy so vehemently after Valentine’s Day? In other words, why does 5 Star need to sound like Bajrang Dal?

To understand that, and to contextualize the bizarre turn of events with regard to Cadbury’s 5 Star and its agency, Ogilvy India, we need go back in time… more than 20 years, to be precise.

Back in 2005-2006 period, Ogilvy helped Cadbury’s launch the famous ‘Ramesh – Suresh’ campaign series. The premise was this: 5 Star was so thick and gooey that Ramesh and Suresh get lost while eating it. But what’s the fun in saying that? So, to make it entertaining, Ogilvy exaggerated one specific aspect – what happens when Ramesh and Suresh get lost in eating the thick and gooey 5 Star?

Thus started the funny ad series featuring Ramesh and Suresh.

The story of the Patloon

Ramesh and Suresh return home with the patloon

Part 3 in the patloon series

Bank robbery

Uncle Ji ki Kursi

Party

You get the drift, right? Ramesh and Suresh are not bumbleheads by birth. They just become bumbleheads because they forget everything while eating the thick and gooey 5 Star.

But all good things must come to an end and 5 Star and Ogilvy ended the Ramesh Suresh series eventually.

But Ogilvy concocted another series from the death of the Ramesh and Suresh series. If the duo become so self-absorbed while eating 5 Star, they would be unable to do anything, right? So, from that line of thought, Ogilvy invented the ‘Do Nothing’ series.

Consider this famous ‘Do Nothing’ ad:

The idea is diametrically different from the Ramesh Suresh series. The duo was portrayed as a set of twins who got into trouble because of 5 Star (because they get lost in the chocolate). But the ‘Do Nothing’ series reframed the premise differently – the consumers of 5 Star simply refuse to do something/anything and because of this, they actually stand to gain something either for themselves or others around them (unlike Ramesh and Suresh, who usually lost something, including getting slapped by pitaaji.

Here’s more from the ‘Do nothing’ series:

5 Star and Ogilvy also started having a funny perspective on topical events using the ‘Do nothing’ plank.

5 Star on AI taking our jobs:

Make AI mediocre again:

So far, so good.

One of the other things Ogilvy and 5 Star extended the ‘Do nothing’ plank was on Valentine’s Day. It started in the pandemic year—2020—with an innocuous limited edition pack that proclaimed ‘Escape cheesy gifts’ – Eat 5 Star, Do nothing. When you scanned the pack’s QR code, you got silly ideas to save money or avoid cheesy gifts. 5 Star continued this in 2021 too.

Then, in 2022, things became a bit more ambitious.

Ogilvy came up with the preposterous idea to rename an island as ‘My cousin’s wedding’ so that those who are tired of Valentine’s Day shenanigans of others could use that as an alibi when someone asks you, ‘What are your plans for Valentine’s Day?’ – ‘I’m going to My Cousin’s Wedding’. This is a clever stretch of an idea indeed and brought a chuckle given the smart exaggeration.

But how does this connect to ‘Do nothing’? The premise was that you avoid Valentine’s Day, head to My Cousin’s Wedding, the island, and do nothing there!

In 2023, Ogilvy came up with a mush-detector so that those annoyed with Valentine’s Day mushiness can detect mush in their vicinity and stay away to… do nothing, of course.

Not as clever as ‘My Cousin’s Wedding’, but still functionally apt within the ‘Do nothing’ plank. But you can already see the ‘Do nothing’ idea being stretched beyond its limits and its fraying at the end now.

Then, in 2024, Cadbury’s unleashed its mission to ‘Erase Valentine’s Day’ using space scientist Nambi Narayanan. No, not literally erase anything, but use the international dateline and timezones in a way that a ship can travel from February 13th to 15th, entirely skipping 14th February. Of course, those who want to avoid Valentine’s Day need to apply online so that they can get a seat in the ship.

Till this point, all of Ogilvy and 5 Star’s Valentine’s Day ads have been about helping those who are tired of Valentine’s Day to find ways to avoid the mush and ‘do nothing’ instead.

But, this year, with the ‘Destroy Valentine’s Day’ campaign, 5 Star seems to have entered a new zone. From finding ways to ignore Valentine’s Day (which anyway will happen) to destroying Valentine’s Day altogether!

Instead of merely helping only those who are uninterested and want to stay away (and do nothing), this year’s campaign wants to make Valentine’s Day itself into a non-event that people would lose interest in.

That is, this year’s campaign wants to purge the event for all so that not just those who want to avoid it can avoid it, but also those who want to celebrate it… should not.

That’s an oddly aggressive line being crossed in the name of harmless humor.

Observe how labored the entire premise has become already, since mid-2000s. To spell it out:
1. Get lost in the thick, gooey chocolate and goof up
2. Get lost in the thick, gooey chocolate, do nothing, and gain something
3. Do nothing on Valentine’s Day by going to an island
4. Do nothing on Valentine’s Day by installing an app
5. Do nothing on Valentine’s Day by getting on a ship
6. Do nothing on Valentine’s Day by recruiting uncles

Ironically, this year’s campaign premise is supposedly that when Uncles start taking interest in something, that thing loses its trendiness. So, if Uncles start showing visible, public affection in their partners, Valentine’s Day won’t trend anymore, it seems, making this year the one with the last Valentine’s Day.

Does that mean Cadbury’s 5 Star and Ogilvy can finally “Do nothing” in the name of a Valentine’s Day campaign in 2026?

Incidentally, even the Bajrang Dal would ‘Do nothing’ if Uncles shower affection publicly on their partners on Valentine’s Day. Why? Because the entire premise of Bajrang Dal’s annoyance with Valentine’s Day (besides it being a ‘non-Indian marketing jamboree’) is that unmarried couples are indulging in it. Uncles, given their age, most likely would be showering their affection publicly on their wives (‘Aunties’?). Married couples celebrating their love on February 14th or any other day of the year would be a difficult thing to illegally vandalize or attack, even for the Bajrang Dal. In fact, most Uncles themselves would be friends of Bajrang Dal members on WhatsApp.

We knew that 5 Star was thick and gooey, but I suppose Ogilvy has dragged it so far, far, far away that we just have one broken piece in each hand with none of the gooiness left. The exaggeration is now so far fetched.

Of course, the larger irony is that a sugar-loaded chocolate is asking people to do nothing while it should be, in all fairness, asking people to work hard and burn that unhealthy stuff they ingested into themselves voluntarily!

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