How Cadbury’s Secret Santa Postal Service Is Lifting Spirits with Surprise Chocolate

I’m not saying a bar of chocolate can solve the world’s ills, but receiving an unexpected bar can do a lot to make you feel better about humanity. That’s the feeling that British Chocolate brand Cadbury is trying to encourage for the six weeks leading up to Christmas, with its 2022 ‘Secret Santa Postal Service’. On a mission to unite the nation around a simple gesture that echoes the true spirit of Christmas, Cadbury will be inspiring people across the UK to send a free chocolate bar, in secret, to someone special.

“The Christmas campaign is always a big deal for us at Cadbury,” says Emma Paxton, senior brand manager for Cadbury Christmas. Since 2018, that has taken the form of the Secret Santa project. Originally, that meant taking the Postal Service to a few towns across the UK to give out chocolate in person. When covid hit, the experience moved online. But this year, the brand is working with its agency of record, VCCP London, on a more ambitious project than ever.

 

“We’d always been limited in terms of how many people could get involved,” says Emma. “This year it was so important to us that we were as accessible as possible for people - we wanted to go bigger and better than ever before!”

“In previous years, giving out chocolate to people face-to-face was magical, incredible but also limited us in terms of accessibility.” An online mechanic allowed chocolate to reach more people, which is the name of the game for Cadbury. “The less disappointed chocolate fans, the better!” says Emma. 

But running the entire campaign online wouldn’t have had the cut-through or impact they were looking for. “That’s when we hit on the idea to turn posters up and down the country into Cadbury Secret Santa Postal Services.”

 

At the heart of the integrated campaign is a transformation of media: hundreds of digital six-sheet, static and flyposters popping up across the UK on bus stops to train stations and from quaint little towns to big cities. The posters will invite members of the public to send chocolate secretly to someone special, for free, simply by scanning a QR code. A total of 120,000 Cadbury chocolate bars will be released gradually every day of the activation until Christmas Eve to ensure as many people as possible have the opportunity to send chocolate secretly to someone special. There’s a good element of luck too, as the digital posters will pop up at random throughout the day in different spots, spread out carefully across the country so that everyone has a good chance of sending some secret chocolate. The Cadbury Secret Santa website, which also acts as the campaign’s central hub, also helps people to suss out where their nearest poster might be. 

 

Subject to availability, people can choose from a range of products, including the original Cadbury Dairy Milk bar, and Cadbury’s Oreo, Caramel, Wholenut, Fruit and Nut and Plant bars. Also available is a range of seasonal products from the winter range, including the Cadbury Dairy Milk Mini Snowballs bar and Cadbury Dairy Milk Winter Wonderland bar.

 

It’s a huge operation. And one that goes way beyond the emotional festive TVCs that so many UK brands plump for at this time of year. The Secret Santa Postal Service translates an ambitious idea into a mechanism for brightening lives with sweet treats in cities and towns up and down the country.

 

“The idea was something VCCP led with almost right from the off,” says Emma. “I’m not saying we weren’t nervous to zig in a world of zag, but it just made sense. Once the seed was sown, we didn’t back down. We were committed behind the idea of doing versus purely telling. Passing on the generosity to two people (actually creating connections across the country) versus showing - to be able to facilitate something like this… it’s pretty special and not something many of us get to do.” 

The real Santa is, of course, a busy man at this time of year, so Cadbury found the perfect alternative. “Who needs Santa when you’ve got Jeff, our amazing Cadbury Secret Santa postie? (He was also totally cool with handing the reins over to Jeff for this one),” says Emma. 

 

Jeff is central to the creative in the campaign, from the TV to the social media to the actual posters themselves, explaining how the service works. “Matching luggage is slightly out of fashion these days but for us this was crucial for our campaign,” says Emma. “We wanted to ensure people who saw Jeff on TV or online would recognise him in the posters that are at the heart of our campaign and know what it was all about.” 

 

In a pledge to make the Postal Service more magical and accessible this year than ever before, Bernadette, the product and services innovation company from VCCP, have supercharged the activation by enabling a digital experience once the QR code has been scanned to give customers a more personable and interactive experience with the Cadbury postie, Jeff. Similarly across static posters and flyposters, the poster will come to life with a bit of extra magic using augmented reality. 

But for all the clever media and tech innovation involved, Cadbury’s big Christmas activation is about unexpected bars of chocolate spreading joy when we most need it. “The UK needs people’s generous spirits now more than ever,” says Emma. “There’s so much happening in the world that’s likely to put a frown on peoples’ faces at the moment. We wanted to help people to give each other a little lift instead.”

Emma adds that the response so far has been “incredibly positive.” Of course, her team has been keeping an eye on the reactions across social media and have been absolutely thrilled to see so many people sharing pictures of the bars they’ve received. What’s most heartening is the warmth it promotes: “For many it’s been a surprise little lift that they weren’t expecting.”