STUPID/SMART
The Banger Blog · a Stupid/Smart breakdown
Classic · 2007

Gorilla

Cadbury Dairy Milk · Fallon London

From YouTube.

The insight

You can't rebuild love with facts; joy is what a chocolate bar is actually for.

The idea

A gorilla savouring, then nailing, the drum fill in Phil Collins' 'In the Air Tonight' — no chocolate, no words.

The Stupid/Smart of it

Stupid: Answering a salmonella trust-crisis with zero product and zero explanation; the client nearly killed it.

Smart: Nonsense for a chocolate ad — but it's pure joy, which is the truth, so it lands as inevitable.

Why it works

'A glass and a half of joy' is Cadbury's own equity; the film IS the product, not borrowed. Earned.

An irresistible air-drum earworm everyone shares → became the 'Glass and a Half Full Productions' platform.

The magic

The four seconds of the gorilla's face before the drum fill. Nothing in the strategy asks for a pause; the pause is the whole ad.

Craft-poweredIt dies when described. It only exists once made. Has to be seen to work.

The way in

The devices behind this one, from our library of ways in:

Show the feeling, not the productHide the product until the end
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