Confectionery products maker Cadbury Adams today breaks an online viral marketing campaign to promote its Bubblicious chewing gum to kids ages 11 to 15.
Using technology from Oddcast, Cadbury Adams agency RMG Connect, New York, created a Web page on the site at www.bubblicious.com that lets users animate the characters online with their own voice. They can then forward this to their friends.
“They’re really interested in bringing technologies that their 11-to-15-year-old demographic has not interacted with before and they felt that with the large amount of kids in that demographic having access to cell phones and with their friends having cell phones that this ability to tie in the Web with telephony is going to be a test success,” said Emily Twomey, director of sales at Oddcast, New York.
Cadbury Adams, Parsippany, NJ, created four animated characters earlier this year that are represented on the site’s new promotion. Visitors now can select their favorite character and change accessories on each of them – clothing and sunglasses, for instance.
Then, users can call a toll-free number and leave a personal message, which is turned into a WAV file that will be automatically lipsynched with the chosen character.
In essence, people can see their characters on the screen lipsync with their voice within a few seconds. The character is chewing gum when it’s not talking and blows a bubble after every audio message.
Oddcast’s VHost Workshop with Telephony technology was used for this process. The company also serves clients like ad agency Digitas for its Pontiac account, Holiday Inn, ESPN, Bratz dolls and Honda.
Cadbury Adams’ goal is to increase interaction with the brand and also spur sales of the gum.
Bubblicious, on average, costs 75 cents a pack and is available in strawberry, grape, watermelon, sour apple and bubble gum flavors.
“In this particular campaign it was a perfect match,” Twomey said. “We could bring Oddcast technology to this product – chewing gum – and we could actually bring it to life using the characters that represent the brand.”
Mickey Alam Khan covers Internet marketing campaigns and e-commerce, agency news as well as circulation for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
