The best fairtrade comms ever from Cadburys

Its been a while but thought I would pen a few words about the latest stuff from Cadburys.  I think its awesome.  Lets remember for a start that the story that they want to communicate is actually about their internal operations - the supply chain no less.  To many not a rich source of creative communications.  Going fair trade can easily be seen as a tick box exercise or be communicated in a cliched, 'because we care' kind of way, rather than being seen as a source of inspiration.  If you don't work in advertising then the latest work seems like some memorable 'out there' fun with an African theme to express the fair trade connection.  If you do you are tempted to think about how it was sold or even explained to the client to get them to sign it off.  You might also dig a bit deeper and find that the every aspect such as the people, music, and visual themes seem to been pulled together in an authentic way from genuine Ghanaian references.  For example the rapper is a top selling Ghanaian rapper, the face/mask was based on tribal art etc... etc...  Maybe that's part of the reason why it works even though it seems like a random fantasy / drug induced dream.  The final thing of note is the way it uses the 'make culture not ads' approach i.e. it works as branded entertainment.  There is a 'music video' edit as well as an i-tunes download, and I'm sure, loads of other things that I've not yet seen.    Brand substance I'd call it.

Awesome idea to make every road a power plant

This idea to make roads out of super tough solar panels really captures the imagination.  One of the big problems for getting renewable energy ideas off the ground is that they create an obvious impression on the landscape and there is a highly vocal minority who usually manage to convince councils to block promising projects.  'We are not against renewables, we just don't want them in our back yard' is the usual argument from people who have detected the slightest whiff of an impact on house prices.  Now someone has had the idea of making solar panels look like something big and ugly that for some reason causes less of an uproar with middle England... roads.  Whats really interesting is the ways they could create advantages over conventional roads such as ingtegrated lighting panels allowing better visibility.  This would give the ability to change road markings to alert drivers to possible hazzards making them safer.  They could also mean less road signs which are also pretty ugly.  Maybe if they managed to disguess other renewable energy projects as a branch Waitrose or 'good local schools,' then there could be even more sell in : )

Seen here...