Week 4: One Third of the Chocolate Journey

Being in-charge of the social media aspect of the brand was not as easy as I thought it would be. After receiving a proposed post from the digital marketing agency, I had to provide my feedback to Mei Ying to ensure that it aligned with the Cadbury's direction. I felt bad by giving such detailed but constructive feedbacks as it was already their hard work of coming up with both visuals and copywriting for the post. However, I was reassured by my manager that it was part of the process of getting it done right. In the end the Facebook post, came up looking great receiving good response from the fans.

Taking on another minor project, for which I called “Project Advocacy” due to the name of the agency with an extra amount of premiums. An existing partnership with KidZania has provided Cadbury with a certain amount of free entry vouchers for use. Mei Ying tasked me to come up with both an internal and external competition to fully utilize these vouchers to increase the brand awareness and give back to the fans of Cadbury. She suggested to create a digital competition where participants have to perform a certain task to receive the vouchers. It was again an interesting task for me to get my creative brain working.

This week was also my first time sitting in for the Marvellous Creations Bi-Weekly Meeting at Carat, the company’s advertising agency. Being an outstation student, I did not have any personal transport to the place. Fortunately, I manage to asked Beatrice, the external public affairs manager who was also going to the meeting to fetch from the office. The whole session was more like an induction to the whole new product launch for me as I was not part of the pre-planning stage. I again had to absorb as much as possible with the intimidating look from my manager sitting across me. Trying to understand how an above the line launch (advertising, promotion, digital marketing and many more) work alongside a below the line launch (roadshows, internal & external launch, etc.) was intriguing as it was a larger scale of what I did for my clubs and society event previously.

One of the most exciting part of the week was having the chance to sit in for a meeting between agencies and Cadbury. The meeting was to initiate the third phase of Project Percaya – a crisis management campaign to counter the recent accusation that Cadbury is not Halal. With this multiple agencies including public relations, advertising, production, event management agencies were present. It was very intimidating as a fresh intern to experience and observe how corporate meetings are conducted. I was given the opportunity by Mei Ying to speak up if there is any opportunity. Hence, I tried but felt that it did not really made an impact. With the pressure from Mei Ying giving an aura of disappointment, I sat back and pay close attention to the detail of the discussion. As many discussions were flying around, I tried my best to take note of everything but felt that I missed out on a lot as I did not know anything about the whole campaign. In the end, I was given a simple task to provide the company’s new ambassador for the campaign – Dato’ Siti Nurhaliza, with a gift basket every month as an appreciation for her support in instilling confidence back into the hearts of the Muslim market. This was an interesting project that allowed me to exercise my creativity skills.