cadbury dairy milk
The challenge
Cadbury Dairy Milk is Cadbury’s flagship brand, so it needs to be updated continually. Its major relaunch in 2002/03 included new global packaging and a more coherent approach. This was designed to give a stronger consumer impact and to create a purple patch of Cadbury Dairy Milk products on the shelf.
The background
One of Cadbury’s first major successes was the launch of Cadbury Dairy Milk in 1905 which made an immediate and lasting impact.
Until this time British chocolate had been considered inferior to Swiss Chocolate, the market leader. By today’s standards British chocolate was coarse and dry and was made with powdered milk. Cadbury spent a great deal of time and money on research and a new plant and developed a new recipe using fresh milk and new manufacturing processes.
There were three long-standing variants of the Cadbury Dairy Milk brand – Cadbury Dairy Milk Fruit and Nut (launched 1928) and Cadbury Dairy Milk Wholenut (launched 1933) as well as Cadbury Dairy Milk itself. There are now many more variants of the brand – Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel, CDM Crunchie, CDM Biscuit, CDM Creme Egg, CDM Mint chips, CDM Turkish Delight, and CDM Bubbly. There are also seasonal Cadbury Dairy Milk products, such as Christmas tree decorations.
In order to bring new consumers into the brand, as well as offer variety and interesting new things to try for existing consumers the development of the Cadbury Dairy Milk brand required a great deal of innovation from the product development team, for example:
CDM Biscuit
Many different types and size of biscuit were trialled in order to find one that gave the desired flavour and crunch.
CDM Turkish Delight
A special blend of Turkish flavours and chocolate were developed to provide the distinctive taste of CDM Turkish Delight (developed from Fry’s Turkish Delight). This flavour derives from using genuine Otto of Roses flavour.
CDM Mint Chips
Aerated Murray Mint is crushed in a purpose-built breaking plant. The chips are graded according to size and only those of the right size go into the bar. A significant amount of work was undertaken to evaluate the consistency and size of chip that would result in the best texture and flavour.
Another challenge was to stop the mint chips absorbing moisture and becoming soft. The solution was to use special containers with a moisture-proof seal at the bottom. These were integrated into the factory so that the mint chips could be added directly into the processing line. A high-moisture barrier packaging was developed to prevent moisture entering the product and making it soft and chewy.
The challenge was to stop this strong minty flavour from spreading to other parts of the factory. The answer was to use a special mint flavour, so that the bar smells of chocolate but the mint flavour is only released upon eating – this took a lot of recipe development.
CDM Crunchie
A high-density honeycomb was formulated which can be broken easily into pieces. Like the mint chips, Crunchie pieces absorb moisture easily and become sticky. The special containers with moisture-proof seals and high-moisture barrier packaging were used again to solve this problem.
CDM Bubbly
A less dense product with larger bubbles was developed to create a distinctive product. Exhaustive trials were necessary to ensure that the correct weight of the bar was achieved.