When I blog about campaigns – I usually have  extreme opinions. Either I love it or I hate it. But for the first time – I actually have no opinion. No reaction whatsoever.

“Viral marketing” has been a buzz word for a while now.  And, of course – It seems to become a core part of the client brief – ‘Please make us a viral video’. But, virality is more likely an outcome than an ingredient in itself.

Ogilvy & Mather, Mumbai made an attempt at the dark art (with their dark chocolate) of ‘viral marketing’. Bournville is a dark chocolate and so the entire concept revolved around their unique positioning of being ‘not so sweet’.

Here is the video:

The unbranded video with it’s little branded hints – ‘the toy train’ and ‘I really though it was sweet’ gave away the true dark corporate intention behind the puppy love video. But hey, it would be worse if Cadbury invested money in making an unbranded video and no one even realized it was Cadbury.

In terms of ROI – the video had 3 million hits on YouTube within the first 4 days. It seems like they just wanted to get the ‘not so sweet’ conversation started. To think of it-  I might have just helped meet their objectives.

Signing off with ‘still no opinion’.